still more great booths!

My booth piece continues with  more of my favorites in the simple, clean, lower budget-but-fabulous category from the August 2010 New York Gift Fair,  here they are:

http://www.9spotmonk.com/ did a GREAT booth! foamcore white walls, covered in a fabulous high gloss orange vinyl adhesive. They also built a wall right in the middle of their booth which not only added 2 extra walls for displaying but also added architecture to the square booth. They used a craft paper brown to offset the high gloss orange to make their wall, for their bench at the back of the booth and for their floor.

LOVE this booth!

(and hope to have a link to share with you soon on where they got their orange high gloss vinyl!

http://www.flipandtumble.com/ took white and clean to new heights!

They did a floor that looks like wood, simple white furnishings (Ikea) and white walls.

They lined their white walls with their fantastic bags, making the colors simply POP!

I think the simplicity of this booth and the almost laboratory look of it was a really smart way to showcase their products, let me tell you, walking down their aisle, you HAD to look in their booth, and that, as the fabulous martha would say, is a good thing!

Lastly in this series, one of my favorite little booths at the show, http://www.baileydoesntbark.com/ .

Everytime I walked past this booth, I would admire and swoon a little...

Using simple dark stained wooden shelves and tables with non color, natural textured extras and vintagy details they acheived a beautiful soft look yet with a very sophisticated feel, right down to their beautiful sign! (the font is amazing!).

Through their display, they did a great job showing their clients how easy and impactful it could be to show their products once clients order them and have them in store.

They are showing retailers that their products look great grouped  (hey retailers, buy a bunch of our stuff and you too can have this look!) Hello? who wouldn't want this look!?

So smart! So effective...YAYE Bailey Doesn't Bark!

(for some crazy reason I didn't ask...but I hope Bailey is a cat or a fish...or a pet rock...)

more layout options

I had shown you an easy foam board layout for a 10'x10' booth here , by using 3, 4'x8' foam board panels per wall. You would place a panel at each side, right to the corner and overlap a 3rd panel in the center of the wall, like this (this shows one wall).
For a 10'x 10' booth, this design layout would use 9 panels of foam board.

Here is another way to plan your layout.

Find the center of your wall. Line up 2 panels of foam board so that they meet in the center of your wall. Now you will have 1 foot left of space on either side to cover up.

At this point, you can play around with your design a little bit...

1- You can start putting up your side walls now, but start at the front poles on each side, like this.

You will have 2 panels per wall, on your back wall, the panels will be centered, on the side walls your panels will be lined up with the front poles. Result will be 2 feet of unfoamed wall on each of your side walls (the area near the back of your booth), plus, 1 foot on each side of your back wall that is unfoamed. In other words, your 2 back corners will be open.

2- Here comes the fun part...well, some of us weirdos think this is fun!...

You can now decide how you would like to cover your empty space in the back corners.

You might want to use a panel that is scored down the center to fit into the corners. You can slip the excess behind your already set panels, or trim them with a sharp box cutting tool/blade.

You might decide to make a diagonal wall, by attaching a panel from your back wall to your side wall. There are no rules here...you can do both corners differently, one as a fit corner and one as a diagonal, get creative! This can actually make your very square booth look a little bit more interesting and architectural.

* A note here on storing excess samples or supplies. If you decide to do a diagonal wall, you can actually use the space behind it for some storage! Sometimes we simply tape one side closed on the bottom near the floor and this way we can open the diagonal wall when we need to get back there. (very convenient!)

see our diagonal wall (below) on the right, we displayed our press features on it.

we also kept the trunk in front of it to keep the wall in place!

we did the same thing here (below) with a diagonal wall.

If you make a mistake, cut down your foam board in the wrong place or find that your booth is not exactly the dimensions you had planned for, or the perfect square you had hoped for, don't sweat it, once it's all up and your samples are displayed, if a seam is not perfect, or if one wall is not exactly the mirror image of the other, it won't show...relax, no one will notice! If you need to cleanly run white tape down all your seams to keep things straight and secure, do it! it will look fine (try to use matte rather than glossy tape for that!), if you need to use some heavy duty clamps or extra velcro tape or hot glue- do it!...this is all illusion, it doesn't have to withstand weeks or months of use, it's temporary and really just theater, keep that in mind!

January 2010 New York International Gift Fair

finally have the amazing booth shots that fabulously talented Lynn took!

I will be posting her info as soon as she gets her website together...so that you can all hire her!

yeah yeah, I know, no web site yet,
I guess she wasn't sure this whole computer/internet thing was going to stick! :-)

need booth help, suggestions, tips & tricks and resources?...get in touch!

hmmmm, this blogging thing is easy to slack on...

and we were doing so well!
alright, I am back on track now.

Back from the NY gift fair, (more) back on my derby skates than before, winter might just be coming to an end soon (although every time I say that, it magically snows again!), baby tess is sprouting a little tooth (yes, her first!) and will already be a year old soon, and I have a few things to discuss with you all. (or just YOU) whoever you are that might be reading this, or, if you are my ex or some other friend that doesn't talk to me, you are a little stalkerish for being here, (just saying).

Alright then, now that that is out of the way, I would also like to mention that perhaps this whole law of attraction thing does work...after blogging about a bag that I had absolutely fallen in love with, I had the wonderful opportunity to get my little paws on one (at cost! shhhhhh whilst at the NY show)- Now don't bitch and complain about that, we actually show at one of the same trade shows (much to my utter delight), there has to be some kind of advantage to being in this industry other than paying absolutely crazy prices for trade show booths, setting it up in record time in stinky dirty conditions, sitting in the booth through great shows or shows where hearing crickets would be considered busy, and then regardless of the outcome, packing it all up and doing it again. A little Carni-like if you really want to know (as in, Carnival folks that move from town to town and set up, pack up, over and over again).

