Wood Brain at the Unique Spring Show 2013

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Our first ever Unique LA show was a huge success. We had such an amazing weekend.

Our booth was a collaboration between, Dawn Sinacori of Seadrift Soul, Meredith Harbuck of Meriebabie handbags and myself Lindsay Zuelich of Wood Brain. The three of us shared a 10'x20' booth space and used all the footage to our advantage. We had many creative meetings between the three of us, gathering our concepts and designs for our booth space. Meredith did a mock up of what the three of us envisioned for our space for the Spring 2013 show in Sketch-Up. (pictured below)

Concept sketch for our booth 

Sketch-up model by Meredith Harbuck

The Unique LA Spring show is held every year on Mother's Day weekend in the California Mart's penthouse suite on the 13th floor. It was our first time participating in a Unique show. We wanted to be a fully prepared for anything we would run into during our set-up at the California Mart. 

We were one of the first to arrive on set-up day Friday May 10th the day before the show. We made many trips using the freight elevator and learned some tips from the veterans that had done these shows many of times. After everything was off loaded we went to work on constructing our booth. We detoured a little from our original design model but in the end we were happy with our booth layout. check out the pictures below for a little recap of set-up and the show.

Friday morning our booth bare, before set-up

Dawn Sinacori doing a little paint touch up after the wall installation 

Our Amazing helpers for the weekend displaying our signs

Booth Space 152 in the Eco-Friendly section

Booth 152

Seadrift Soul, Meriebabie and Wood Brain

(click on the photo above to check out a short vine video I did of our booth space)

(give the video a second to start after you click on it & it redirects you)

(click on the photo above to check out a short vine video I did of our booth space)

(give the video a second to start after you click on it & it redirects you)

(left to right)

Dawn Sinacori of Seadrift Soul, 

(myself) Lindsay Zuelich of Wood Brain,

Meredith Harbuck of Meriebabie handbags 

Now that all the fun is over for the Unique LA Spring show, its time for me to gear up for the Unique CAMP June 6-9. I'll be headed to a outdoors business conference for 4 days. I'll be sure to write a blog about all my adventure when I get back. In the mean time you can check out more about the Unique CAMP on this link.

Wood Brain will be at Unique LA Spring show and CAMP Unique

Unique LA is the largest independent design show in the country, attendees get the rare chance to meet and shop directly from over 350 hand-selected designers and artists. The exciting two-day shopping event makes it easy to buy local and shop handmade. The products at the show are proudly made right here in the USA. 

Applications opened for the Spring 2013 show on Febuary 18th and closed on March 31. I applied for a (10'x20') shared booth along with two other amazingly talented people, Meredith Harbuck from meriebabie handbags and Dawn Sinacori from seadrift soul. The three of us currently have a 10'x30' booth down at Crafted in San Pedro. We've been looking forward to applying for Unique for quite some time now and applied for the show the day applications came out. We eagerly awaited April 1st when they sent out notifications of acceptances. Exciting news came in the form of an email that day, notified us that we had been accepted into the Spring 2013 Unique LA Show...

Dawn Sinacori .  Lindsay Zuelich .  Meredith Harbuck

The 2013 UNIQUE LA Schedule
The Spring Show will arrive at California Market Center May 11+12

For more information about Unique LA click on this image above-

Cost: $10 at the door, or buy online to reserve your free tote bag Kids 12 and under are free. 

At each show 10% of all ticket sales go to a partnering non-profit, we’re proud to be working with the Downtown Women’s Center (DWC) for the Spring Show.

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 Admission includes:

• An exclusive UNIQUE LA tote bag, each one featuring a different artist’s work. Our last bag featured an illustration by Brian Rea who recently collaborated with Marni and illustrates the New York Times “Modern Love” column every week in the Sunday Styles section)! *for the first 5000 people through each day

• Unlimited re-entry for both days

• Our UNIQUE directory & mini-magazine!

• Free cocktails from our friends at Art in the Age, plus free drinks from IZZE, Honest Tea, GT’s Kombucha and more!

• Free DIY workshops + crafts from author Marisa Lynch all weekend long!

