The home stretch
Nov. 22nd, 2018 10:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
offcntrWe're in the home stretch as far as holiday sales go. Yesterday, we went from this:
To this!
It took us about 3-1/2 hours from start to finish, and we still need to do a little more work Friday morning, setting out Denise's paper, putting out business cards and shelf signage, but this will be the last time we have to set up the booth this year. (Holiday Market makes us take out the pottery at the end of each weekend, but the booth can remain until Boxing Day.)
I've been working on ways to better light the lower shelves for a while now, first with battery-powered button lights--which went through so many AA's--most recently with LED counter lights. They're bright, low-power, and can link together to only use one outlet. And they make a huge difference in visibility.
Unfortunately, mounting them is a problem. They come with little plastic brackets that screw into the underside of your cupboard or shelf, but those are designed to snap in once and stay there. Getting the bars in and out again at the end of the show--without breaking either the light or the bracket--was a challenge, as was stacking shelves on the roof rack to get to and from shows. I'd been having good luck using rare-earth magnets for my shelf signs, so ordered in some bigger ones for the lights.
Tried them out at Clay Fest and Clayfolk, and ran into some problems. To begin with, both the light bars and magnets are smooth, and the hot glue I used to attach them didn't want to hold. Also, two magnets per bar seemed to hold all right up until I tried to move the cords out of sight, at which point the lights popped down onto the pots. I wound up using box tape as a temporary fix, but it's messy and sticky and I needed something better.
We discussed possible solutions on the drive home from Medford, and decided to try this:
No, not electrician's tape. That's the anti-gravity device from the space program: Velcro. I got three yards of self-adhesive 3/4 strips from JoAnn Fabrics, which turned out to be just enough for all five light bars, with six inches left over that I used to mount a single button over a dark spot. We'll see how well it holds up over the next five weekends, but for now, I'm cautiously optimistic.
To this!
It took us about 3-1/2 hours from start to finish, and we still need to do a little more work Friday morning, setting out Denise's paper, putting out business cards and shelf signage, but this will be the last time we have to set up the booth this year. (Holiday Market makes us take out the pottery at the end of each weekend, but the booth can remain until Boxing Day.)
I've been working on ways to better light the lower shelves for a while now, first with battery-powered button lights--which went through so many AA's--most recently with LED counter lights. They're bright, low-power, and can link together to only use one outlet. And they make a huge difference in visibility.
Unfortunately, mounting them is a problem. They come with little plastic brackets that screw into the underside of your cupboard or shelf, but those are designed to snap in once and stay there. Getting the bars in and out again at the end of the show--without breaking either the light or the bracket--was a challenge, as was stacking shelves on the roof rack to get to and from shows. I'd been having good luck using rare-earth magnets for my shelf signs, so ordered in some bigger ones for the lights.
Tried them out at Clay Fest and Clayfolk, and ran into some problems. To begin with, both the light bars and magnets are smooth, and the hot glue I used to attach them didn't want to hold. Also, two magnets per bar seemed to hold all right up until I tried to move the cords out of sight, at which point the lights popped down onto the pots. I wound up using box tape as a temporary fix, but it's messy and sticky and I needed something better.
We discussed possible solutions on the drive home from Medford, and decided to try this:
No, not electrician's tape. That's the anti-gravity device from the space program: Velcro. I got three yards of self-adhesive 3/4 strips from JoAnn Fabrics, which turned out to be just enough for all five light bars, with six inches left over that I used to mount a single button over a dark spot. We'll see how well it holds up over the next five weekends, but for now, I'm cautiously optimistic.