::Craft Show Mini Series:: Branding like a Pro for Cheap!

Hey My Friends, I hope you've had a wonderful weekend!  Ready for our next little chat about how to rock your first craft show?  I'm no pro, but I would love to share with you a few tips I've learned about branding so that you can make your craft show booth (and online shop) look like you spent a lot of money hiring someone to make a cohesive brand... when in reality you've spent next to nothing!

Let's get started!  If you're not already familiar with Picmonkey.com, you'll want to check it out... it's a totally free photo editing website.  You don't have to download anything on to your computer or sign up for annoying emails.  Next, read Jill's fantastic tutorial about how to make a resource like this site work for you.  Following Jill's tutorial and Picmonkey.com I was able to create all of my branding materials.

To create my logo I set up a Pinterest board and began pinning anything I liked... colors, shapes, font, feel, etc.  It was a nice way to start a daunting process, I basically just combined a lot of the ideas I liked and here's what I came up with:

I used my logo in this collage (the collage is another feature Picmonkey offers).  About two months before my show I sent my friends and family an email save the date and included the following two pictures.  (Surprisingly, I got a lot of orders even before the show started by doing this!)  I wanted those close to me to know that I was planning my first craft show and what I was going to be selling.  

Keep in mind when you're creating a brand that you want every touch a customer has with your business to include your logo or at least the "feel" you're trying to create.  Some of the places a customer might come in to contact with your brand are:

• Shipping materials
• Gift bags/packaging materials at your show
• Business card
• Enclosure cards 
• Online shop header
• Blog header
• Thank you notes
• Name tag at the show

My Etsy shop banner:

Here's my most favorite tip!  I ordered a stamp with my logo from Rubber Stamp Champ (right now they have free shipping on orders over $10!)  This is the one I bought and I upgraded to laser rubber since I knew I would be using this sucker a ton.  

I'm very pleased with the rough texture of the stamp, but if that's not the look you're going for you can always order a smaller size.  

I used the stamp on my business cards.  I bought simple business cards from vistaprint.com.  They were blank except for my blog, email and Etsy site addresses printed on the bottom corner, then I went to town stamping them.

I also used the stamp on some round printable stickers (Avery 5294).  Yes, you could just print from your computer directly on to the stickers and that would save a lot of time, but I liked the imperfect texture of the stamp, so I went that route.  Those stickers were used for my packaging, gift bags, gift wrap and my mailing materials.

And here I am modeling both a stiff smile and all of the branding in my booth.

I've said it before, but it's a good time to say again how important signage for your booth is.  Make a sign and put it up high enough that your shoppers can see it even if the booth is packed.  I made this sign by printing my logo out on computer paper, tracing the design on to freezer paper, then using the freezer paper stenciling method to print my logo on to a piece of fabric that was stretched in an embroidery hoop.  Lots of steps, but it's worth it because I'll be able to use this sign a ton.

Last but not least, my enclosure cards... I whipped up this design on picmonkey then uploaded it to either snapfish.com or shutterfly.com (I can't remember which) when they were doing their penny print deal.  I got 200 of these for $2.00 plus shipping!  Score!

I love that every one of my customers will have a pretty picture of my product along with all of my contact information if someone asks them where they got their scarf or if they decide to order another color in the future.  Oh, and to save time I stuffed one of these in each of my gift bags before the show started.

Whew!  So there are all of my branding on a dime secrets.  I'd love to hear any ideas you might have.

UPDATE:  Here are the links to all five posts in this mini series:

The First Step... Designing your "Feel"

Designing Your Booth

Branding like a Pro for Cheap

What To Bring

How to Prepare