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Chelsea: How do you display design options at events?

I had to ask her to clarify her question because I wasn't 100 percent sure what she meant. And, um, in further conversation with her, she- basically what it came down to, is she wanted to know what was the best way or in what ways did I display design options to people when I am working at a festival or at an event. Um, so that I can still sit with a person while also allowing people who are in the line or who are interested in getting services done, um, so that they can still see the books. And they could still see the design options. So I thought it was a good question. Um, uh, obviously she's not- she's new to the event and festival sort of scene. So I'll just kind of answer this really simply.

So when I work at, pause, when I work at events, I don't normally take design options at all. When I work at events and when I describe events, I'm referring to events where I'm paid by the hour. Those are events where I'm hired by a private client to go and work at a particular venue, say for a party or graduation or a, like, whatever the occasion is. In instances like those, I actually don't take a design book. Those designs are all artist's choice because I'm faster that way. I work faster that way. And so in order for me to have a better opportunity to gauge the line, um, and then for me to be able to best serve the people that are there and be able to touch as many people as possible, I, um, just work purely artist's choice in instances like those.

So when it comes to events, um, for events, I don't take a design book at all. The people literally will just see what everyone else got. And that's how they know if they want to get henna from me or not. They get to decide there, um, if my style, if my designs are nice to them, if they want them. Um, now if I'm working at a festival, um, a festival or a market, I'll separate this and make a distinction in saying that a festival or market scenario is one in which I'm there, um, I have a booth and I'm selling directly myself to the customers- the people who who are there in attendance. So I haven't been paid by an organizer. I haven't been paid by a host. I'm there to make sales one-to-one.

So when I'm working at festivals it's a little bit different. When I work at festivals, I have, uh, a series of books, a collection of books that I use to offer people options. So what I do is I have a bunch of design books, e-books, right? Which, if you don't know what an e-book is, it's basically- it's a collection of line drawings that you can purchase from another artists or you can swap with another henna artist friend or you can make them yourself. And, um, I have these designs in a collection, um, and I have them all in binders. So inside of one binder, 'll have multiple e-books, right? And I have them kind of divided into sections. So I have, like, inside of one binder, one binder might have five or six different e-books so that there's a lot of variety for people to look fo- to look through, to search through so that they can find a design that they want to buy. Now each one of those designs is, um, marked with a color and, um, then there at my booth they can see that there's a color- a price index that's based on color. So they know if this design is marked with a yellow dot, then it costs whatever that yellow amount is. And honestly, I'm horrible about- I don't even know the colors of my dots because I don't check my people out. Normally I have a booth babe that does that. Um, but it's in $5 increments.

And so what I do- because I have that design book, I have multiple copies of it. So I have multiple copies of the design book out on a table for people who are coming by to check out. Um, and they can just flip through them and find the designs that they like. And when they decide that they're ready to get in line, they want to sign up for henna or they want to go ahead and have a seat, then my booth babe takes note of the page of, um, the page in the book that they are wanting. So each of those eb-ooks has a number and a letter ascribed to it. So like, e-book A- the first e-book would be e-book A and then every page in there is marked numerically. So it'll be in my book. So it'll be like, the page number A5 or B3 or whatever, G11, like, whatever it is. And my booth babe will mark that down. And then when that person comes to sit with me, I also have a copy of that book at my table. And so I will just, um, he'll, you know, he'll say, you know, uh, "Next up is Maria. And Maria wants the green design on page B3." And I'll say, "Okay!" And I'll flip to page B3 and there might be six designs there or there might be two designs or whatever. And so I'm looking for the one that he's indicated to me.

So that's how I allow, still, for people- for traffic to still check out those books. They can still look and see what designs interest them while I'm still working on in the back. So I just have like a master copy if you will. Um, but it's super easy.

You don't have to have a ton of different e-books in order for it to be efficient. Like, you could create designs all your own, um, and just create a series of pages like, you know, three pages for mandala style designs and three pages of jewelry style designs and three pages of floral style designs. And then just mark them, you know, A1-3, B1-3, and so forth. And, um, and then you would have your copy there at your table so that when that person says, "Oh yeah, I wanted design A3." Then you know, "Okay, this is what I'm working on." and the people up at the front can still look through the designs that you've got there. So that's how I display designs at events.