Pencil Parade is back from New York and our first trade show, Blue Print! We all arrived in New York from our various and widespread homes on May 20. We spent the next few days meeting some great potential new clients, connecting with existing clients, sharing our work with all our visitors, selling artwork, and getting to know other wonderful artists, designers, and mentors.
The Pencil Parade art collective booth at Blue Print Show #2: May 21-23.
Although Pencil Parade has been working together as a collective for about two years this was actually the first time we met each other in "real" life! Facebook and Skype are great but it was refreshing to be with each other in person and go through this exciting new experience together. We all get along great and it worked really well to exhibit as a group this year. We were told again and again how our work complements each other and exhibiting together meant we were able to utilize each of our individual strengths.
We found Blue Print to be a great experience for us and we're all feeling confident it will lead to some exciting new ventures. We had visitors from fabric companies, apparel, gift wrap and stationery, greeting cards, wall art, and home decor. The atmosphere of Blue Print was really fun and relaxed and that helped everyone, from exhibitors to clients, to enjoy the show. Many thanks to Andrea and Paul from Cinnamon Joe Studio for creating this show and for all the work they do to make it a reality. We're looking forward to next year!
Being in New York while Blue Print, Surtex, and the National Stationery Show were all occurring simultaneously also gave us a great chance to meet up with a number of other artists and designers we interact with online. We're a very active and supportive community and it was incredible to see everyone converge on the same place from all over the world. In a way it felt like we were all preparing for the shows together. So while we were definitely busy with the show we managed to sneak in some fun time as well!
