THE ROAD TO NSS 2013: SETTING UP THE BOOTH

We finally made it to the actual show! There are so many months of preparation that once you get there, it's almost unbelievable. I almost always think that my shipment(s) won't arrive but so far so good. I usually carry as many samples as possible on the plane with me so that if all else fails, my products will be there. Luckily, my crate was ready and waiting for us. Here is the before shot with nothing but our luggage in the booth and our huge crate ready to be cracked open.

I am so sorry that we didn't get any pictures of us putting the walls together but they were actually very simple to put together and get up. First we laid down our white foam flooring to protect the canvases from the nasty NSS floor. Then we laid the canvases on the floor just how they should be once put up. Since the frame of the canvases is wood, we simply used small pieces of wood to connect them. We used a drill to connect the smaller wood to the back of the canvases so that all of the canvases on one wall were connected in a sturdy way. We had pre-drilled holes in the back of the wood on each canvas to slip zip ties into. This is how we connected the walls to the metal pipe that is provided.  It isn't ever as easy as it should be and there are always issues.

That is the most important thing that I have learned over my years exhibiting at NSS: No matter how well you plan and prepare, something will go "wrong" and you will have to come up with a solution on the spot. You can only hope that they are minimal.

This time, I went ahead and painted product headings onto the canvas before I left. I had a little feeling that this may be a mistake but it was something that I couldn't do once I got there. It was too time consuming. I just had to have that hand painted feel to my words on the canvas and that had to be done before hand. My calculations were wrong and my booth number ended up being in a different place than I planned. It was a minor issue and we dealt with it. The best part about already expecting that something will go wrong is that I don't get stressed out when it does.

Here is our display coming together for the new Paper Cuts Album. I bought some fake flowers at Michael's and spray painted them with 2 types of gold spray paint. I cut them up and used a hot glue gun to create the wreath. We also used hot glue to fix it to the wall.

Here I am putting together the display which I just had a general idea of in my head, no real plan. So I just started putting stuff on the wall with no plan. And it didn't turn out so hot. 

Here you can see the original display for the Paper Cuts Album. I moved on and kept putting together other parts of the booth even though I wasn't happy with my wall display. It wasn't bad, it just didn't do the product justice. So I took it all down and went with another tactic. I decided to do it based on color and you will get to see the final product in the next post. And I am so glad that I changed it. With the original design, no one stopped to look at the laser cut designs. Once I changed the display, barely anyone walked by without at least slowing down to look. And this was just the other exhibitors, but it would carry over to the actual buyers as well.