Booth Finally Painted!

The booth had been the most stressful and time-consuming part of the whole project. Soon as I moved here, had to find a handy man to build it, and unfortunately the person wasn't very reliable so had to find another person, and he got the job done just in time to ship this week. Here is my husband painting the booth. Remember the chalk paint I bought? Well I took the paint to Sherwin Williams and had them tint it with this incredible blue. I thought the color was perfect: bright enough for people to notice and yet it complements the company's color PLUS I CAN write on it!!!

Hubby is painting away, he loves the color too which is saying a lot since he's my biggest critic! :)  It took about studying 20 swatches to get this color picked out... Why does everything takes so much longer than you anticipated?

Next worry:
Shipping this thing! I'm a little nervous about having the booth make it there in ONE piece...

Just need to pray, pray & pray! :)

So here on the left is the final product laid out. Once I get the booth set up, I will post more pictures.

SIgn for ABC

Have to forgive me for my lack of posts this week. The show is less than 2 weeks away and I have been busy getting everything ready. This weekend, my awesome sign arrived for the booth. Looks way better in person, but basically I can't take credit for the the creativity behind this. My sister Caroline designed the sign with moss, and paper. She hand painted the stripes too. Looks simple, but it took 3-4 prototypes before we got it right. I still have to add the name.

Organized Chaos

A little information about our company.

My show is finally coming together.  At least I feel like it is.. I am super-duper excited! CRAZY-FILLED day:

Today, I received my cool-custom made Jaq Jaq Bird fabric that I designed for the table cloth at the booth. I'm not crazy about the the colors: way too muted. But it will do...

I am running around trying to get the booth wall finished....long story, tremendous pain in the butt, I'll spare you the gruesome details.. but I think it's going to end well, keeping my fingers crossed....

Good NEWS: The rest of the products came today, (wet bags are still coming) PRAISE GOD! My daughter helped me stage some of the products to be shot with my camera, but I still have to set up the full studio tomorrow which will take pretty much all day.

Took the boys to piano lessons, but came at the wrong time, then had to run back home and come again at the right time.  I swear I thought she told me we changed the time this week to an earlier time. She must think I'm the most frazzled mother she ever met...

In the mean time, I am waiting for my catalogs, banners, and my COOL sign that my sister created. I have a vinyl cutter, and I am trying to cut the letters out for my logo, BUT I CANNOT find the electric cord. The Japanese movers didn't pack it with the cutter and I'm running around everywhere looking for the cord. I finally called the company, and they told me to buy a basic notebook/computer cord. Doesn't work, spent $60 and tried all different type of ports-nothing... I can't believe this, I don't know how I will finish up the sign.

GREAT NEWS: I already created a lot of buzz around the brand so I'm getting orders, and a great retail company approached me about designing some private label products for their cool store! I'm pumped!

Drinking wine and grading my son's math now, signing off....

Ramping up for the ABC Show

So there are some great pros to living in a small city: Stay inside my home-office and pour into the business during the day! It's so much fun, I love what I do: creating, designing and developing! Ironically, I am not a very "crafty" person, and I'm terrible at decorating anything that has to do with space. Fortunately, my chic little sister, Caroline is very good at it, so she's been giving me some pointers. Right now, I hired a nice handy man here in LA and he's making my hard walls. I have an inline 10x10 booth at the show. 3 years ago, my sister and I did the show together in Las Vegas and the booth looked like this:

We didn't know what we were doing. The little banner on the far left was added during the show because I needed more pictures. Buyers would walk by puzzled by the Chalk mat display, so the banner on the left really brought more people inside the booth. The little stool and table set up was super crowded.  Believe it or not, I spent close to $10,000 on this show 3 years ago: plane tickets, hotel room, food, transportation, signage, dreyage, shipping, press kits, products shipping from overseas, etc.. But this show was well worth the investment.  For such a humble booth, we walked away with some great accounts...

Now for my next post.