Our Mrs. Paint has done it again. Remember when we gave her the medium reel from our small, medium, and large trio of reels? After that happened, we sent the large one to her house. Sadly, the small reel is still at my house. But not for long...
0 Comments
I am endlessly envious of our dear Mrs. Paint's creativity. We got a stack of used electrical reels because I had seen a cool picture using one in a magazine once upon a time, and in no time, we found ourselves the happy owners of an ottoman to sell. Here's how it went. Stack of electrical reels at my house: The same stack of electrical reels at Mrs. Paint's house: I feel this way about everything at her house v. everything at my house. Our designer is a lady with talent, and I'm proud to know her!
Anyway, shortly after all this magic happened, the amazing ottoman found its way to our space at The Queen of Hearts in Alpharetta...and was promptly purchased (thank you shopper)!!! I need to send more of my junk over to Mrs. Paint's house, don't I? The Queen of Hearts offers a half-day training course to all dealer merchants, and although I was interested from day 1, it took 2 months of being a dealer merchant for the course to be offered on a day that I was in town and available. So I went. Yesterday!
I found my way to the Buford location and their training room just as the very charismatic Peggy Jones was getting started, and then spent the next 4 hours in sponge mode. I was delighted to find out that The Painted Hammer has developed a strong Facebook reputation with the Queen's PR staff, and we got several mentions when the course talked about good Facebook practices. We went through a tagging exercise so that we could understand how important our tags are, how important it is to follow their tag guidelines, and what happens when we don't. To the best of my knowledge, we follow the rules, but it was good to learn why the rules are there. I really enjoyed hearing Peggy's ideas on what a good booth is like, how invested the Queen is in our shared success, what our rent and fees go to, and how to promote our wares. I'm most impressed with how the course was able to cover such a broad range of topics for such a broad range of dealer merchants with such a varied set of skills. I guarantee you all 20 of us left with a list of things to do immediately in our space, things to look into, and things to try once we've been around for a little longer...I know I did! Here are a few things on my list:
I'm glad the Queen offers this course, I'm glad I went, and I look forward to Construction of client M's custom modular shelving walls has officially begun! The design that Shane created with M (see that part of our story here) is steadily taking shape, although a lot more sawing & hammering & hammering & sawing has to take place before paint can even be considered. As you can see in the low resolution snapshot below, one of the 21' walls is nearing completion. Once it is done, the open side can begin. As this project progresses, I get more and more excited about the amazingness that will be the end result. I will keep you updated here, I promise.
When our modular box shelves first debuted in our booth at The Queen, I made a big deal about them because I thought they were pretty amazing. I promoted them in every way I could think of: I posted them on our Facebook page, I blogged about them, and I shared them on Instagram. And someone responded! We have a client for a custom set of modular shelves! Let's call her M (for now...we'll debut her name when we debut the finished project). Sweet M has a loft space in her home that her children spend a lot of time playing in. It is about 21 1/2' wide and about 12' deep and overlooks another play/living area. M wants to put custom modular shelving against the back wall and to create a faux wall for the overlook. I sent Shane over straightaway to check out the situation. He met with M, they talked over things, and this plan was imagined: Now that a design is agreed upon, everything now hinges on the weather, believe it or not. This project is so massive that we need a good weather weekend when both M and Shane are free because the materials need to be cut and assembled on site.
