Put A Heart On It

Some of the "Team Cupid" Members

Saturday, February 12, 2011

First day of our "Put a heart on it" Valentine's Day promotion at the market.  Challenging weather. People showed up. It's Seattle. Tables covered with protective brown paper set up under several tents. Chairs around some - tables tall enough for adults to stand around at one end. Sand bags and weights secure the canopies and piles of red paper, stickers, pipe cleaners. Bottles of glue, sticks of glue, puffy glue, puffy paint, glitter, glitter and glitter. Farmers donated dried flowers. Artists from the craft line cut out paper hearts and flowers. Scraps of cloth, plastic clowns. Pussy willow. Glitter. A father with his 2 sons "Come on, let's go now." "Nope" they say. "We've got to make another one." Crusty old busker who hung around the tent for several hours mumbling that he didn't have the talent to make a valentine finally sat down and worked diligently on a card for his wife. Steady flow of people all day long. Back at my business, "You've got pink and purple and uh, glitter in your hair."  "It's windy" I say.

Day 2 - Sunday - the weather is calmer. Steady flow of people continues. Groups of teenage girls stand around the table. One pulls out her phone and searches for a picture of the space needle. She carefully copies the image in blue crayon on her card. Glue. Glitter, silver. "This made my family's day," says a mom. Artists from the craft line show up. Some just on a break from their tables. Covered up or their neighbors will watch over. Some came down on a market day off to help. Glitter. So much glitter.

One more day to go. The big V day. "Let's do this on Mother's Day" say some. "Let's talk about cross promoting with our businesses" say the businesses. It feels very, very good to make a connection with people. Kids. Families. This was a fun and appreciated event. As we search for ways to make these connections we also communicate to the public that we have beautiful, unique handcrafted arts and crafts to sell. The general public still tends to look for a mall to shop. A fellow artist at the market says that we should just tell them that we are a mall. The oldest one in the region. Just look at us. Little shops all lined up. We have a roof over our head. well kind of. And there are walls around us. very barely. The biggest difference - There are hearts here. And until the wind really blows the street clean - glitter.