If You Happen to be in Palm Springs This Weekend...

Vaughn McMillan

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I'll be showing (and selling) some of my turned work at the Desert Arts Festival on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. More details are here:

http://workingwoods.com/upcoming_shows.htm

I know Dan Mosely is nearby and I hope he can visit, but if any of you other SoCal Family members are in the area, drop by my booth and say hi. :wave:
 
Please don't tempt me. I notice that as I write this, it is 61 degrees in Palm Springs while it is 23 degrees here. Allegiant Air has direct flights from Bellingham to Palm Beach. They picked our city to fly out of because it's close proximity to the Canadian border. Most of the passengers in their flights to Las Vegas and Palm Springs are Canadian.

As I said tempting, very tempting, but I guess I will just move a little closer to the heater.
 
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Wish we could go, but it's technically my 4th day of vacation, and somehow I've managed to work 50 hours for a work project that I shouldn't even be touching since saturday. :huh:

Don't think I'll record it as vacation days.

But good luck! I hope you sell out of all the really big expensive stuff first! :thumb: :thumb:
 
Hope the weather is great for you and your booth is full of people with full pockets! (with money to give to you, :))
 
Just a quick follow-up on the Palm Springs show last weekend. It was a pretty good show, but by the time I included the extra overhead for gas and motel costs, I only did a little better than breaking even money-wise. Still had a good time, though. I sold a pretty even mix of lower cost things and mid-range stuff. Didn't sell any of the real showcase pieces, though. (Although I did sell one of them a couple days before the show to a neighbor.)

Although the temps were cooler than normal for Palm Springs (in the low 60s), the weather cooperated for the most part, although Sunday we had a few times when the wind kicked up and created havoc with some of the booth canopies. Fortunately, I was on the downwind side of the show, so I had other booths as a windbreak. I also had my canopy pretty well anchored with weights and stakes. I did have a couple pieces get blown off my shelves on Sunday, but after that happened, I removed any lightweight things from the shelves. The crowds were decent, but several of the vendors told me the crowd seemed smaller than it has in years past. This show was my second "solo" show, as LOML stayed home with the fuzzy children. These things are a lot of work when there's just one person. I've spent most of today just recovering...I'm still pretty beat from all the schlepping and driving involved.

Here are a few obligatory photos...

Da Booth:

Palm Springs Art Fest 2010 01 - 800.jpg

The row I was on. This is on the edge of the show...there were booths scattered throughout the park:

Palm Springs Art Fest 2010 02 - 800.jpg

The view of the mountain behind the booth:

Palm Springs Art Fest 2010 03 - 800.jpg

Some of the booths behind mine:

Palm Springs Art Fest 2010 04 - 800.jpg

One side of my display:

Palm Springs Art Fest 2010 05 - 800.jpg

The other side of the display:

Palm Springs Art Fest 2010 06 - 800.jpg

And that's the scoop. ;)
 
Your booth looked great. You've got a really slick setup going there but I imagine even as fine tuned as it is, doing it solo is a fair bit of work. Glad you covered expenses and got some more exposure. P.S. is pretty close to me but, I was out of town doing the holiday thing.
 
Agree... great looking booth and beautiful spot for a show. Your booth looks really good.

I have 3 more to do before the season is over... all are a Holiday Market in downtown Knoxville... no view of the mountains.... I'll probably not have to do mine solo as the wife insists she needs to be there...after the first snow fall, she'll probably change her mind.
 
But the real question is did you have fun? Breaking even is good, making a profit better, but if you didn't have a good time getting away from it all, where's the use in that?
 
I believe in todays economic climate, people are prone to purchase gifts they find more practical.
There are tons of shows this weekend coming up out here.
Seems dec 4th and 5th this year are all the arts and craft shows before the holiday.(I think they forgot chanukah is tomorrow night)West coasters have more brains I figure.
I might attend a show but I feel people are going to be hovering more around the booths where people are selling items like clothing or electronics, not even jewelry.(cheap jewelry yeah, custom made stuff, no)
I find it strange that someone would spend 400 dollars on a phone for someone, but would never think of spending that on a piece of artwork.

Vaughn, your pieces are always top notch and thanx for posting pics.
 
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