Back From CHA

We're home from a very full week at CHA.  It is a wonder to me the amount of work it takes to get everything ready to set up the booth and then two days of set up only to have it come down in a few hours.  We thought you might like to see a few "before" shots of setting up the booth along with the after shots.

BEFORE:

Our good friends Jorge and Hector from the factory bring 4 very large crates that contain all the basic items to make the booth.  You can see the first couple of walls going up.  

 Jorge has the walls and pillars all organized so he knows exactly which parts go together.  Notice some walls have product that has been wrapped in plastic that we put up when we did the pre-set at the factory a couple of weeks ago. 

A lot of thought and care has been taken to build this booth.  The different wall papers, columns, ledges lighting and many other details.  With that said, you would think that someone could have come up with something better than this to label the crates.

 Walls are up, lights on, umbrella/sign in place....but check out the mess!

Notice the large black suitcases, that is what Paula and I fill and lug to the shows.  They carry all the items for the ledges, signage and a hundred other details.  We are VERY good at packing them to the limit of 50lbs.

 More mess....we can make a mess faster than most!

AFTER:

Just a few highlights of the booth. 

Disclaimer - The lighting at the show is horrible to take pictures.  

The overhead lighting or lack of it along with the booth lights make is tough.  

It is so much better in real life.....really!!

Ticket holder display

We sewed multiple strands of the new tickets together (along with some generic tickets for filler) to make this display.  Everyone thought that the sewing would have been the hard part.  Actually the hard part was that the tickets were prototype which meant I had to cut them all apart and punch the little half circle on both ends of each ticket before I could sew them together.

ticket holder - by Paula

Petit Carnet and Stationery Section

If you aren't familiar with 7gypsies Petit Carnet (little books) and Stationery, you are missing out.  They are fabulous and I think sometimes overlooked.  Check them out here.

Notice the cute awning.  When we first made the booth, we asked Jorge if he could make the frame work that attaches to the top of the wall.  Paula made the cute fabric ticking awning that we tie to the frame.

Collage tissue

The first time we were able to get our hands on the new tissue was Friday night before the show.  Paula and I stayed up late in our hotel room making these flowers to put on the wall and additional smaller flower for all the girls in the booth to wear.  We also decoupaged book board with the tissue....it is fabulous, goes on like a dream and looks like the images were printed directly to the board...you're gonna love it!

Camden Collection Wall

Most of this display came from Paula's house.  The vintage sewing cabinet she got for Christmas from Mr. Jay (our infamous guest blogger) who knows how to pick up on a good hint (I think the hint went like this....Paula, "Hey Jay, someone you know might like that for Christmas").  Bonus for us, cause then we can use it in the booth!  The laundry bench is her coffee table, luggage from luggage stack.  Also note the wire cage lights, we each had one and thought they would look cute hanging together.

Notice Paula in photo below....I think she is singing!...or most likely just doing a lot of talking...you do a lot of that at the shows!

Lille Collection Wall

This is my favorite of the two new collections....so much detail.  It is really hard to see what we have done here, but we attached 2 Library Drawers, an Artist Printers Tray, a Letterblock Tray, a 4x6 Photo Tray and a Letterpress tray together for this display.  This photo does not do it justice.  The details and all the little things in each section are so good!  We will do another post later telling you more about it and how you can recreate your own....so be watching.

Notice the frames on the column, they are random frames filled with the 7gypsies ATC Kit Cards.

Up close....sorry, bad picture, but you get the idea!

Other overall pictures of booth 

So glad to be home, now onto the next thing!