Above is the completed booth. It wasn’t all on the floor like I expected so that was good. I had a great first day and got to meet a lot of familiar bloggers like:

Carol Eldridge
Tara Reed
Cindy Ann Ganaden
Liz Goulet Dubois
Laura Fry
Mary Beth Cryan

Plus several others that I can’t think of right now (sorry guys – my brains pretty much mush right now), but hopefully I will later.

I made a few good contacts and one really great one about 15 minutes before the show closed. I’ve heard that tomorrow (Monday) will have the most people and Tuesday’s crowd will start to dwindle as the day goes, but it could only take one good contact to make the show successful and so far I have several!

I’ll try and blog again tomorrow night!

I’m here! After months and months of working on things for Surtex, it’s finally here and I’m ready for it! Today was the set-up day and it was pretty rough. There was no air conditioning on, my booth was by the huge open dock doors and with all the humidity and heat, my tape wasn’t sticking to the walls and my things kept peel and pop off. So, we went and bought scotch tape and that was working but only a little, so I’m heading back bright and early in the morning to see all my work on the floor and tacking everything up with command poster strips (I boughts all they had at the CVS by our hotel). Hopefully with the air on tomorrow everything will stay stuck. I’ll try and post an image of the complete booth set up tomorrow.

I finally got to “meet” my fellow Illustration For Kids member Jannie Ho. We didn’t get to talk long but am sure we’ll make up for it in the next few days. My booth is next to Monica Lee, Barbara Johansen Newman, Caleb Gray (the only exhibiting artist, I think, who is from my neck of the woods), and Nancy Woolf (who’s work is super cute!).

After set-up we walked back to the hotel (our hotel is in a perfect location!) and then headed out to eat at the Bread Factory and then to Time Square. Since I’ve never been to New York, the crowds and sights were pretty insane. I’m already tired of all the honking

Here’s my tree display from yesterday’s ornaments. All my painting & gluing is done so tonight I get a manicure and I’ll be set!

Quick iphone picture of what I’m working on right now. A couple of ornament mock-ups from my designs.

Starting to pack up all my supplies for Surtex and trying to think of what I might need if I ran into issues with anything. We leave bright & early Thursday!

Organized Chaos. Still a lot to go!!

Just a sneak peek at what I’ll have at Surtex. I love this circus pattern and the little plush lion as a mock-up of what could be done with a character. My licensing manager made the lion and I love how it turned out!!

I’m going to try and post everyday until Surtex and plan on blogging and tweeting from there too! All my tweets will show up on facebook too in case you’re not on twitter.

I leave for Surtex next Thursday and I’m getting everything together and hope to be done with it all at the end of this week. Above is my little promo giveaway. It has my bio card, samples cards, business cards and some will contain access to my private gallery. Today I’ll be gluing everything on study boards and tomorrow will consist of cutting and mounting. I still have a lot to do, but the stress of it ll is gone. It feels great!

Surtex is officially one month away and I still have a ways to go, but I;m feeling really good about my progress so far. I figured out my booth layout and what all I will show (the biggest stressor for me). I used my skills from my environmental design class in college to work up a to scale elevation of the booth:

The green areas are what I already have printed out, the pink areas are what I still need to print out, the blue areas are signage and the orange areas are things I need to mock-up (I’m still working on my last panel though). I spent Tuesday and Thursday this week printing. I am using someone’s large format printer by paying them per square foot. I like this better than sending it out somewhere and hoping it looks good when it’s all done. This way I can check progress as I go. Luckily I haven’t had any issues. I’ve cut everything out and will later mount it all on boards:

This week I also worked on some postcards for Surtex. I decided not to use the USPS postcards like i normally do because I’ll be writing small notes on some of the mailers and I couldn’t do that with the others. One is a mailer I plan to get out next week (we went through names yesterday and have about 220 people to send to), a bio postcard to hand out as giveaways and I had extras printed to include in any samples we mail, and thank you postcards (for Surtex and later). For the design I went with a design I originally went with
last year:

I still have to print my other giveaway goodies, so hopefully I’ll get to all that next week. Other things on the to-do list:

• Get everything printed and assembled for my press kit (everything is written, just need to print it all out)
• Mock up several physical products to show
• Mock up products to put in design book – I think I’ll get my designer to work on those next week
• Start packing my suitcase of of things I’ll need for the booth (scissors, stapler, tape, etc.) – just filling it up as I go so I won’t have to get it all together at once
• Chart out our road trip via Garmin
• Download audiobooks for the trip
• Shop for clothes and comfortable shoes

Now I’m off to spend the day preparing for the Woog’s 5th birthday party tomorrow!!

I’ve been able to flush out my booth design in the last few days and I’m feeling pretty good about how I’ll have it organized. I do have to keep telling myself that it’s not a one-shot deal for me, they have Surtex every year and it’s not my last trip to New York, so don’t try and cram everything in while I’m there. So the first thing I wrote in my sketchbook when planning my booth was:

I need to ingrain this into my brain. I don’t have to show everything I have on the wall. I’ll have a book with all my designs in it, and I only need to show my best and most relevant work on the walls. I also realized that I may need to take things down after each show and keep them in the secure area of Surtex or take them back to my hotel room. Yesterday the need for that came to the forefront of my mind again when I read Ellen’s post on someone stealing her design book. I need to really plan out how many 3-D/removable objects I’ll have since I’m going to have to lug them in and out everyday! So keeping this in mind I started sketching and making notes:

Like I’ve said before I’ll have a corner booth and as of last week the local has been changed. I’m now at booth #349:

Seeing how my booth configuration is opposite than what I originally had, I sketched out the booth layout:

There are eight “categories” I want to show things in and this will work perfect the way the walls are physically set up.

I am also working out how to use the space on the vertical corner post I have. I want at least one dimensional element on each panel just some my booth is more dynamic and not too flat. I’m working on some easy shelving issues that will hopefully work.

Now onto tourism. This will be my first visit to New York and I would like to see a few things while I’m there but need to keep in mind that I will be back and I don’t have to see everything in a day. One thing I need to decide is do I go to the Met or MOMA? At the moment I’m torn. I could do both, but that cuts into other site seeing time. Any suggestions? Any must sees while I’m there?