Musings from the Midway....

"Yessir, folks, step right up and see Lola,
the slippery, slithery Cobra Girl: She walks, she talks,
she crawls on her belly like a reptile, a leapin', screamin',
creepin', crawlin' mawnster! She's eleven feet lawng and she's ALIVE!"

"Now move along, move along...just follow us this way
and peek behind the curtain, if you dare.......

She's perplexed, she's bamboozled,
she's LIT-ER-ALLY flyin, without a net: She's......

Annie, the Clueless Shop Dealer! "

How the heck-fire do you guys do it?
I have a newfound respect for all of you shop dealers, believe-you-me.
The sheer amount of time invested in research,
acquiring inventory, cleaning, refinishing, pricing, booth set-up, travel time....
if I didn't love what lies ahead of me so darn much,
I'd likely feel pretty overwhelmed right about now.

Pricing is proving to be a prickly point (too much alliteration, I know).

After signing my lease for my first booth space at the local antique mall,
I took a leisurely tour of every booth there (well over 50)
and jotted down how each dealer had priced their wares.
To say they were all over the map would be a gross understatement.
One dealer had vintage suitcases priced at $15,
another had almost exactly the same thing going for $55.
To be fair, the mall I'm going to be in is one of the better ones in the area.
In my research of other malls, I've come across lots of dealers
who didn't know Milk Glass from Milk Duds....
venues where the descriptors "rare" and "antique" were tossed about
rather freely, as many items designated as such were clearly neither.

Methinks I'm going to stick to just calling everything I sell
"vintage" as a sort of pre-emptive CYA move.

See how I feverishly whip around that muslin and cheesecloth
in a booth decorating frenzy?

Trust me though when I assure you that I'm not complaining,
not by a longshot. I'm loving every minute of this,
addled and discombobulated though I might often feel.
Just sharing thoughts here....keepin' it real, like I've promised you
I will always, always do. I just feel a little out of my league,
especially when I compare myself to the likes of you pros.
Here you guys are gearing up for Warrenton, the Mother of All Shows,
and I'm having a minor wigout over how to price some twee tchotchkes. Sheesh.

Hmmm, maybe being a midway denizen isn't so bad after all....

The way I see it,the chief role of the carnival barker
is to charm and to sell, correct?
And rather than luring them in to gawk at poor old hapless
Lola the Cobra Gal, my aim is to weave a fanciful world
within the walls of my booth. Isn't that what we all try to do?
To create beauty, to expose the unusual,
to sell our customers on the possibilities
of (warning:overused cliché alert) thinking outside the box, stylistically speaking?
To lure them in with the unexpected and to
present a challenge to view the world through fresh eyes?

Rewrite in progress: " Yessir, folks, step right up and see the Amazing Annie,
proprietoress ex-tra-or-din-aire!
Right this way ladies and gents, into the world of Fiona & Twig,
a world of whimsy and wonder and just a whiff of danger....."

I think I like the sound of that.

Wonder if I can hire him for my grand opening....

This post was edited to remove
any photos not taken by myself, Anne Lorys.