Having signed up for a number of Craft Fairs, we started looking at other options for selling our prints and decided that local Art Shows would be ideal – little did we know how stressful the lead up would be!
The first Show on the list was to be Watlington Art Show and, having secured our spot, we set about getting the pictures ready – now this turned out to be our first problem, what pictures do you pick? Do we go with our favourites or do we try and judge what the public were likely to buy?
In the end we decided to go for a bit of a mix – 6 framed items (2 of them were limited editions) that would be hung and 10 mounted pictures – with several of our favourites and the majority being what we guessed might sell.
A number of the images needed printing and these were duly ordered before we set off on our trip to Northumberland (see previous blog), with a request for delivery for when we returned – now this proved to be our second problem!
When we got back, the prints hadn’t been delivered and the printer informed us that they would be with us on the Thursday – however, this was the day that all of the pictures were supposed to be dropped off at the Show so that left us in a bit of a hole.
What were we supposed to do? Plans were made for extra prints to be made at another printers, just in case the originals didn’t arrive in time – this wasn’t ideal as these were going to cost a fortune (due to timescale) and would also require mounting and packing prior to being delivered to the Show.
Fortunately, the original pics arrived and we were able to cancel the extras without incurring any additional costs.
With these problems resolved, along with a number of others – including; how do you price your images for this sort of event and an email from the organisers to ask whether we were displaying any items (it turns out they had misplaced all of our paperwork) – we managed to get everything delivered on time.
To add to the stress levels, the organisers asked us if we would judge the children’s photography competition – we were, obviously, delighted to be asked but also a little concerned as we’d never done this before.
Friday night – preview night – came around and we took some friends with us for a bit of support. Everything was very well organised and it was great to see our pictures hanging on the wall.
Judging of the competition was completed – such a difficult task and so many budding photographers out there – and we even managed to spot that one of the limited edition prints had been purchased on the night so we left for home feeling very happy.
The beauty of the Art Shows is that we didn’t need to be there all weekend, although our thoughts throughout Saturday and Sunday kept wandering back and wondering whether we’d made any more sales – as it turned out we did, another one of the framed pictures plus one of the mounted images had gone.
Did we make the right decision with our selection? Probably not – all three images that were sold were from our favourites while those selected as more likely to sell didn’t interest anyone. For the next one (in 2020), we’ll select just our favourite pictures and see what happens.
Did we make the right decision in attending an Art Show? A resounding yes! Not only did we sell some images, but we also met a lovely bunch of people who organised the event and started to network with numerous other artists.
The exercise also took us out of our comfort zone, so the stress was worth it and we have now signed up to do 3 more Art Shows and, hopefully, this one again, in 2020.

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