Wrangler's First Sale

I spent the weekend visiting one of my sisters.  It was a great opportunity to see her new house and the garden where she works.  I also showed Wrangler's paintings at a local art festival.  They close off one block of a street in A's neighborhood and vendors associated with the area are invited to attend.  When one of the head people found out the A had a sister with a painting horse he insisted that she get Wrangler's artwork there.  

I sold the first one to one of the other vendors before I was even finished setting up.  But things slowed down considerably.

The weather was a little nippy but the wind wasn't bad so things didn't blow over.  I did have to contend with the neighborhood kids playing basketball in the driveway behind me, rollerblading and running around on scooters.

As you can see the street was crowded with vendors.  Then, when they opened the gate, it was crowded with lots of people, strollers, kids and dogs all day.

I had to look across at this table all day.  She was selling those noisy door hangers for $25.  She had a very good day.  I'm estimating she sold at least 15.

The women that bought this was very excited and she bought a shoe too. I was selling those for $5 each and ended up selling $25 worth of old shoes.

Santa was there too, getting his picture made with everyone.  There were also bands playing all day which added to the festivities.  

• I tried to dress the part with by cowboy hat which I think drew some attention.  People would walk by and sort of look at the art the look up at me and see the hat then look over to the "Wrangle the painting horse" sign.  There would be a moment of confusion then they would look back at the paintings.  I would usually then say, "yes, the horse does the paintings."  Then the conversations would began.  Sometimes the one that recognized it was a horse artist would grab the person in front that had walked by unrecognizing and say "a horse did this."  Kids usually caught on before their parents.  I could always tell when someone understood because a smile would suddenly cross their face.  One person said she had a ranch with 5 horses and she was sure one would do this.  Good luck with that is all I'm saying.  Someone asked if I was paying my way through college with his art.  I guess he couldn't see my gray hair with my hat on.  Someone picked up a horse shoe, laying right next to the paint brushes I had on display,  and asked "is this what he paints with?'  Several people thought I should have the horse there.   I should have said, "do you want the people selling honey to have their bees here?"  The honey by the way was selling for $20 a 1/2 pint and they sold out of the 90 jars they had.  I think I'm selling that next year.  All in all an interesting day.  Sold 7 paintings for a total for $220 plus the $25 for the shoes.  So I sort of got paid to go visit my sister. At least I'm breaking even with the art supplies now.  I might have to figure out how to sell the paintings from Wrangler's  facebook page next.