• Free photo booth portraits and a print at the Oh Snap Studios Photo Booth

• Our curated cafe featuring LA’s best restaurants and trucks, so you can enjoy lunch or dinner, snacks, coffee or a sweet treat

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OUR MISSION IS TO HELP ENTREPRENEURS SUCCEED

Our formula is simple; gather a network of like-minded doers, place them in the environment of a summer camp and provide a curated curriculum that allows them to rediscover the youthful idea that “anything is possible.”

I was very excited to hear about Uniques newest project CAMP Unique, a new style of business retreat, geared towards creative small businesses. I was also stoked to find out that CAMP will be held in Big Bear at the YMCA's Camp Whittle, the same place I was a camp councilor for many years. 

I'm looking forward to attending CAMP  in June.

June 6 – 9, 2013.  All Camper’s board a private bus that departs from Los Angeles the morning of Thursday June 6, and return to Los Angeles in the afternoon, Sunday June 9th. 

(Click picture above for link to CAMP schedule)

(Click on the pictures above for more information)

New custom bag from Meriebabie

Meriebabie  and Wood Brain

I met Meredith at Creative Heals a fundraiser hosted by Charleen Dere, Jenny Kita at KessPro Studios back in April of 2011. I fell in love with her Meriebabie bags and I wanted to invest in one for myself. We got to talking about other craft events like trunk shows and Art Walks and we agreed to meet up on a few upcoming events. We really worked well together and the next thing we knew we were business partners at CRAFTED at the Port. Check it out Meriebabie on KTLA channel 5 morning news were she was featured on KTLA news, they feature a few of the amazing vendors down at CRAFTED and meriebabie is honored to have been one of them. I was extremely happy when Meredith agreed to make me a custom Left of Center hand bag that was designed for me, Wood Brain. I love it! I love that even after making the custom hand bag that she went the extra mile and hand painted the wood grain on it just for me. It's truly one of kind. Check it out-

Custom Meriebabie Hand Bag for Wood Brain

Custom Meriebabie Hand Bag for Wood Brain

Custom Meriebabie Hand Bag for Wood Brain

What I've be up to since CRAFTED opened

After the final installation at crafted the booth finally took shape with paint on the walls, a cash wrap, with glass display case, and a wood cash register to top it off. Then filling the space with product really made the space take to life.

It was a huge step from where we started just a few weeks earlier...

Our booth even got a little feature in the San Pedro Today. Terry Harbuck, Meredith's mom, was running the shop durning the photos.

A few months after Crafted had opened there was a "make and take" event was planned with Etsy.  I choose to offer a wood post card make and take. The Etsy party's theme was "Wish you were here" and I figured that was a fitting product. I hand cut and lined out each postcard.

There was also some decorating involved for the party. We made paper chains and globes which we hung from the large open beamed ceilings of the old warehouse we call home.

Etsy holds 2 annual nation wide craft parties. Anyone can throw one and if your response back form the RSVP for the even is high enough Etsy will even donate crafts items to be used at the "make and take" event. The event was a huge success and our Esty Craft party at Crafted was the second largest turn out next to the Etsy headquarters in Brooklyn new york.



The booth across from us was vacant at the time so we asked to use for our make and take area for the evening. I really wanted to do something fun in the space so I built a table to work at decorated it with old post cards and maps and hung globes from the celiings. I also built a oversized wood postcard to be used as a photo booth in the space. I cut a hole for the face where the stamp was located.

We had a lot of fun people stop by our make and take booth to create one of a kind leather luggage tag identifiers and wood post cards & book marks. Here are a few of our fun make and takers.

After the Etsy party the staff at crafted ask to keep the large over sized post card so reinstalled it in a empty booth down the way from mine.

Later that month I had a lot of specials order requests like these drift wood planter with custom size card holder.

.. And these two wood be right back signs for Clay Magyk at Crafted.

..And these ten wood letter keychain to attach to jump drives for Maragrita mix studios. The attached jump drives will hold menus of local restaurants so that they're clients are be able to order from on they're own personal computer.

I even did an artist collaboration with Sire's crown eyewear.

I was always hard at work at Crafted in San Pedro.

Here are some custom wood cutouts for specialty fabric pieces for De La Luna designs at Crafted

I made a wood pie cut out & hand painted for Cutie Pie that! at Crafted

I also put a book together of the building process of our booth for Crafted to keep displayed at our shop.