Beacky, these are wonderful! They should not only sell, they will inspire! I especially love the one you did using the metal leaf plate! Wow. I know you've inspired ME!

Just wonderful!!!

Pretty! Becky, could you post more details about your club's Art Fair? Where do you hold it what kind of things do you sell, and post pics after? I am thinking our club might want to do such a thing someday. Do you also sell plants at the same time? Do you invite venders?

kp

Sure kp, can post some info for you....This is the fourth year for our newly formed garden club. We have one fundraiser per year and it is the Garden Art Fair & Bake Sale. We have about 30 members. All are asked (not required) to make garden art or something related to gardening or baked goods and donate it to the club.

We rent a school gym, set up tables, advertise for about a month and then sell everything that was donated. Last year, in about three hours, we brought in $1,300!.

We do have unusual house plants and some garden plants, but we try and stay away from too much of that, as we want to be know for our garden art. We also do not wish to run into competition with our garden centers because they usually have their open houses the same weekend.

It is a great fundraiser plus it keeps the members busy all year searching for new ideas and creating their art. It is so much fun to see what members come up with.

Some of the things we sell: We have totems, silverware windchimes, mosaic work, stepping stones, garden aprons, bird feeders, hypertufa pots & mini gardens, birdhouses, butterfly houses, garden signs, garden baskets, decorated garden chairs, watering cans, garden books, plate flowers, garden crosses, a willow trellis, homemade jams & jellies (red hot pepper jelly, onion jelly, raspberry jam, homemade salsa, and many others.

I will take pictures this year and post them if anyone is interested. No, we don't have other vendors, as this is our fundraiser.

Past years, we have also hosted workshops every hour, on the hour, but the last few years, they have been less and less. Everyone who comes just wants to buy, so this year we aren't offering anything extra.

It is great exposure for our club too. Many people come in and ask questions about gardening. We even pick up new members when they come to visit us.

And I think our own members are our best customers! BUT we aren't allowed to buy anything until we open up the doors for the public.

Becky

Very pretty! It sounds like your garden art club is a lot of fun. Thanks for the info on it!

Love those! I have made similar items.
I have a couple of those same 'leaves'that I have
not used. My problem is TIME.
I like the garden club idea. Wish I could get
my garden club motivated to do this. We do the
'Tour of Tables', (decorated table and a luncheon,)
and the 'Festival of Trees' (Christmas trees and
wreaths,) but we don't have a SPRING thing and this
would be a great idea for us.

Tell me about the Tour of Tables.

You both seem to have very vital clubs. We just plant and our membership has dropped. I have to take responsibility since I was the last president many years ago. Trouble is, I'm not the club organizing type. I can figure out how many plants it takes to make a design and draw up plans and set people to it, and we do wonderful plantings very quickly. BUT I'm not good at attracting new people and orgainzing fairs and tours. No one else who is still involved seems to be either. I'll look for a different forum to post for help - but do you guys have any suggestions for me?

For the Tour of Tables, each club can decorate a table. Out club usually does two. One year we did a Brides table and a grooms table. Our 3 tier wedding cake was made of shoe boxes and spackling compound. The grooms table cake was also a box/spackling with a roadway made of roofing material with a car....This year we did 'Alice in Wonderland'. We put a tall ficus tree at the end of one table with as Alice doll sitting on the table. We had shallow boxes with mad hatter, Alice at the door, white rabbit and watch etc. In all we had 7 boxes-all 3-D with at least 3 layers of cutouts. Eveything has to be 'thin' to allow for the plate settings for eating. Our second table had 'The tea party' with a bunch of tea pots for the center. We also bent spoons as part of the 'set'. The meal is usually a chicken or pasta salad, a congealed salad and dessert. I work on the tables, but don't go and eat--(not my kind of food, and I am allergic to black pepper and can never tell if there is pepper in things)! We have also done the Fifties, valentines day, Murder on the Orient Express, and others. Wish I had the capacity to post pictures. One of the girls said she would post on her blog, but she hasn't---
We have fun coming up with and making the designs.
Some of the tables are just fancy table settings, but we like to have fun with ours. There are usually 20+ tables.