The Rochester Mini Maker Faire 2016 was a great time. The show began at 9 am and ended at 5 pm. We had someone in our booth until around 4 pm, when I turned to my wife who was there all day with me and I said, "Look, the booth doesn't have anyone in it!" So you can see it was BUSY!
I was able to finish the stamps for all five of the characters. All five were big hits. I didn't keep track of how many of each got made, but it seemed that maybe Tory the Mermaid was the front runner, as I think the demographic of the attendees in my booth trended female, and the mechanics of the tail is hard to pass up.
What was equally great was the number of people to did "mash-ups." We had a great assortment, and lots of combinations of characters. I love it when someone uses a part for which it wasn't intended, like an arm gets used for an ear. You will see a lot of them in the album below because I really tried to get as many as I could captured in the moment.
We definitely had more kids than adults. The littlest ones really needed help with the scissors, so my wife and I helped cut out a lot of shapes. As someone who works with stamps nearly everyday, I am still astonished at the folks that I can tell have never picked up a rubber stamp before. My stamps are not mounted to wood, so that can be confusing at first, but getting people to get a decent print can be done, but it takes guidance.
One unexpected thing that happened was my choice in inks. I specifically picked dye based ink. It dries way faster than pigment ink, and that was important since folks would be going right from the stamping step to the cutting step. If i had picked pigment ink, it would have smeared. Dye based ink however stains. Stains fingers. Stains fabric. So I had to put up a little warning sign about that. I think I may have only had one family who didn't do it because of that though. It was still the right choice, but it took a couple days for my fingers to look normal again.
I loved this project so much. I loved working with my artist friends to bring some of their characters to a different medium. I loved helping folks MAKE something from scratch. I loved carving these stamps. I really want to make more of these, and maybe get some into my Etsy shop for 2017. The last few years I have recycled my Maker Faire project for the ArtAwake event. So if you missed it, keep your eyes out for ArtAwake in 2017 and maybe you will be able to make one of these for yourself!
CLICK on the picture to see the whole album of photos.
