Ballard Seafood Festival 2019
Seafood Festival
Ballard July 13th and 14th 2019
10x10 booth space shared with Lauren of All Dog Kind
After Sam and Lauren decided to share a tent at the Seafood festival they had weekly meetings where they schemed and planned their tent display, work load and festival goals. There were many phone calls, cups of coffee and plenty sleepless nights. The tent designing was a pretty long process filled with ideas, designs and then elimination. Some of their first iterations didn’t even work out but they were very pleased with the final result.
This was going to be the biggest show that either artist had ever participated in and they wanted to stand out, have fun and meet people. Here’s what they did:
After their first meeting Lauren drew up the tent display in Numbers to give her and Sam a better idea of the layout. This was enormously helpful for spacing and visualization.
At the same time they created a secret Pinterest board of ideas for booth and tent displays which they added several ideas to.
Sam had been sourcing old tiles for a photo shoot and decided they would be the perfect color scheme for her table in their shared booth.
Lauren already had a very defined set of colors for her branding and they worked well with the colors Sam had chosen. While their brands are very different they wanted the tent to feel cohesive.
To get an even better idea of layout Lauren set the tent up with her display in her backyard while face-timing with Sam. Lauren also got two really cute rattan chairs for the back of the tent and she and her husband built some really cute wooden displays for her bandannas, hats and stickers.
Sam in the meantime on the other end of the phone had set up her display on a table in her lounge so they could trouble shoot and compare notes.
You can see here in this accidentally captured moment of contemplation how much thought was going into their tent design. Tassels or no tassels, that was the question!
In their very first meeting they committed to the idea of a backdrop - a way to draw people in to their tent and possibly even be used as a photo backdrop.
Since Sam is a plant lady she really wanted to create a plant wall. She started to research, found some DIY’s online and got to work.
The first version of the plant wall had a neon sign that Sam built using wire and neon cord, but she wasn’t 100% happy with the result.
And was reminded that the neon wouldn’t really show up in the summer tent light.
So she abandoned the neon tube and decided to get pre cut wooden letters. Michael’s had a bunch of different options and so, sitting on the floor, Sam sent Lauren several options via text (using her hand for size) and they eventually settled on the 6 inch wood letters and some gold spray paint.
Sam took the letters, spray paint and some scrap cardboard to a local park where she spent the afternoon spraying the letters gold.
As a finishing touch Sam added a spot color using some silk flowers in two corners. While the plant wall was pretty heavy and challenging to hang they think it was worth it and are both really happy with how this turned out.
Sam and Lauren decided to do a test run at the Fremont Sunday Market the weekend before the Seafood Festival and they cannot recommend this enough.
It gave them the opportunity to test how long everything would take to set up, if the tent display area worked well for the flow of customers and if they liked what they had designed.
Turns out that there were only a couple minor changes they needed for the Seafood festival and they felt that overall their display worked and looked great.
They were both nervous and very exited. They had a cooler full of ice, soda water and snacks, they were ready with new business cards and hours and hours of hand made inventory.
The first day of Seafood fest brought great weather and a lot of people. Sam and Lauren set up early and with great ease, thanks to all the preparations and the excellent organisation of the Ballard Alliance.
Summer in Seattle had finally started bringing sunny skies with barely a cloud in the sky. Thousands of people came to the festival to enjoy seafood, beer, music and a variety of talented artists and vendors.
Sam and Lauren had a very successful festival, they learnt a great deal, met amazing people and laughed a lot. It showed them what they were capable of and pushed them to try new things and expand their boundaries. They are very excited to participate in more shows like this and can’t wait for next year.
