Open for Business!

After years of thinking about it and months of hoarding gathering items for it, I finally took the plunge this week and opened my own booth at a local antique mall. For those who are wondering, here's how it works: You usually pay a monthly rental fee for the space (smaller spaces are cheaper, obviously) and then they take a percentage of your total sales, too (6-10 percent seems to be a reasonable range). Some locations also ask you to sign a lease, committing to a space for a set amount of time. I've also heard that some malls let you work the front desk in exchange for rent, but that's not the norm at most of the bigger places anymore.

My first antique booth experience had a relatively inauspicious start. It mostly consisted of me sweating profusely as I lugged a carload of stuff to Tennessee Antique Mall near the Nashville Fairgrounds, where I immediately started organizing and pricing. My friend Dani Edmondson allowed herself to be roped into stopping by to help (check out her fun blog at http://crowandquill.wordpress.com/). She was a trooper, letting me boss her around and make her stand on stuff to reach the highest corners of my new booth. It was a good start, but I took another carload over on Friday to really fill out the space a bit better.

Here are the results:



This my little homemade sign. I decided to stick with the same name I use for my freelance writing/editing business and my jewelry making:



I repainted this coffee table that I found at the flea market and those recovered stools were in my living room for the past few years:



This little shelf, and the stuff on it, came from a variety of different places:



This shot includes some of my metal letters, a child's chalkboard and one of my first embroidery projects in ages, a retro camper:



Last but not least, here's the toy area:



The booth will be a constant work in progress, so I'll keep you updated here. Oh, and as if this weren't enough for me to take on, I'll be launching a small countertop booth at Gas Lamp Antiques near Nashville's 100 Oaks Mall the first of September. It will let me highlight small, special items and see how I do with their customer base. It also puts me first in line for a bigger space when one opens up there. Since it's a local favorite and consistently named "Best of Nashville."