Written by Jessica Benes

How We Got Introduced to the Idea

At the height of Covid, one of my neighbors set up a craft fair in their garage to sell their handmade doll clothes, towels, wooden pens and other handmade cloth goods. They usually frequent several craft fairs around the area but everything had been canceled due to the pandemic. Their little fair was popular and well-attended, and got me thinking. What if we did a neighborhood craft fair, just like some neighborhoods do community-wide garage sales? Here is information on this year’s 2023 Banyan Court Craft Fair.

We Were Crafting, but Etsy Wasn’t Working Out

I had started making earrings with resin and glitter, just for fun, and my sister was decorating mini pots for succulent plants. I set up an Etsy shop, and Danielle joined me, but, as she said, “It’s a full time job to get anywhere on Etsy!” Yep, that’s true. I bought a “list” of groups to be a part of on Pinterest and joined some Etsy Facebook groups. I posted a few times, but then got busy with my work as a teacher. My Etsy site kind of languished and every six months when someone bought a pair of earrings, it was a big “Event” where I got to put their earrings in an organza bag, then a special padded envelope and ship it off.

But, overall, Etsy was getting me nowhere. It was like swimming upstream in a heavy current, to get anyone to even notice my page, much less visit and make a purchase. So, I knew that selling locally would be the way to go. Danielle was on board, so together we began to plan.

The 2021 Neighborhood Craft Fair Began to Come to Life

The following summer, I asked my neighbors if they planned to do their craft fair again. “Well, it was a lot of work…” they said, not sounding sure. The other big church and community craft fairs had opened back up. But, my heart was set on doing a neighborhood craft fair. “If we do all the advertising and everything, will you participate?” I asked. They agreed.

I started by creating a flier that said, “Neighborhood Craft Fair, anyone?” and went door to door putting the fliers on doors up and down our street. Slowly but surely, I began receiving responses from interested parties who lived on our street.

A Huge Success

And our neighborhood craft fair was born! We went on to advertise both online and in person with large signage on both sides of the street. A woman who lived a few streets over and owned a bread-making business used our lawn as a location to sell her bread, and was blown away by the amount of traffic she received. She sold out of her baked goods completely, and vowed that the next year, she would cook more.

Another woman showed up that morning with a tray of Cocoa bombs and asked if she could sell them. We welcomed her wholeheartedly! We realized that, if just a couple of sellers were coming out of the woodwork, asking to set up on our driveway, maybe vendors from all over our city might be interested in coming to our street to sell!

Our first craft fair was a huge success, and we received multiple compliments from all of the vendors who participated, as well as buyers who swarmed our street to buy crafts and food (and a few garage sale items that also made it onto people’s driveways. We weren’t going to limit anyone on what they could sell)! That’s when we knew it was going to become an annual tradition.