Of Altered Art Trophies and Expo Show Adventures

Early last year, our fellow dealer, customer and collage-artist extraordinaire Candy Martens noticed something we'd made and suggested we consider submitting it to the Somerset magazine group for publication. In case you're not familiar with them, the Somerset magazines are all about the creative life, with titles covering a range of topics, from mixed media to collage, blogging to jewelry making, altered couture and more. Somerset Studio is Barnes and Noble's top-ranking paper-arts magazine. Candy is a frequent contributor and was nice enough to bring it up again on a couple of other occasions. Finally, we decided to take her up on it. But what to send? Then in May, we finished a new project that we had hoped to have for Mother's Day, but didn't finish in time -- altered art trophies -- and Candy thought we had a winner. So we carefully packed our three hopefuls and sent them off to California along with an outline. And then we waited. Which Candy said would happen. So we tried to be patient...



...which I'm not very good at. But, one night in September, I was curled up in my favorite living room chair, blogging away on my mini Dell, when an e-mail popped up. And from Jenny Doh, no less. You might have thought I'd just heard from Santa, I was so excited. Jenny is the Head Fred -- editor-in-chief and director of publishing -- and she was saying they were interested. WOW. It was one of those slow-motion moments.




They were kind enough to ask for a full article, due in two weeks. When the proofs arrived, I was stunned. The photos were so beautiful! And there was the text, all laid out. Just like a fairy tale -- our. project. was. in. a. major. magazine. Wow.



The January/February issue arrived in my mailbox just before Christmas, so we thought the Expo show on New Year's weekend would be a good time to introduce the new trophies we'd made to go along with it. It turned out to be a great juxtaposition -- there was a huge crowd of people waiting to get into the show, and the excitement building from that magnified our excitement over the trophy article. When they opened the doors at 11, the trophies were gone in 8 minutes. People had so many nice things to say about the article; some had even brought copies to be signed. It was an amazingly happy moment for us; many, many thanks to everyone for being so nice. And for all the wonderful e-mails and blog comments.

The show was a tremendous success -- sold out -- packed with customers -- full of positive energy. What a fine way to start 2010! Our thanks go out as well to the Zurkos for all their hard work to make that happen; they are wonderful promoters -- always great to work with. Dealers, if you're thinking about trying the show in February, we would totally recommend it. There is currently a waiting list, but call today to put your name on it! Work starts tomorrow on Grayslake and Valentine's Day. More soon on that. xo