Back from Atlanta July 2013 show

We got back from the Atlanta show this week. Despite all the time I spent making phone calls, I didn’t have much success this time in setting up appointments before the show. At first I was disappointed but it was a good lesson to always look for the up side of things.  I didn’t feel like being gloomy and decided that this would be a different kind of show. The trick is to decide how long you want to spend feeling bad and then stop and switch to a better frame of mind.

This time, I made up our show schedule differently. I did it by floor and marked down the companies on each floor that we wanted to see. Instead of running from floor 18 to floor 6 and then back to 14 we started at 18 and worked our way down, doing a few floors each day.

We were there for three days and met with 12  companies. Five were new companies for us. This was one of our goals.

I hardly took any photos this time. Usually I am clicking that shutter all day long. This time I just wanted to focus on our meetings and on looking as carefully as I could at each showroom.

I did show off my new heron painting and got very good response.

Great Blue Heron watercolor

We saw herons all over the place which may mean a new trend. We are putting mine into a design at the request of one of our clients who manufactures area rugs. I have been working on a comfortable watercolor style for painting birds and I think I have it now. There are all sorts of birds I want to paint now including  a peacock and flamingo. What fun!

Owls were still all over the place. We saw a lot of designs in black and white. Birds and nature themes still popular. Chevrons.

Sometimes, something old is something new.

Four Clipper Ships

 This is one of a set of four that Dennis did. They got a lot of interest at the show and would look good on many different products.

We did some networking and had dinner with friends and spent some time with our friend, artist Lucinda Wei.

And we did what we always do: track trends; look carefully at products; see what styles were popular and who the artists were. And this time I got that foot massage that I have been promising myself.

Here’s a recap of the things you will need to do when you get back from a show:

         •Send thank yous to all the manufacturers we met with

• Send out the designs that were requested as jpegs

• Create the new designs that were requested at the show

•Make notes on which companies were looking for what and when

     so that we can keep particular companies in mind when we are doing new designs.

            •Enter new companies and networking in our data base

GIVE YOURSELF THAT PAT ON THE BACK.

Up up and away

Unpacking was a bit difficult. The cats were all glad to have us back at home.

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Maggie