Friday, January 20, 2012

HRM Steampunk Symposium - Part III - Setup

PANTS!!!!!

That ended up being the random phrase of the weekend, that and a very dramatic "Dun Dun Dunnnnnnnnn!!!" due to the alert that Cindy set on her phone to remind me to check the oil in my truck before we left to head back to San Diego. We never did remember to check the oil, d'oh!

Why "Pants"? Well after our harrowing adventure loading in we took a breather by leaning on a stack of plastic tubs full of merchandise to catch our breath (too much cardio also known as being way out of shape) when I looked up and blurted out "Pants!" Of course this makes Cindy look at me like I grew a second head and maybe tentacles or something. "Pants" I said as I pointed at the floor to the stacks of pants that the crew from Last Wear had laying out and then we both proceeded go into a fit of giggling. I'm sure all our neighbors though us slightly nuts, well at least those who weren't dead from hauling mass amounts of grid wall up 4 flights of stairs.

I usually have a pretty good plan for getting the booth put together and all my merchandise out, but Friday morning, my brain had decided to leak out my ears and curl up in a corner to sleep for a while longer, due to the cardio we forced it into and the lack of coffee. I stood there trying to process what the heck we were going to do and where to start.

We started by getting the grid wall all set up and then went in search of the vendor coordinator to find out where our tables where. Seems the staff for the Queen Mary was a bit behind in delivering the tables that morning, maybe they were suffering from the same brain issues I was. We got permission to pirate a couple of the solo tables and well, we didn't have to be told twice. Two tables later, we had dug out the PVC pipe and fitting that was going to add 2 feet of height to the grid wall. I had decided two days before that I didn't want to bring my 2 - 8 foot panels with me because they're unwieldy and of course after load in, I was *doubly* glad I didn't bring them. So to give me some height to hang the banner from and the torso forms, or Mr & Ms. Nudie Pants and they were so named by Cindy from.

Now the PVC pipe idea was an idea I came up with as I was driving home from work the week of the event. I then sketched out what I wanted for my husband and he went to town cutting the pipe and spray painting it black. Come assembly time, it was an another adventure, actually it was like playing with life size tinker toys. A few tweaks and zip ties later, we had it all set up and functional. The measurements were a bit off, but it wasn't bad for being an untested idea in my head. Though we did learn that Krylon Spray paint for plastic is great if you're using something stationary not something that is going to be tossed in a bag and then hauled up in a truck.

From there we got everything laid out, checked into our hotel room, changed into our outfits and waited for customers.
Our booth set up

Part IV

No comments:

Post a Comment