It is, of course, that time of year again. With the DC Pen Show (sadly) in our rearview mirror, I want to reminisce on the experience.
To start, I think this may have been my best pen show experience in years. I had an absolute blast!
Rather than my typical, highly — or overly, depending on your point of view — detailed rundown, I’m going to do my best to provide overall impressions and general feelings and experiences since there’s so much to cover. To make it easier on you, I’m breaking this into sections. Feel free to jump to what you’re interested in.
Jump to a section: Show keepsake | Teaching seminars | An experiment | Are we getting old? | Shopping | Recap
Attending workshops and seminars
I attended Deniz Bagdas’ Scrapbook Journaling for Pen & Ink Lovers and The Art of Wax Sealing workshops, and I’m so happy I did! I’ve wanted to try junk journaling for a while, but always felt somewhat intimidated. Deniz gave us some excellent ideas, and I learned so much. 2 hours didn’t feel anywhere near long enough, but I came away with one completed spread I love and one half-finished, but very promising spread.
The wax seal workshop was excellent as well. I’ve dabbled in wax seal making (stamping?) before, but never with marbled colors or adding contrasting color on top to bring out the design. I’ll need to get some tea lights and some wax finish, but I really want to incorporate seals into my (hopefully) new junk journaling hobby. And once I feel confident enough, I’ll try multilayered wax stamps.
While I had every intention of attending several seminars, time got away from me. I only made it to the Penny Post Junk Journaling session, which turned out to be a chance for people to sit down and do some journaling. Penny Post kindly donated some paper, ephemera, and tapes for us to use. That’s where I got most of the washi tape used on the inside covers of my show keepsake.
Show keepsake & stamp rally
Speaking — well, writing — of my keepsake, I’m rather pleased with it. If you haven’t seen my Instagram post, I used a 009 Traveler’s Company Passport-size refill (kraft paper) to collect all of the vendor stamps and giveaway stickers. I also included some business cards, my show badge, and some ephemera. It’s a lovely little reminder of the show.
I highly recommend doing something similar, even if only for the stamps or stickers. By keeping an eye out for them, I visited nearly every table. This is a stark contrast to recent years when I realized I skipped an entire section of the show without meaning to.
Teaching seminars
Once again, I taught two seminars, although one was repeated. I intend to turn both into blog posts soonish, so I won’t go into much detail. The single seminar was Thoughtful Penabling, focusing on tailoring penabling recommendations to the one being penabled. The repeated seminar was Maximize Your Pen Show Experience, focusing on suggestions of what to make sure you do during your first few pen shows.
The first “Maximize” class (Friday afternoon) was excellent. The room was nearly full and the attendees were engaged. The second, however, was a half hour before general admission started on Saturday, and I heard from a couple of people that they would have attended if they’d known they could. I made sure to give Barbara — one of the show organizers — the feedback. I know space and time for seminars is limited, but perhaps seminars should only start with general admission entry, at least on the weekend.
An experiment
At the past few shows, I’ve tested interest in my crocheted pen lanyards, and even sold a few. To continue my experiment, I expanded the styles I made and, as I mentioned in my pen show prep post, Smruti pens was kind enough to “host” my little collection.
While I was told many people admired the pen lanyards and keychains I made, very few actually sold. I hope that the “cute things” brought extra people to Smruti’s table and that this resulted in some extra sales for them.
What I need to figure out now is if the problem was that people don’t know what the lanyards are for when they don’t see one in use, or if the fancier — AKA more time-consuming and costlier — lanyards end up priced outside of people’s interest.
I’ll try just having them with me at the Baltimore show. At least I won’t need to worry about making a bunch.
Are we getting old?
Continuing a trend I vaguely noticed at the Baltimore show, “my” pen friends weren’t really present at the after-hours hangout. On Friday, I went to the lobby around 7:30, maybe 8 and sat crocheting for about an hour, maybe a bit longer. I didn’t really see any of my friends during that time. When I talked to them the next day, everyone had either gone home or right up to their room after dinner to relax and sleep.
On Saturday, Jim and I both went down to the lobby around 9, and there were still a couple of seats! I only saw a couple of my usual pen friends, and I noticed people starting to head upstairs by 9:30.
Granted, this was my 9th DC Show — 10 years, but no show in 2020 — and many of “my” friends entered the pen world around the same time I did. I certainly find it harder to stay up a decade later. Where I once only started saying good night to people around midnight or maybe even 1, now I’m generally back in my hotel room by 11 or 11:30, midnight at the absolute latest. I can only assume my pen friends are similar.
Shopping
And we get to what many of you are probably here for: my show haul. I have already shared pictures on Instagram. If you’ve seen that post, these will look very familiar. A quick note: these photos exclude some of the freebies I picked up at the Share the Wealth table, the stickers I bought, and most of the materials from my workshops.
Per usual, I had a shopping list, which I followed until I found something I wanted that wasn’t on it (also per usual). Unlike previous years, though, at the end of each day, I cataloged what I’d purchased. I’d intended to catalog as I went, but that proved difficult on the crowded show floors.
As one might expect, my Friday haul was the largest, in both price and number of items. Going just by number of items, that haul was over double my Saturday haul, and my Sunday haul was tiny. I did better with impulse purchases this year, with the only “true” impulse purchase being a bottle of ink. I don’t really count stickers or items under $5 as impulse purchases; those are little dopamine hits and/or materials for future projects.
I definitely still purchased too much, though. I’m still working on that, and who knows when, or if, I’ll get it under control.
Recap
So, did I learn anything new at this show? Yes, actually.
I need to take more workshops and probably attend more seminars. I can learn a lot, and, depending on the price of the workshops, save some money.
I want to continue with the stamp/sticker rally. Maybe at the Baltimore show I’ll grab something from every table (stamp, sticker, business card, or photo).
I probably should request afternoon slots for classes I’m teaching. Those seem to be better attended.
I still have a lot of work to do on my shopping habits.
Did you go to the DC Pen Show? If so, what was your favorite purchase? Let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear from you.
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