This was held at the Shoppes of Wiregrass, Wesley Chapel, Florida. It's basically a suburb of Tampa with beaches, state parks, and Tampa itself within a short driving distance. Set up started at 10PM Friday night and lasted till 12AM then resumed early in the morning (4AM I think it was). I drove there from TN so I left early Friday morning planning to get there by 7 or so, check in to my hotel and then go find the festival. Well, I left on time but about halfway there my car died. So I left my car in Macon, GA and had to rent a van, unload everything at the Volvo Dealership (I have an older Volvo station wagon) and then haul a** to get to Florida before midnight. LOL. I arrived at Wesley Chapel right at 11:30 PM and thought - yay! just in time to get signed in so I don't have to do it all in the morning. Ummmm, it didn't work out that way. A dense fog had settled over the whole area making it impossible to see street signs, find the festival, or even my hotel. My husband actually helped me from back home in TN......my cell phone has that tracking system thing on it so he could follow my car on a map on the computer and he told me where I was in relation to the hotel (it was past midnight by this time). So he found the hotel and I checked in and slept for a couple of hours before getting up at 4AM for the set up. So it wasn't a great start to my first festival of the year LOL. It's funny now that I look back on it but at the time I was way over stressed. I hated leaving my car in Macon but my rental van was brand new super high tech. I even had to have someone show me how to close the doors, you apparently press buttons instead of just closing them like in a normal vehicle. But back to the festival......It actually turned out to be pretty awesome for me. I must have had all that adrenaline going the first day because I wasn't even tired until I got back to the hotel room. Sales that day were steady, I sold 4 of my bigger canvases and several matted prints. I did about $1200 the first day and then less on Sunday. Maybe $300 or so. It wasn't an awesome $4000 or $5000 show by any means but then again I didn't expect it to be. I believe the show itself was only $150. I've also had a couple of sales from it since I got home.....one for $100 and another for almost $300. So adding all that up it comes to a decent total. Plus I'm trying to learn to take everything into consideration when I do a show, not just the money I bring back (although this is obviously the most important factor lol). The location was lovely, palm trees and fountains and sunshine, there was a 2 story Barnes and Noble right there, coffee shops and restaurants were all around. There were booth sitters that came by several times a day, a goodie bag with snacks for all the artists, and load in and load out were super easy because we could drive right up to our booths. I stayed at the Best Western Summer Crest which was about 5 minutes from the festival. I highly recommend the hotel, the rooms were super spacious and comfortable and there was an Outback Steakhouse right across the street. The festival was only Saturday and Sunday but my car wasn't going to be ready until Tuesday so I stayed until Tuesday morning. This gave me a day to explore the area.....I went to Honeymoon Island State Park, Dunedin,Tarpon Springs, and then on into Tampa. They have a fabulous Ikea store there in Tampa so it required a trip into the city proper. I left Tampa at about 8 that night and could see the whole city lit up, it was beautiful. I left about 9 the next morning and the trip home was fortunately uneventful. I picked up my car, reloaded it all at the Volvo Dealership and got home late that night. And then slept for about 3 days.......LOL. Oh, and I got lots of great photos of the ocean on my exploring day. All the better to create new artwork from.....
