A CRAFTY DAY IN
About A Crafty Day In and its Organizers
In May of 2020, Sarenadia approached BKlug with the idea to create a virtual space online to showcase different vendors, as a way of compensating for the rapidly increasing number of shutdown of in-person craft fairs due to COVID-19 lockdowns worldwide. BK agreed and chose to host the creators on her personal website, and the first A Crafty Day In event was created. The name “A Crafty Day In” was chosen due to the social isolation encouraged at that time during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first event ran over the course of the day on May 23, 2020.
The event itself hosted seven different vendors, but it sparked an interest in GracefulDawn - a.k.a. Dawn - who happened to be one of the seven participants. After the single day of livestreams ended, Dawn approached BKlug and asked if both her and Sarenadia needed a third organizer for future events. Both BKlug and Sarenadia agreed, and Dawn joined the team. Working together, the three organizers created a dedicated Discord server for future participants and found a website which they prepared for the next upcoming event.
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The second A Crafty Day In event took place on August 26 & 27, 2020,
just before the Labour Day weekend and it was themed towards Back to School. This craft fair was the first time any A Crafty Day In event spanned two days, largely laying down the groundwork for future events. The number of participants almost doubled, with 12 vendors. This event was wildly successful, so much so that the number of views ended up breaking the website! Two hundred (200) views caused the free Webnode website created for the event to crash by the afternoon of the second day. Dawn scrambled to find a reliable replacement for future events, quickly migrating the remaining information onto a new site provided by Weebly (which, in turn, is powered by Square) by the end of the day. While she worked, it lingered in the organizers’ minds that this free website was temporary; they knew they needed a more permanent home.
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Overall, the second event showed the three organizers that having a fourth person behind the scenes would be vastly beneficial to continue to coordinate future events and assist with the newly-created social media pages on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. The three organizers invited Liz of SleepingLunaDesigns to come onboard, and she readily accepted. With four volunteers on-board, they tackled the next event, which took place over the next Black Friday weekend.
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The third A Crafty Day In event was even larger than the other two, boasting 22 total vendors and two full days of streams on Nov. 28 & 29, 2020, each with a two-hour time slot. The four organizers managed to bring over 1,000 views to the Weebly-powered website and heard that every participant had a boost in views. After a week of down time to relax and properly sleep and hydrate, the organizers began coming up with loose plans for the first event of 2021.
Having four organizers on the team gave them confidence to increase the amount of accepted vendors for the March 19 & 20 event. Thirty-four (34) final participants made the first event of 2021 a roaring success, though the four organizers quickly realized that there was much they could - and needed to - improve. TheRamenPond, affectionately known as Ram, offered to come onboard and assist with graphic design, and the four organizers readily agreed.
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They also agreed on something else - A Crafty Day In had already grown much quicker than any of them had anticipated, and running three events in one year, such as was done in 2020, wasn’t a viable option. Over the summer, they agreed to
take a pause and step back to recoup mental and physical health, with the goal to come back stronger in the autumn of 2021. Pre-emptive meetings began in August 2021, during which time SomethingElf, also known as Elf, and Aronuvel360 joined the team to help with data entry and another set of eyes on social media publications.
Now seven members strong, the team of organizers prepared for their next event: Black Friday 2021, scheduled to take place on Nov. 26 & 27. Thirty-eight (38) participants joined for the popular sale weekend, and stream viewership of the raid train was at a consistently high number all throughout both days.
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The Black Friday event brought on several new vendors, as well as something long-discussed but not yet implemented: limited edition A Crafty Day In merchandise. An Etsy store was created to host the official creations. A keychain, magnetized needleminder, phone holder, and dual-sided coin were the items listed for sale. Elf was kept busy
during a few days after the Black Friday event ended, using her GlowForge to laser-cut the merchandise pieces out of coloured acrylic sheets.
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Aronuvel360 and TheRamenPond played a critical role in stepping up to help with both creating social media posts and designing the graphics for the raid train streamers during the Black Friday 2021 event, as well as streamlining the process for future events.
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As the spring of 2022 came around, the next date was set for the sixth event: July 1-4, with the theme of Fireflies & Fun.
Detailed Statistics Breakdown
May 23, 2020
Event: Virtual Market
Participants: 7
Streamers: 3
Overall Views: unknown
Notable Happenings: Inaugural Event hosted on privately-owned website
November 28 & 29, 2020
Event: Black Friday
Participants: 22
Streamers: 11
Overall Views: 1,000+
Notable Happenings: Raid trains consisted of 45-50 people during two days of streams
November 27, 2021
Event: Black Friday
Participants: 38
Streamers: 18
Overall Views: 3,600+
Notable Happenings: Social media increased viewership and pages views across entire website
August 21 & 22, 2020
Event: Back to School
Participants: 12
Streamers: 9
Overall Views: 200+
Notable Happenings: Free Webnode website bandwidth limit exceeded by end of first day, halfway through second day website created on Weebly
March 19 & 20, 2021
Event: Spring Fling
Participants: 34
Streamers: 15
Overall Views: 2,900+
Notable Happenings: None of the participating vendors had fewer than 40 views per individual page; each streamer had an average of 27 views
July 1-4, 2022
Event: Fireflies & Fun
Participants: TBD
Streamers: TBD
Overall Views: TBD
Notable Happenings: TBD