I got this little guy in time for Bazaar Bizarre / Maker Faire, and I love it soooo much more than the Bartizan 4850 tabletop imprinter I used to have! Not only is the Bartizan 4200 more compact and therefore easier to pack, it’s just way easier to make a credit card imprint with too.

The old tabletop version took up valuable table space, and I’d often have trouble getting the credit card info to come out clearly. Jimmy was better at it, but I didn’t want to deal with the hassle at Maker Faire because I knew there’d be loads of people and very little space in our 6×6 foot booth.

So I went back to Mr. Imprinter’s eBay store and picked up this listing for myself, which includes the imprinter and a pack of 100 credit card slips for $26.50 shipped. A couple of things to note: The slips that are shipped with this listing are the longer 80-column sales slips, but the unit also takes the shorter 51-column size. I sent Mr. Imprinter an email to ask before I ordered but never got a response back. Wah.

80-column sales slip

51-column sales slip

 
images from Mr. Imprinter

Also, the listing says that this unit doesn’t take merchant plates but in fact it does. It’s “set up for use with a 3 line embossed plate of .014 – .016 over material height” (this is from the manufacturer’s website, and you can also see that there’s a place to insert a merchant plate inside the unit). I guess Mr. Imprinter just doesn’t sell that type of plate, but you can get it separately from Addressograph (I’d check with them to make sure that’s the right one!). Merchant plates, if you’re not familiar, are these customizable metal plates that are mounted on the inside of an imprinter so that your store/contact information are imprinted on sales slips along with the customer’s information.

Here’s Mr. Imprinter’s:

There were a couple of things that were not so great but only one specific to the product itself. For the price and in comparison to the 4850, I’m a huge fan.

Pros:

• The compact size  (1.75″h x 4.125″w x 7.75″l) is lightweight (0.61 lbs) and easy to store and transport.
• You don’t have to sit the unit on a flat surface to get an imprint.
• Produces a clean imprint with one swift pull of the lid.

Cons

• If you slide the credit card in too far on accident, it gets stuck and is hard to pull back out.
• Merchant plate can’t be ordered from Mr. Imprinter but is available from Addressograph. I just ordered a rubber stamp from Simon’s Stamps and got help from my dear friend Jenn to stamp my shop info on all the sales slips. Heh heh.
• I think the shorter sales slips would be easier to manage inside this unit than the longer ones that are shipped from Mr. Imprinter.

And that’s my imprinter recommendation for the day!Similar Posts:

• A knucklebuster to call my own
• My craft fair production schedule
• Feelin’ the love at IndieSacramento

After all the excitement from preparing for and then tending my own booth as a Bazaar Bizarre craft vendor at Maker Faire this past weekend, I think I’m actually suffering from a little craft fair withdrawal! But more than anything, I’m just overwhelmingly happy with how everything turned out.

I barely stepped foot from behind my table the entire weekend, but even just from that vantage point alone I had a blast! I talked to so many cool people — shoppers, buyers, makers, passersby. I met at least five other vendors who will also be at Renegade Craft Fair SF this coming July and as always, I loved hearing all the real-time feedback from shoppers about my products.

The direct feedback is one thing that makes craft fairs so valuable, hearing what folks love and what they have questions about like, “What’s this loop thingy here for?” The answer to which is, “It’s a grab tab for you to hold onto when you open and close the zipper.” To which they’d respond, “Oooooooh!” I’ve yet to decide whether that means I should remove it or simply label it as such, so if anyone’s got an opinion on that, I’d love to hear it!

My favorite (and I’ve actually gotten this several times!) is:

Booth visitor: You made all this?
Me: Yes! (big smile)
Booth visitor: ALL this? (wide sweeping gesture)
Me: Uh huh, all of it!
Booth visitor: By yourself?!? (look of incredulity)
Me: Just me!

I figure others must get this line of questioning too because I’ve seen spreads that are even bigger than mine, but I love it each and every time!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!
To everyone that stopped by the booth, thank you so much!!! And to all who further lent your support with a purchase — HUGS, KISSES AND THANK YOU AGAIN!!!

Agnes from Teacake Bake Shop (you need to go there!) made it with her hubby and baby in tow, and she took home a whopping four Boxy Zippered Pencil Pouches!

A quick product update
I introduced three new products at the fair and will begin posting them to the site over the next two weeks as I replenish my inventory. If you left me your contact info for something specific, I’ll be in touch! If you didn’t manage to sign up on any of my lists, please join me on Facebook! I’ll send updates through Facebook as well as my email newsletter.

