Opening Day - Antique Mall Style

Today was Opening Day (for our booth at the antique mall)! My shop partner, Bargain Hunter (I'll just call her BH), and I went with her husband to get the booth set up. His truck was loaded with all the shelves for the booth and it looked like the Beverly Hillbillies (all it needed was Granny in a rocking chair)!

Here's what the booth looked like when we began -- the previous tenants left the *lovely* border, royal blue shelves and blue carpet. We wanted to go with a more 50s & retro look and less country, so we painted the border with black chalkboard paint. We're going to put lots of different colored polka dots on it and leave a space at the back of the booth to write a changing message, like 'Welcome' or 'Happy Valentine's Day'.

BH's husband has been so good to us! He not only built the tall white shelves and corner shelf that you'll see in the picture, but then took the day off work to come and help us get them into the booth and tied in to the wall. We couldn't have moved in without him!

Once the shelves were in and the border was painted, it was time to get out all the stuff and start staging -- that's the REALLY fun part! All told, we spent about 7 hours there and got the booth together pretty well. All of BH's items made it there in one trip, because she has an SUV and mostly bin-items. I have a TINY sedan and had lots of larger stuff, so only about half of my stuff is in. We're going back to paint the polka dots and add more stuff on Thursday, after the blizzard. Yes, the snowpocalypse is upon us -- we're supposed to get about 12" and have 60-mile-per-hour winds, so everything is closed tomorrow.

Here's what the booth looked like halfway through the process. . .. . .and when we left for the day

And now for the best part: by the end of the day both BH and I had our first sale! The people who worked at the mall were all excited to see a new dealer and see what we had. I've noticed that most shoppers won't come in the booth when you're putting things in (I never will, either), but the workers were happy to get first dibs. They bought our first two items! That was a great confirmation that we're on the right track.

I'll post more pictures after we dig out of the snow and finish up on Thursday.