Anyhow, long story shorter, I got the bag in Bone (that's a color) and it's going to be amazing! (I say "going to" because I haven't received it yet, but it's coming!).

As for the show, (photos are coming) I am happy to say that things seem to be moving along, certainly on the upswing! There seemed to be more buyers around, more buyers actually buying, and an overall less gloomy/doomy feeling than recent past shows. It looks like I will finally be doing business with some fabulous retailers that I have wanted to work with for years, wrote some exciting orders for great international stores in Tokyo, Saudi Arabia and Canada, had a bunch of interested magazines and press stop by the booth and have shipped and will be shipping to lots of new clients and some of our great regular clients within the coming months. So, phew (for now!) seems like we are still in business!

The actual trip to NYC was pretty great, except for the speeding ticket, but I will get to that later.
Although daddy wasn't able to come with us this time (which made the momma kind of nervous...). Roller-auntie Lynn came to keep baby Tess smiling and she did one heck of a job! I did hear a few comments along the way like "how do you do this all the time?" and "I am so not ready for this!",

but OMG she was amazing with her!
I was a little worried the first day of the show, when by 3pm I still had not heard a peep from auntie Lynn and Tess...by 4pm I was dying. As of this point, I had never really been away from my teeny girl for more than about 3 hours in a row. Just as I was dying, in they strolled with big smiles and lots of toys and doo dads in the stroller, (the ones that you hand tiny people to keep them occupied as long as possible while you are trying to get something done or go from point A to point B). When I asked where they had been, Lynn smiled and said- "Hey, you need to work! don't worry about us, we are fine!".
For someone who usually controls stuff, this was oddly comforting and incredibly reassuring!
Needless to say, auntie Lynn was fast asleep by about 9pm that night.

I have known roller auntie Lynn for several years now (her derby name is Lyn dah Kicks, I like to call her Kicky, not only are we team mates on the same roller derby team La Racaille, but she is a wonderful friend.
I trusted her implicitly, obviously, when I asked her to come to NYC with us and care for her royal "babyness", but she exceeded all my expectations. Within 2 days she knew all of Tess' baby sing along book songs and didn't think twice about doing a little jig or making a kooky face to get her to smile or giggle, in public or privately! On several occassions I saw her pushing the stroller loaded with all kinds of paraphenalia, winter coats, water bottles, toys and her photography stuff (she is a professional photographer to boot!), while CARRYING a squirming Tess in her arms and still smiling! Moms, join me in a quick "Halleluja Auntie Lynn" moment!, Tres Impressive!

The booth once again made me quite happy! I am definitely in the "keep it simple" mindset for now, and I think that the overall feel and simplicity of the booth design is a pretty great backdrop for the line.
Basic white!
The line pops on white and I find that it's much easier to focus on the products rather than the actual booth, which is really what we want when working with buyers. I had some fun with my black Sharpies again this show, by drawing out picture frame mouldings on simple brown cardboard and cutting it out and adhering it to our foamboard walls with a glue stick. It served to add a little architecture to the plain walls and table with a little bit of a sense of humour, maybe Victorian humour (given the design of the mouldings?...maybe I am pushing it here!). Also, since the fabulous Marc Tetro (amazing artist and dear friend) and I still show together, the simplicity of the booth design is still perfect in giving us a unified look, while also keeping both lines independant and distinctive.

So all in all, things are pretty ok! although still what I consider to be a somewhat scary time to be a small business, the flip side is that BlueDogz Design is so lean to run that I am thankful I am not a big huge company right now with lots of overhead and families to feed. I look forward to see what the next months will be like business-wise and to see where my ideas and life will take us.

Stay tuned for the speeding ticket, great baby and booth photos (by Kicky!) and I guess it's time to get into some derby...

some quality time with my chisel tip sharpie...

While most of you were busy enjoying Halloween I decided to spend some quality time at home with my jumbo chisel tip Sharpie. I am an admitted "HalloWinch" (my friend Stephen's word- perfectly describes me!) I am enjoying the very short time I have to not "do" Halloween with Tess, so until I have to, I am doing other very important tasks during this very special night for so many of you (whatever!).
In getting ready for the Metro Cooking Show in Washington, this Halloween night, I decided that it was the perfect night to get some architectural elements done for the booth, just me and my Sharpie! Something impactful, easy to transport and cheap!
Here's what I did.
I went to Staples and picked up one of those extra large pads of paper (the ones you can hang on an easel to do presentations, 2 ft wide by approx 3.5 ft tall).
I then started to measure out my Mouldings...

Then I started to fill things in...

I was not concerned about perfectly coloring in the lines, as a matter of fact, I was going for this "sketchy" almost "cartoonish" look.
Here is the finished product!

Once I had finished one, I put another sheet over it and simply traced the lines and did it again and again and again- yes, this was a long Halloween night!
Anyhow, the point is, I have mouldings for the booth now!
You will see the results very soon in photos, but basically, I will be using pushpins to tack these drawings all along the bottom few feet of our white foamboard walls to add some depth and architecture to our space, also, everything in the booth will be black and white except the products, so they will really pop!
upshot? cool mouldings, very transportable (just roll them up!), inexpensive (the cost of the notepad and the sharpies, I did go through 3 and my time? forget it! I didn't have to dress up and that's priceless!)
what do you think?