Wow! What a Show.

I've been teasing you for long enough with little snippets of a Stampbord Collage I've been working on. Well here's the finished article.

I made the Stampbord mirror to display on the stand at 'Stitches' to demonstrate the versatility of Stampbord and all the different products that can be used in conjunction with it.

It has been a whirlwind of a fortnight........

We have been away at Craft Hobby and Stitch International or 'Stitches' as it is better known. Stitches is a trade only show held at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham and is the UK equivalent of the American trade show CHA. The show takes place over three days and opened on Sunday 17th and ran until Tuesday 19th of February.

But let me take things back to the week before and all the preparation that went into getting ready to go. Anyone who reads Glenda's blog will know that Glenda and Adrian had both been very poorly in the run up to the show and thank goodness, were both ok (but only just) and back at work last week. We had a contingency plan just in case but didn't need it in the end.

It was all hands to the pump so to speak and some of the Elusive Images design team members who live close enough came in to help prep all the art work and displays. A big thank you to Kathleen, Lesley, Annette and Barbara who all rose to the occasion and did a fantastic job wielding paint brushes, stamping, painting canvases, spraying Glimmer Mists and carefully wrapping and packing away all the wonderful pieces. Another big thank you goes out to the rest of the design team: Helen, Sue, Rose, Eunice, Elaine and Sandra who made such fantastic pieces to be displayed at the show. We are incredibly fortunate in having the most 'awesome' bunch of artists who make up our design team.

Everyone worked really hard to put the show together. Val, Sheila, Bill and Vickie in production did an amazing job with the stamps and other products and getting all the stock packed and ready to go. Carrie Anne, our very talented graphic designer was totally awesome and beavered away (we hardly heard a peep out of her all week she was so busy), and Denise our accountant did just about everything else. From doing accountancy things to picking and packing Graphicus orders and getting them out the door to keep the other side of the business running smoothly.

Then there was the show team who went to Birmingham: Glenda, Adrian, Emma from Sales, Judith our Office Manager and me.

Everyone played their part and what a success it resulted in.

During the early stages of planning the show, we had decided to go with a strong 'Peacock' theme for the stand to complement a brand new range of stamps that would launch in two phases. The Peacock Glory themeplate launched on Glenda's new Create and Craft TV show - Stampbord Sensations and the second themeplate Peacock Lady was released at the trade show together with some other fabulous new stamps (look out for them on the website soon).

Anyway, to cut a long story short....... I had this vision for a piece of artwork to decorate the stand which would encompass the peacock stamps and show off a selection of Artylicious papers printed from the CD ROM collection. It was a very strong vision in my head, I just wasn't too sure how I was going to transform the idea into a 3D piece of art work.

This is how my idea started out. I struggled with the roll of chicken wire at home until my DH stepped in to save me from its very sharp and unforgiving edges. He formed it into a tube (using our dogs rugby ball to wrap it around) and then he handed it over for me to transform which I did wearing some very thick oven gloves to protect my hands while I pushed, squeezed, stretched and moulded the wire into shape. The next day at work (Thursday) I started to assemble all of the elements.

Artylicious papers were printed double-sided, cut into different sized squares and formed into cones.I inserted Peacock feathers into some of the larger cones - the hot glue gun got a lot of use I can tell you!
Kathleen was hard at work, first spraying sheets of tissue paper with a variety of colours from our huge selection of Glimmer Mists.
I covered the frame of the peacock with papier mache and when it was dry, painted it with a base of white emulsion. I forgot to bring some Gesso with me!
Here are some of the cones being glued into place to form the tail feathers. Below, Kathleen has stamped peacock feathers onto the tissue paper and is hand tearing the individual feathers for me to glue onto the peacocks body.

Well, I'm afraid I'm going to do it again and keep you in suspense for just a little longer. It's getting very late and I have an early start in the morning. I will be back tomorrow with photo's of the finished peacock - his name is Percival by the way.

I will tell you more about the trade show and have pictures of our stand and more of the artwork.