The Making of a Trade Show Stand - for Home Show 2014 in London

So we have returned from our first trade show of 2014, HOME London, and have been busy sorting out all our orders and new contacts from the show. The response to the new products has been beautiful and once again I got lots of compliments for my stand design. Since I always put a lot of thought into my stand, I feel like sharing a bit more about the process of making it ...

 

 

To begin with, we took polystyrene letters from polycraftsupplies and decorated them with newspaper and the best neon acrylic around, Daler Rowney number 544, so they would stand out from the back wall that we covered with black board paint. It's a wonderful mat black that makes every colour stand out against it. Below you can see the letters lined up, as we prepared to stick them onto the wall.

I have used the concept of vibrant colours on mat black background also in one of the designs of my Pop Art goes Design collection. It's called 'Pop Art Dots' and the original art work, which you can see below, is made up from hole punched magazine clippings. Thinking about the positioning of the products on the wall, I realised that I liked the randomness in the 'Pop Art Dots' a lot. So I decided to allow my gut feeling to guide me in distributing the products across my stand. But it wasn't supposed to look careless, so I wanted to hang everything with beautiful hooks, nails, zip ties and ribbons.

Below you can see what I found as I raided all my boxes ... and my friend Andrew Stafford who helped me with my stand planning and building gave me some crown silver light bulbs for the lampshades that added an extra special touch (you can see them in the picture of the whole stand at the bottom of this post)

Below, some of the products attached to the back wall. The cushion on the stool in front of the wall is a new addition to the range of Cameras designs of the 'Pop Art goes Design' collection. It's a digitally printed, 40x40cm linen cushion called Camera Play, and it's now available on our website. The design references Joe Tilson's photo collages of the 60s. If you're interested you can read more about my inspiration for 'Pop Art goes Design' in an earlier post I did on my blog. 

 

Below a close up - yes, I am rather pleased with how it turned out :-)

But to move on: I wanted to use a collection of chairs to offset all the different cushions and ranges, and to give the buyer a feel of how these products might sit in their stores, and indeed their customers' homes. The Thonet bentwood armchairs fabulously showed off my Bike wheel cushions ;-)
And who needs a carpet when you have gorgeous concrete to begin with?

  

 

Especially since the concrete made such an effective backdrop for my first 'Bicycle' rug, which you can now order from our website.

The chair to the left, above, is one of the pieces that Galapagos Designs have upholstered for us as part of our collaboration with them to illustrate to the buyer how my designs can be used on fabric for upholstery. And below I show you another one, of a different model, but with same fabric and neon accents. It's called 'Pop Art Circles Armchair'.

'Pop Art Circles' overall had a fantastic launch: I was very happy that KentLyons (the designers of the 3 shows Home, Top Drawer and Craft) asked to use my Pop Art Circles wallpaper to decorate the pillars at the entrance to the shows.

Here it is in close up: 

And we also make Pop Art Circles cushions, with extra special neon piping. They are available in 3 different shapes square, oblong and round.

Here with another Thonet chair accentuating all the circles..

And here is the full stand at the opening of the show - thanks for reading and I would love to have your comment if you can take the time - 

 

Love,

Ella x 

My Bicycle rugs in the making

I have just received these pictures from Paul Vowles of WovenGround. He has been at the factory in India where my first Bicycle rugs (from my Bikes of Hackney collection) are being made - in time for us to launch them to our trade buyers next week, at HOME London, Earls Court, 12-14th January.

The above image is from the back of the cloth as the bicycle begins to take shape.
 
These pictures give you an idea of how they stretch the cloth over a frame, with the design printed on as a guide for the craftsmen. They then hand tuft the different colours of wool into the cloth, following the background template of colours. It's like painting in numbers, which I always loved doing as a child! 

This is what it looks like once they have finished tufting, but before the surface is trimmed off so that it is all even, and soft to touch. 

Voila! Now it can be removed from the frame and be backed and finished!

I have not yet visited the artisans myself, but I hope to do it this year, so I can learn and share even more about what is involved in making these beautiful products. Once HOME London has ended I'll post more pictures of the finished rugs. 

In the meantime, have a wonderful first week of January and remember to set your goals high and enjoy the ride wherever it takes you this year.

Love,
Ella