Lavonia Renaissance Faire Recap
Yesterday was the 2nd annual Lavonia Renaissance Faire. This faire isn’t like Scarborough Faire in Texas or the Georgia Renaissance Festival. It’s a quaint, small-town faire hosted in the Lavonia city park by the City of Lavonia, and it was a rare opportunity for a small fish leatherworker such as myself to live out one of my far-fetched, “Nah, it’ll never happen” dreams of actually being a vendor at a faire.
The first faire was held in October of 2019, and to say I was unprepared would be an definite understatement. I did not expect the turnout we had! It didn’t help that I was also fairly new in leathercrafting at the time (like, less than 6 months into my leather journey new, yikes), so what I had weren’t what I would really consider quality products, either. To my surprise, I sold quite a bit! At the end of the day, I was DETERMINED. Next year would be even better, especially since I would be a better leather crafter and I would be more prepared.
Unfortunately, in true medieval fashion, a plague overtook the world in 2020, so the faire was rightfully postponed. That did give me time to hone my skills, though, and for the rescheduled event, I felt much more prepared. I still didn’t quite know what to expect turnout-wise, though. The faire had been rescheduled for May 1, 2021, with the US still experiencing difficulties due to Covid (don’t get me started on the price of lumber, wtf), so there could easily have been nobody to show up, or we could’ve had All The People show up.
Guys. ALL THE PEOPLE.
I sold out of my bracers, baldrics, and other various armor pieces within the first two hours. My more rustic style woven pouches, a staple of my product line, were gone by 1pm. Even though the faire didn’t technically end until 5, we started tearing down at 3:30 because I was OUT of products. I even had people trying to buy the costumes off my mannequins!
There were several totally awesome things that happened this year, too:
I had I think 3 or 4 repeat customers come back this year after buying from me at the 2019 faire, and they were all wearing the products they bought. One guy about brought me to tears, he made me so happy with his kind words about my stuff.
Several customers throughout the day commented on how well made my products were, which also almost made me cry happy tears.
I didn’t hear this but my mom did. A customer and his wife/girlfriend came back several times and each time he bought something else from me. As he was walking away, my mom overheard his wife/girlfriend ask him “Did you spend all your money at this one booth?” to which he proudly said yes. (insert sobbing emoji here omg)
One mother & daughter came by to look, and the daughter fell in love with a turquoise top I’d put on my tabletop mannequin (pictured below). I’d also added a thin black belt after the brown belt on it in the picture sold, along with a mug frog and skirt hike for display. The mug frog & skirt hike I put on there happened to be the same matching turquoise color. She was so sweet when she asked if I would consider selling the top that I gave it to her for the same price I paid for it on Amazon. She also bought the belt and a skirt hike, and then immediately ran to the restroom to change into it.
Other notable things that happened today included getting to finally see my dragon belt that I’d spent so much time working on go to a wonderful new home with a guy who was so excited to get it, making tons of new friends, and getting to see a friend that I’d met at the first faire in 2019. It’s the sweetest story, too. Last year, she was dressed as a fairy in all green and she bought a green pouch from me to match. She also met a blacksmith who had a booth, and they started dating like 2 days later. Well, he did THE SWEETEST THING and proposed to her the morning of the faire! She saw us (my friend Kaitlyn, pictured below, has unmistakable bright red hair lol), and she came running over and it went something like this:
Her: “OMG HI I saw her red hair and I knew it was you guys and I had to come say hi. I’m sorry I’m shaking so bad, my boyfriend just proposed!” long inhale
Us: … “AND?”
Her: “I said yes!” cue all the screams
It was such a good day.
Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), I was stuck in my booth selling all day. I missed out on getting to walk around the faire, and I didn’t get to take any pictures except for the few I took of myself & my booth before the faire opened (below). I did get one (last one in the gallery) with a nice lady in monarch butterfly wings. Pictured is her, myself, my boyfriend’s mom, my sister, and Kaitlyn. I wish I could’ve gotten one with my newly engaged friend, too!
I definitely made the right choice in costume, too. I decided to buy this nice, simple dress in green off of Amazon because I didn’t feel like making one, this dress looked good and didn’t have to ship from overseas, and the company actually looked pretty good, too. It was thick and made in a fairly historically accurate design, which was a big selling point for me as I wanted to dress in a more traditional viking/Norse apron dress look. I added an apron made of unbleached muslin from Joanns, bought some tortoise brooches and made a necklace to go with them, and topped it all off with a belt and pouch I’d made for myself to keep my phone and square reader in. While it was SO HOT and I was sweating so bad in it, I didn’t get a sunburn except a little bit on my face. It never fails that, no matter how much sunscreen I wear, I always get burned, so sleeves saved my life yesterday.
Pro tip: Square readers come in a little book-looking thing with foam padding to keep them in. I ended up taking the paper cover off mine since it was about to fall off anyway, cutting the foam part down, and turning it into a little leather bound book and I tell you what, I got so many compliments on that too! Something I thought would be a silly little way to be “on brand” turned into a lovely little talking point for me.
I think for my next couple of blog posts, I’ll go into detail about how I prepared for this ren faire, including how I designed & decorated my booth, product decisions, inventory, what must-have things I brought, etc. since that was all information I was looking for when I first started and I wasn’t able to find answers to everything.
Til next time, friends!
