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A couple of weeks ago I tabled at Thought Bubble, which if you don't know is a comics and illustration festival in Harrogate which I think of as the main comics event in the UK!

I was sharing a table with my amazing talented friend Strike who is a bit of an art fair veteran. Thank you Strike for all your help and advice!! We were there with three of our minions who ferried us food, helped us haul our heavy heavy luggage, and gave us time to have breaks and wander around. I really don't know how people manage to table solo, I need a damn entourage.

Friday and Saturday it was absolutely pouring with rain, but by some miracle we managed to keep everything dry. I always forget how much colder it is in the north + that the days are noticeably shorter. I made the rookie error of wearing fashionable shoes instead of comfortable shoes on day one and after standing for a few hours I had to get Alex to fetch me my sketchers STAT.

This was my first time out and selling The Corus Wave, and I had a number of lovely people who backed the Kickstarter come up to me and tell me how much they enjoyed it which really meant the world. What do you mean people are actually reading it? Thank you everyone!!

I was really excited to debut my moss guys (I've been struggling with what to call them) - I finally made a transparent sticker sheet of my mossmoji pixel art which has been a dream merch item of mine for a while. I love small transparent stickers like these, big inspo from Minisuper and Alliens' stickers. They were one of my best selling items so I'm glad everyone else likes them as much as me!

And another dream item that I finally got round to making - the moss specimens! I've been wanting to make these guys real for a while but was intimidated by the sewing process, I'm going to make a blog post about how I made them soon. I was in Japan in 2023 for Design Festa aka the world's biggest artist alley. It was SO inspiring and I particularly liked how many little guys there were, so many people with their handmade creature mascots as toys, stickers, etc. They're so charming and fun!

These specimens were driving people crazy, just as intended (said evilly). A couple of teens were calling me 'the goober lady' and 'the green beast lady' which I'm ready to embrace. Obsessed with the faces people were making upon spotting them.

Being an artist is quite a lonely occupation, I'm usually drawing at home alone, so being able to meet other artists and interact with people is my favourite thing about fairs and conventions. Seeing even one person look at my work and say 'wow, I love this!' is 1000000x more fulfilling than watching likes tick up on instagram. It makes everything feel real, makes my heart grow ten sizes, etc. This year I've started having more opportunities to chat and hang out with other artists and I'm beginning to feel a real sense of community. Thought Bubble was overwhelming and exhausting but so socially and emotionally gratifying and I hope I can attend again next year!!

Shout out to the food spots we hit in Harrogate this year (recommendations for anyone going in the future?)! GINKO cafe was near our air bnb and was on the pricier side but soo incredible, we needed those healing umami flavours after hauling our suitcases uphill in the rain. Cambridge Cafe is a British Chinese place and honestly maybe the best one in the country. Last year we had Cambridge Cafe 3 nights in a row but this year settled for a measly 2. The salt and chilli tofu goes so crazy. For lunch, the bagels at No. 35 right next to the convention centre were very good if a little drippy on the go, I really like the 'New Yorker' (pastrami, gouda, gherkins, mustard mayo, etc).

LESSONS IN TABLING:

Separating this part off for anyone interested in tabling!

Thought Bubble was my second ever time tabling, my first time being at PCZF in March which was a much smaller event and from which I had forgotten basically everything. I definitely learnt a lot about what to do and what not to do this year!

Firstly, I was very rushed in my prep for PCZF and didn't even have time to practise my table set up which made for a very stressful morning. I was writing price tags as people were filing in. I was much more prepared for TB and it saved me a world of pain. TB also has the option of setting up on the Friday evening before the convention which is a godsend!!

When the fair started my thinking was, leave people to their browsing and don't make them uncomfortable, this is a room of introverts and I know I feel intimidated when someone is staring me down from the other side of the table. It didn't take me long to realise this was not a good approach, not just from an encouraging-people-to-look standpoint but from a getting-to-have-nice-chats one too. I started greeting people and starting conversations, trying to busy myself while they were looking but also like, telling people about the comics they picked up (because it's actually kind of hard to get a good feeling for a comic just from a quick flick through), and pointing them to related things. Maybe it seems obvious but this made TB soo much more fun.

I attended Thought Bubble in 2024 just as a guest and tried to take notes on what worked or didn't work for me with table setups. Sidenote: when you're looking at tables the layouts just seem natural and obvious, but when it comes to working out how to lay it out yourself it's actually so hard. Anyway, here's what I noted down:

★ Setups with some verticality were much less intimidating to approach as there was a bit of a shield between you and the person tabling.

★ Anything at knee-height (like the front of the tablecloth) was hard to see/notice because it's so far below eyeline and people are often standing in front of it.

★ It was easier to look at items which had a solid backing/were on a pegboard than things on grid fences (I still used grid fences but I kind of hate them tbh, some people make them work but on mine I think they just looked messy).

★ If the prices weren't prominent I probably wouldn't ask about it just because of the awkward situation if it costs more that I'm willing to pay, I also prefer pricing to be next to the item rather than on a price sheet somewhere.

★ I personally am annoyed if I buy a print and the seller doesn't give me any packaging for it, like this is going to get destroyed before I'm home.

★ Finally, something I've heard as advice for tabling and I think it does work, if you have verticality then put something shiny/cool up high to attract people over.

I tried my best to put these observations to work in my set up and I was pretty happy with how it looked! I did find that some things I thought were obviously on display people missed or only noticed after a few minutes of looking, I think this is particularly a problem of a bigger event like this where there's so much to see and people are moving around more quickly. I made signs describing my books but I'm not sure many people read them, could be because my handwriting is not the best (lol) or maybe it was just too much text. I saw some people (including Strike) had small descriptive labels stuck to their sample books which I think might work better as people can read them it as they examine the book.

One mistake I made was not putting a business card in the paper bags with the things people bought: this is something I remembered to do at PCZF but promptly forgot about. I saw a lot of instagram posts of peoples hauls being posted with 'don't know the artist for this one!' next to my stickers... not a huge deal but I definitely need to get on that.

I love when people have cute packaging and fun buying experiences so I'm excited to try more things and hopefully be able to invest in more ambitious stuff! I'm still getting a hang of everything and trying to work out if this is something I want to keep doing. I don't live in a big area so going to events is always an investment for me, but so far I've been enjoying it and I hope I'll be able to table at some events in 2026.

- Karenza