Outdoor festival jewelry booth design

In case you haven't noticed, I've missed a couple of blog posts in the last few days.  If having TWO batches of resin that didn't cure properly (mostly hard, but sticky like scotch tape when you touched them) wasn't bad enough, I've gotten the wild hair to redo my outdoor art festival jewelry booth.

This is my current booth.  It is composed of wooden boxes with collapsible glass boxes on top.  The boxes themselves don't collapse, but the legs do come off the bottom.  I get lots of great comments on it, so why change?

Couple of reasons:

1. I don't think it fits the resin jewelry style.  I think this display is a good match for sterling silver and semi precious stone jewelry, but little too "snooty" for resin jewelry.
2. It's a bit cumbersome to lug around.  For shows like the Downtown Festival and Art show, in Gainesville in November, where I can't set up until Saturday morning, there is no way I can set this up by myself in time for the show. 
3. It's time for a change.

So here's what took me five days to come up with.  (Thanks to Google Sketch Up for the help.)

First, let me say, the wall and floor colors are a bit more "intense" than what I would say they will be, but you'll get the idea.

The floor is actually the brick road street downtown.  Unfortunately, it isn't as level as the picture shows.

The long table is 2 four foot tables put together.  It is draped with ivory tablecloths, with a table runner on top.  The table runner matches some jewelry display novelty items I got at Bed, Bath and Beyond a couple of months ago for my wholesale show.  The table runner is ivory with a few large flowers on it.

The walls are going to be a sheer drapes in the aqua color.  My hope is that they will give enough color without feeling heavy.

The three hanging wall items will be jewelry displayed in a frame at eye level.

So you might be asking, why not go over the top color like what I did with my wholesale art jewelry booth?  I did think about out.  Really, I did.  All I can say is now I understand why fashion designers put out the big over-the-top fashion pieces -- to grab attention.  I think the wholesale booth does a great job of drawing business and art gallery owners in and making it crystal clear that my jewelry is about fun and color.  I'm a bit concerned that the same "over the top" approach to retail customers may be too much.

What do you think? 

Art show table covers and fabric walls

My fireproof fabrics for my jewelry booth at ACRE Las Vegas arrived this week.  I'm still happy with my color choices.

This will be the table cover.  It can fit a six foot long table, but can adjust to a 4 foot table as well.  It was slightly less pink than I was expecting, but still a good fit.  I think it's going to go great with the green floor.







 

The ivory panel walls are nice too.  I ordered them with clips and a velcro strip at the top the panels.  That way, I can put clips (which also have a velcro side on them) over a bar and velcro the panels to it.






Down to the wire!!  I'll be traveling to Las Vegas two weeks from today!!

Jewelry pictures for my art show booth

Last Monday, I showed you pictures of jewelry that would end up hanging in my jewelry booth at the ACRE Las Vegas show.  I ordered plastic poster clips from Displays 2 go to hang them with.

If you look at the top of the picture, there is a clear clip.  I put the picture in and clip it shut.  There is one to go at the bottom as well, although I didn't put it on the picture.

I didn't get them all out to try (I may regret that later), but just went ahead and packed everything away.  My fireproof fabric is in transit, so I hope to have pictures to show of that by the end of the week.

Jewelry show booth lighting

Another part of getting ready for ACRE Las Vegas is having lighting for my booth.  Ah but yes, you're thinking, didn't I have this for ACRE Orlando?  You are correct oh wise one, but this time, it needs to fit in a suitcase.

I decided to go with two foot sections of track with gooseneck lamps.  I can focus the goosenecks EXACTLY where I want them to shine light.  Quite frankly, I was pretty surprised how bright the lights got and how far the light projected.

These handy dandy little connectors allow me to bring the track together, then disassemble.

I have a total of 3 two foot tracks, six lights, and all the associated connectors and power source.

And the best news is that it all fits in a large suitcase.  I'm flying Southwest, which doesn't charge for the first two bags.  Awesome!

Picking colors for my new jewelry booth

In getting ready for the ACRE Las Vegas wholesale show, I've been working on a new jewelry display.  I came up with a new jewelry booth design using Google Sketch Up a month and a half ago.  After letting the idea "simmer" in my head for a few weeks, I decided I liked how it looked and started buying the display items.


 I really liked the lime green floor.  It's bright and inviting.  I ordered 25 two foot by two foot soft cushion tiles (enough to do a 10 foot by 10 foot booth space).  I don't know what I was expecting, but the box they came in was huge. 









The tiles lock together with edges similar to a jigsaw puzzle.












They were really pretty easy to put together.  (Yes, even a two year old can do it.)












My prior sketch showed an ivory panel backdrop, fuschia hot pink tablecloth and purple pedestals.  I had gotten fabric samples from a company that specializes in fireproof trade show fabrics and put them up next to the floor.  I still like the colors pretty well and will continue to go in that direction.  The only exception is that I'm holding off on the purple pedestals.  Not because I don't like the color, but because I'm not sure how I can get them on a plane to go with me to Las Vegas without them getting destroyed or me paying overage charges.

What do you think about the colors?

Pantone color chart

Ever wondered how companies go about picking the colors they do?  There's this neat New Jersey company called Pantone.  It has an official "matching system"  that is used by almost any industry you can think of to standardize color across platforms such as paint, fabric, plastics, etc. (Read more about Pantone on Wikipedia.)  What's cool about this for artists is that each color has a number and letter system.  You can download these colors schemes for use in a photoeditor such as Photoshop.  Then, when you send it off to get printed, the printer has the "official" color formula to create that same color.  The system makes sure you get what you want.

Pantone influences more than what you might realize.  Companies use this color system to decide the colors of everything from kitchen mixers to new cars (and sometimes years in advance).  I had my own little "discovery" with Pantone this week.  I just found out a couple of days ago that Pantone's official "color of the year" is Honeysuckle.  Does this look familiar to you?  It did to me.  I blogged a couple of weeks ago about my new booth design.  Although I didn't "consciously" know about Honeysuckle, I picked that color to be on the table in the center of my resin jewelry booth design.  I was amazed that I had essentially picked that Honeysuckle color. 

Coincidence??