Linton Freedom Festival July 3 - 5, 2007

Well, Earlynn aka Dragoncat, and Gwen aka pingwen , gave this festival a try. It wasn't a real good one, this year at least. Of course they had thunderstorms on the 4th and on the 5th, so that may have had something to do with it. Earlynn had a longer drive than anticipated, so she opted out for the 5th. She didn't miss anything! Gwen went in, but only stayed a couple of hours. With the thunderstorm, there were no buyers, just sellers. Many had left the evening of the 4th anyway, as it was very slow. So, after getting to know all the other sellers, she left for the long drive home.

The two shared a booth that was supposed to be 10' X 10', but ended up being pretty much as big as they wanted it to be! That was the cool thing about this festival. The uncool thing was that while they called it a craft show, there were many more retail type booths than actual craft items. Outside there were several carnival type booths with dolls, T shirts, sunglasses, thongless thongs for your feet... one guy trying to sell his artwork. Inside there were window and siding sales, internet service providers, pet stuff (not hand made), and a guy selling some little things that jumped around and danced... still can't figure out how they did that. Some people were surprised to find out that our gals actually made their things themselves!

They had plenty of lookers on the 4th before the storm hit, and did manage to get the word out about Etsy. They handed out about 15 promo bags, and CraftHeart had sent us a nice lot of flower pens with her cards attached. Those went out pretty fast! Neither of our gals sold enough to retire on here. But, they don't really know if it would have been a better sale if the weather had cooperated. At least Indiana got some much needed rain. And, yes, it did rain on the parade!

All in all, they don't think they will repeat the experience. But, it was worth trying. Here are a couple of shots of their booths:

And, unlike the Muncie show..... there was NO beer tent!