First, there’s wind. Even on “nice” days wind can be a real problem at a craft fair. EpicallyEpicSoap had an epically epic run in with the wind – literally:

Last Saturday it was pretty windy and the “welcoming tent” wasn’t weighed down correctly. The entire huge tent took flight and hit me right in the face!!! AAAA!

Luckily, I was fine and none of my soap was damaged, somehow!

And then of course there’s rain. Depending on the show’s location it can go from being a nuiscense to your worst day ever. Bemusedart was unlucky enough to do a show which quickly turned to mud, and an the organizers provided an even worse solution to the quickly growing mud field:

There was the typical 4 days of rain at my biggest show of the year. Ankle deep in mud for 4 days. And the dog started having seizures that weekend so my husband had to stay home and watch him instead of helping me at the show.

They put plywood in aisles for the customers to walk on, and there was a huge gap in the plywood in front of my booth where folks kept doing the splits as they tried to step over the gap. Then the city thought it would be a good idea to use this hay mixed with manure to cover the wet ground inside the booths – Warm wet manure smell – Yum! If it hadn’t been storming, I would have tried to be somewhere other than inside my tent that weekend too. And to top it all off, less than 5 min. after closing the sun came out and made for a most beautiful sunset while we packed up.

But really if we’re talking about rain mishaps, magichands wins hands down (ha ha get it? hands down? hey where are you going?)

I can win this one. Rainy day stories?

MY TENT WAS STRUCK BY LIGHTNING.

Happened during setup on the first day. It was a two-day, $375 show, and the organizer refused to give me any money back, even though it was raining and my tent was a smoking wreck with holes melted in the canopy.

worst. show. ever.

But the award for most total destruction goes to the Fountain Square Art Festival. Circa Ceramics caught the tent carnage on film:

Check out the full photoset on Flickr for a start to finish photo journal of the destruction. And next time its a little cloudy / drizzly just think to yourself “well, at least the whole craft fair hasn’t been blown away.”

Got a horror story of your own? We’re still collecting “worst customer”, “worst neighbor”, and miscellaneous stories, so send them to blog@indiecraftshows.com. And if your bad weather story didn’t make it into today’s post feel free to leave it in the comments!

Got a canopy that likes to collect pools of water, only to dump them on unsuspecting customers head at a crucial moment? Yeah, we’ve all been there.

The Artsy Crafter has an effective and cheap trick for preventing the dreaded roof-puddle – using hula hoops! Read the full article for more details.

[Via The Artsy Crafter]