That's all we have to share for now, but we can't wait for part 2! Our amazing designer has taken advantage of being cooped up during Snowmageddon 2014, and has started work on at least one project I know she has had planned for some time. Chalkboard painting! So far, Audrey has done her magic with wine bottles & silver trays. She's breathing new life into things that were either tucked far away in storage or destined for recycling. These bottles & trays now have the potential to become a part of someone's kitchen or living room decor, or maybe part of a tablescape for an upcoming party. I can think of at least 5 different ways to use these upcycled items, and I bet Audrey can think of 20 more. Here are some pictures of the work she's done so far. Enjoy! Check out one of our newest offerings, the L-O-V-E shelf. Constructed by Shane & finished by Audrey, it is an awesome piece. I think that it would go great in a nursery, kid's room, play room, or bedroom, especially since it ended up this lovely pastel blue. The internet and places like Pinterest are laden with lots of great ideas, and we often leverage those ideas as inspiration for our own work, both in our homes and for The Painted Hammer. I had saved this awesome L-O-V-E shelf tutorial by Keeley Criswell at DIY: Crafting It Myself for some time, and I couldn't be more pleased with our take on her project. Not too long ago, Shane disappeared for a while and then called for me to come look at his work. Lo and behold, he had cut and arranged wood according to the blog's instructions (with some enhancements), and he was showing me his progress on the shelf. It looked great. Once he was done with his part, we delivered the shelves to Audrey in two pieces. She did her magic with finishing, and the shelf is now available at our retail booth. Here are some photos of the shelf as it was being constructed and assembled. Aren't my husband and his sister a talented pair? Having our space at the Queen has been quite a ride, and I say this after only ~23 days of the experience. I have learned more in these last 3 weeks than I ever expected to. On Wednesday, I spent several hours at the store. I dropped some things off at Audrey's from Shane, then I took some things from Audrey to the booth. I spent a lot of time wandering around the store, looking at the other booths with a comparative eye, rather than the eye of a shopper (which was what I was used to doing). I realized quickly that having a space that is attractive is the first step, and the second step is to have a space that has room for you to shop once you enter it. Afterwards, I used my observations and spent some time rearranging our space so that it was more shoppable (to me), and then I took some more pictures. That was awesome, eye-opening, and rewarding, and I like our space more than ever. On Thursday I had a break through with the advertising/marketing avenues available to vendors from the Queen. They do all kinds of promotion on Facebook, and I finally figured out how to be included. At the same time, I may get The Painted Hammer invited to participate in some things that only active bloggers, Facebookers, Instagrammers, and Pinners get to do. More rewards there, and I like the store that our booth is in even more than before. Those two things, however, were things that I knew I was after and wanted to make happen. I knew they would work out eventually and that I just had to figure out the pieces to the puzzle. Saturday led to a new & unexpected discovery that I'm still delighted with. I knew that the Queen would post to Craig's List on behalf of vendors...it makes sense because the more we sell, the more money they make, and I assume part of our rent goes to promotion of not just to store, but to promotion of items in the store. What I didn't know is that there are two ways to get them to do a listing. The first way is to ask, and there are forms for that. The second way is to get something in your booth that they like, promote it through their channels, and once they know about it, they'll list it on Craig's List. Just like that. I'm enjoying the partnership & services that the Queen provides to their vendors. I'm excited about what we'll be able to do together, and I love that they have our back. I'm off to learn more! I got a great deal on a lot of mini loaf pans, and couldn't wait to try something I had learned from Pinterest (it took many failed experiments to get it right, and once I got it to work, it took a couple of tries to get the right colors & patterns). I wanted to decorate them! So I found some old scrapbooking letter stickers, and applied them to the pan. My first phrase was inspired by Alice in Wonderland. Then I dotted around the stickers... After I removed the stickers, I baked the loaf pans. And ended up with this delightful thing! Since it worked, I kept going and made two sets of three pans. I love them and think they would be great for either entertaining or gifting! I'm going to see how these sell. If they do sell, I can make more. If they don't sell, I'll use them for my own personal gifting! I love things like this that are fun to try out AND make me happy no matter the end result! Wikipedia tells us that a paint wash is a painting technique in which a paint brush that is very wet with solvent and holds a small load of paint or ink is applied to a wet or dry support. Essentially, you thin the paint before applying it. You can even apply more than one color to get a cooler look and feel. As usual, I didn't know what this was until Audrey advised Shane that she was going to put a wash on some things he built. I immediately looked it up, but then I started looking forward to seeing what Audrey's wash would look like. So now here's what a paint wash looks like to me: It's nice, isn't it?!
|