Art and Craft Show Listings

© by Rena Klingenberg; all rights reserved

Art and craft show listings are a wonderful way to find shows, fairs, and festivals for selling your handcrafted jewelry. They provide the events, dates, and locations - plus other helpful data, such as the size of last year's crowd, whether it's a juried event, and the contact person.

Here's how to get the information you need for choosing the fairs, festivals, and other events to set up your booth and sell your jewelry.

Studying event listings is a good way to find
the best venues for displaying and selling your jewelry.

Online Art and Craft Show Listings

I highly recommend subscribing to Fairs and Festivals, a craft show listing resource that gives you precise details on thousands of pre-researched events. This subscription can save you a lot of time trying to find events on your own.

For free art and craft show listings online, check Craft Lister's searchable database of sites. CraftLister provides a neat utility where you can search for events within a specified distance of your zip code, that occur within specified months. You can also include some keywords to help you find exactly the kind of show or festival you're looking for.

You can also check out Festival Network Online. Their basic database of art shows and craft festivals is free, but you'll need to purchase a membership to have access the contact info for the shows. If you're resourceful, however, you can either do more web searches to get the details you need regarding a particular show, or contact the chamber of commerce of whatever town is hosting the show you're interested in.

There are many online publications of shows and festivals, most of which are available for a membership or subscription fee. Do a search engine search for "craft show listings" or "art show listings" and you'll find several of these fee-based listing services.

Profitable Shows without Competition

See my top ten Craft Show Ideas - alternative venues for setting up your booth and selling your handmade items, where you'll have virtually no competition from other sellers.

I've had some of my biggest selling days at places like these.

Most sellers don't pursue these great DIY (do it yourself) craft show ideas - so these opportunities are usually wide open for you.

Other Free Sources of
Local Event Listings

For the real skinny on upcoming local art shows, craft fairs, bazaars, festivals, and other events in a particular area, there are two local resources that should be able to help you:

• The Chamber of Commerce of whichever city or locality you're interested in. To find a particular chamber's contact info:
  
  * United States Chamber of Commerce Directory (for U.S. locations)
  
  * World Chambers Federation (for locations outside of the U.S.).
  
  You can also look for "Chamber of Commerce" in the business section of the particular city's listings.


• The Convention and Visitors' Bureau. This organization in the particular city you're interested in is another fabulous resource for art and craft show listings, event announcements, and other very helpful information. You can find the Bureau's listing in the blue government listings of the specific city, under "Convention Bureau".

Mailing Lists for Shows, Fairs, Festivals,
and Other Likely Events

Request that you be put on the mailing lists of the Chamber of Commerce and the Convention and Visitors' Bureau, for your own town and any neighboring towns where you'd be interested in selling your jewelry.

This is your best bet for finding local art and craft show listings well in advance, or to locate other coming events where it might be appropriate to set up a jewelry booth with permission.

And remember, most artists get the best results by visiting a show to scope out its potential before applying for it. That means visiting shows and researching them this year, to determine the shows you'll sign up for next year.