Field of Dolls Online Aftermath

     There is a lot of work that goes into holding a live show. You need to find and rent a hall, make sure it’s large enough to hold the show tables and shower tables, you have to make sure you have awards on time and so many other little details. But at the end of the show day you are finished. Everyone has their awards, you clean up, much less than you stated with, and you go home. That’s it, you’re done. Other than typing up results.

     For an online show there is less work leading up to the show. You don’t have to find a hall because everything is online. To prep for the Field of Dolls online show I made a Google Form for entries (this is amazing and I might use it for live shows if I ever hold one again!), I made and paid for a SmugMug account, and I made the albums. Then I took care of answering questions and fixing things as needed. When entries closed I did my portion of the judging. When Marisa and Liesl finished their portions of the judging I complied all the results and figured out champs (So, I did the results, lol). I made a list of the different champs and reserves and organized prizes to do the livestream. It was fun. Doing the door prizes was really fun for me as well. After I was done I finished organizing most everything (so, I cleaned up) and that was it until Thursday.       Travis had a half day remote so I took the whole day off and helped him with his school stuff. While he did classes I packed up all of the prizes for shipping. This took about 3 hours. I did help Travis a little bit in that time, but mostly it was packing.

     Once school was done for Travis I got to work on postage. I had the packages and my postage scale and got to weighing and postage printing. About 2 hours and roughly $250 of postage later, all of the packages had labels printed and they were ready to be applied. I cut them all out, put them in alphabetical order, and started applying them to the packages. It REALLY is a time saver to alphabetize things.

     Putting the labels on took about 40 minutes. I really had to push myself at the end. I went through 2 glue sticks and 2 rolls of tape, but I got them finished! Then it was off to the post office.

      I had one giant bag and two regular sizes grocery bags of packages. Travis helped me carry everything. But we got them all checked in and on the way! With the delays in shipping because of the holidays I am not sure how soon anyone will be getting their prizes, but they are coming! Eventually.

     So now I am officially finished with the first Field of Dolls online show. It was definitely a lot of work, but it was also a lot of fun. The judges have been paid, the prizes shipped and the finances wrapped up. I did keep back some of the prizes I purchased for next year, which leaves me only about $250 in the hole for this show. It almost ended up much worse for me. As with all things, I learned a lot of things. What works, what doesn’t work, what needs to be tweaked. One thing I am unwilling to compromise on is prizes. I love the idea of every class placing getting a prize. That will continue for the next show. I love the idea of having a ton of door prizes, I will find a way to make that continue. I love the idea of rewarding an excellent shower, and not just the most creatively used horse, and being able to offer champs to a lot of people. The way I am doing the champs for the Spring show will spread it out for sure. Seven people will win top awards. My hope is to then have a variety of excellent raffle prizes to give others a chance to win some awesome things. I had a really good time making this show happen and I a going to keep looking for ways to make it even better.