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Wow!  We were blown away by the welcome we had at the Crescent Hill Art and Music Festival in Louisville, Kentucky on July 3&4.  This is an old-fashioned neighborhood 4th of July Celebration and I envy the people living in this neighborhood! It looked to be a delightful combination of music (2 stages), food, art show. pet show,  silent auction and fun run, held on and near the shady grounds of a historical house/museum.

 Set-up was Saturday afternoon and Sunday early morning.  My husband and I set up late afternoon on Saturday.  We were shown to our booth, and almost immediately members of a local high school Key club were there offering to help us our.  They helped unload, set up the tent and carried water for our weights.  And they were soooo polite!  We were able to back up the car behind our booth to unload, and we were able to do the same on Sunday and Monday mornings.  Parking was a few blocks away with shuttle buses running.

Once the event began, there were volunteers coming around about every hour.  There were coffee, juice and fruit available in the morning during set-up, switching over to iced tea and water as the day went on.  The volunteers offered more fruit, including frozen grapes during the heat of the day, (and it was HOT and HUMID), and peanuts, and water later on. 

Monday morning was an Artist's breakfast with ham biscuits, quiche, muffins, fruit, juice, etc.  Delicious is too small a word.  Throughout the day, more fruit, water and pretzels brought to the booth.

We sell jewelry, so we take out our "wares" at the end of the day.  We weren't able to bring the car in, but the volunteers showed my husband where to bring the car, and at precisely 6:45 PM a golf cart showed up with 2 young men who took all of our stuff to the car.  At the end of the show, more Key Club members to help us pack up, and again, the golf cart was there to take everything to the car!  We began closing up at 6:00 and were in the car on our way before 7:00.

Now about the show:  There were 96 artists according to the map.  I was able to walk the show on the first day.  There was a wide variety of artisans, and there didn't seem to be much overlap.  Even with the jewelry booths, (which seemed to be breeding on the spot!) there weren't many artists whose wares were like each other.  (A word about the number of jewelry artists.  I counted the number of jewelry artists on the program and came up with less than 25%, but when I looked around, there were  booths selling jewelry where the primary art was NOT the jewelry.  A pet peeve of mine)      That first day  was really slow.  Lots of lookers, and not so many buyers.  Many of our neighbors were discouraged at the end of that first day.  One of my Wire Wrap teachers, John Darlin, whose booth was 3 down from mine didn't think he'd be back next year.  I didn't see many large packages being carried.  And, as mentioned before, it was HOT and so humid, we just stewed in our own sweat!  Lots of booths had fans.  I missed the part in the application about electricity being available!  We did have an occasional breeze.  Hopefully next year we can get a booth in the shade. 

July 4th. was a totally different story.  There were a lot more people and they were buying.  I'm not sure what was selling except for jewelry, because we were pretty busy, but everyone I spoke to said that they had a better day.  We made expenses on the first day, so Monday was gravy.  I LOVE gravy!!!!