Whew! What a whirlwind of a summer the Glitter Glamper had!! We are half way through October and I’m just now feeling like I have a moment to look back at all of the fun! I’ll put together a recap of all of our 2022 summer fairs, but I wanted to start with the first one that happened over Memorial Day Weekend this year!!
I was so thrilled an honored to be invited to be a part of the Kickoff to summer, a 5 day event held at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds! The summer kickoff is a new event that started in 2021, as a way to give people a mini taste of the state fair…though earlier on in the season, with less heat and less crowds. Tickets for the event are sold in shifts, with a limited number of guests allowed in each time slot…there is a morning shift and an afternoon shift each day, and in between they clear out all of the visitors for the next round. We definitely LOVED having that 90 minute break to breathe, tidy up our booth and refuel ourselves mid-day!
This was the first time I was able to set up the physical Glamper trailer on the State Fairgrounds, and it was a HIT! The trailer itself definitely drew a crowd. We ended up doing twice as much business as we normally do during the regular state fair! In fact, it wasn’t long after this event that the state fair called me up and offered me a huge, new space for the state fair in August, so that I could bring the trailer! (I’ll recap the state fair in a later post!)
Needless to say, the summer kickoff was a huge success…here are some photos from the event!
For this event we offered face painting, bling clusters (3D bling plus glitter), 3D Festival Faces (paint plus glitter & 3D bling elements), festival glitter eyes, glitter freckles, glitter beards, “sparkle sleeves,” decolletage and glitter tattoos!
While we weren’t originally planning on having my family work at this event, my husband and boys did come save the day a couple times because we were so slammed!! They are of course always a major help with setup and teardown as well.
Having the real trailer at the fair was AWESOME…but the other cool thing about this event was that we were allowed to offer regular face painting as well…not just our bling options…since there were no other face painting booths at this event. Of course, our usual offerings were still top sellers, but it was fun to be able to offer up ALL of our artistic skills!
This event was a great chance to get to know the trailer setup, and also an opportunity to learn how to best deal with working after dark, and with rain! I came armed with all kinds of battery powered lights, in addition to the trailer’s lights and my vintage camping light string. We weren’t open long after dark, however, it did make me realize how important those lights are, not only for us to work, but for our booth’s visibility! Overall the booth looked really cute after dark!
We had rain just about every day, though miraculously it always seemed to stop right when we were supposed to open, and not start up again until right after we had closed! I really couldn’t complain. Rain is much easier to handle without wind! It did of course add on a lot of extra work each morning, having to open in the rain, dry things off, and then be ready to go right when it quit…and buttoning everything up before rain came at night. You never know what May weather will be like in Minnesota, but we really lucked out in my opinion!
The Kickoff to Summer was such an amazing event…it was so great to show off the new trailer to our regular state fair fans who came to find us, and it was a really awesome opportunity to work out some kinks and start honing in on the perfect outdoor fair setup! I definitely could NOT have done it without my amazing team of artists, Tricia, Tamina, Nanette, Tiffany and Naomi, not to mention my husband Wayde and our boys! I hope to be back again next year, but whether we return for the kickoff or not, it’s safe to say we helped create a TON of fun memories for Minnesota families that will last for years to come!
Stay tuned at a later date for a recap of our first ever Carver County Fair with the Glamper, and the Glitter Glamper’s first year in our huge, new “glampsite” at the Minnesota State Fair!
Glitter Glamper 