The booth setup
One of the many things I was really excited about was my new booth display! I brought my dressform again but this time I made her a necklace of Stash ‘n Dash Zippered Wallets, adorned her with a leafy garland I’d purchased for our wedding but never used and topped her off with a twig ball also from the wedding!

Ever the helping husband, Jimmy rigged me a big part of my DIY display — two vertical poles with a horizontal dowel inserted through each to allow me to dangle a sampling of products from overhead. Here he is hard at work:

And the display in action!

A view from the other side:

I think it worked out well in such a crowded environment, but next time I’d like to give it some more oomph somehow. I’m sure I’ll figure something out in time for Renegade!

And all the rest…
The hubs took some time to enjoy the festivities, and here are some of the things he found photo-worthy. Lots of FIRE! And of course corn dogs and funnel cakes, both of which we made sure to sample.

Before I get back to sewing, I leave you with a special collage that doesn’t have much to do with the show but is what Jimmy proceeded to do immediately after building me my little display solution. It may seem like just a row of flowers, but oh, it is so much more. I’m sure it’s what led the Lakers to finally beat the Nuggets, for it is none other than a purple and gold tribute to Jimmy’s favorite team…right in our front walkway. Great.

A few more photos

• My Flickr photoset (photos by Jimmy)

Similar Posts:

• Feelin’ the love at IndieSacramento
• My craft fair production schedule
• Making progress

1) I had the honor of submitting a guest post to Etsy’s blog, The Storque, and it went live today! And Etsy readers are so full of love and kind words. I love it! The Storque gets a whopping 2 million pageviews a month — that’s a lot of eyeballs! So we’re taking the liberty of feeling semi-famous…at least temporarily. Read on, if you please: “It Takes a Village to Craft a Handmade Wedding“.

2) A lovely gal on Etsy sent me the sweetest note entitled “Spotted your bag in the wild”. She said she saw a girl with a cute bag at Whole Foods in Oakland and asked where it was from, and it was mine! Awesome that that happened, and double-awesome that she went to the trouble to let me know about it. I am oozing with love and gratitude.

3) Our entire house is strewn with fabric and pouches and sewing implements because I’m preparing for the Bazaar Bizarre craft show at Maker Faire at the end of the month! I’m SO excited to get to be a part of the show this year, as I’ve always been in awe of Maker Faire. I’ll admit I’m intimidated by the amount of people that are expected to be there (the number 80,000 has been floating around), but I’m much more psyched than scared!

4) Earlier this week, I found out that I also get to be a part of Renegade Craft Fair SF again this year – YEA! The event will take place July 18-19 from 11am – 7pm, at Fort Mason’s Festival Pavilion. It was such a great event last year, and I’m sure it will be just as grand this year!

5) When it rains, it pours?! The folks over at Madison Marquette, which owns a bunch of shopping centers here in the Bay Area (amongst other places), are looking for an innovative new business to help them grow San Leandro’s Bayfair Center mall and are running a contest called Retail*Star. The grand prize winner gets a FREE one-year lease on a retail space in the mall, plus a good chunk of seed money to get their business started. I was one of 66 contestants to submit my business idea to the panel of judges via a 3-minute presentation and 2-page written description, and I made the first cut as one of 15 semi-finalists!

6) There are a bunch more little mini things like the fact that I just had Henry’s Hunan Hot & Sour Beef for dinner followed by a bite of dark chocolate. But I’ll end with the fact that I just scanned in this photo that we had taken last weekend at a Mother’s Day brunch at the Marriott, and it makes me smile. They caught Gramma in a blink, but that’s not anything Don won’t be able to fix in Photoshop I think. But it was just such a great family-filled whirlwind of a weekend, from pitching my Retail*Star thing Saturday morning and booking it over to SFO to get to Santa Monica Pier to celebrate Mom’s 65th birthday then crashing at Ah-Yi’s; to this all-you-can-eat-plus-complimentary-family-photo brunch, followed by more family time and then off again to LAX and back home in less than 48 hours. Phew! Though it was short, it was event-filled and somehow particularly fulfilling. This photo cracks and warms me up all at once.

In conclusion, I have plenty of things to be happy about. And therefore I am!Similar Posts:

• Bazaar Bizarre / Maker Faire – all I imagined, and more!
• Blessings to the Bartizan 4200 portable imprinter
• Happy 2009!