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Arrived back from The New Designers exhibition in London and pretty tired!! Was a busy time there, but really worth it.
I arrived on monday and settled into my cheap hotel room until tuesday lunchtime when our work was getting driven down and being put up.
Wednesday was a long day. Had to be in from 9am as the judges were going around all the work and possibly needing to talk to the exhibitors. Then the awards were getting announced from 2pm onwards. So there was lots of waiting around until the show was open to the V.I.P guests and the press at 6.30pm (and the free drinks were finally given out!). This went on until 9pm and was a busy but fun time. It was really good getting feedback off people who hadn't seen your work before and just generally helping them with any work they wanted to look at (whether that was your own or not).
There were plenty of publishers, agents, card companies etc looking around, and felt good when they talked about your work and collected your promotional material.
Thursday was just as busy, and had some of the guests from wednesday night return for a second look - which could be a good sign i guess! We had some mad busy times when there needed to be 4 of us on the stand as the demand to look at our work was that big (could have done with 1 or 2 extra pairs of hands too!).
I also had some important publishers show an interest in my work - but won't say who in case it jinx's it, but need to send samples to one, another said they would be in contact (we will see), and I emailed the other last night, so fingers crossed.
The rest of the weekend ended up being more quiet than expected. There were steady parts where we would get people over but it seemed like the industry people had all arrived in the first 3 days, but I did see the comedian/author/presenter Danny Wallace walk through the doors as I was heading to lunch (gonna read his 'yes man' book on my holiday!), so that was cool.
Saturday was another quiet day on the stand but I was busy during the day as I attended the AOI talk that was given by Derek Brazell and recent graduate Kate Slater. This was another good talk (went to last years one too), so was able to take away plenty of good advice. Also had my cousin and her fiance visit which was nice to see them, and also my mate who lives in London came near the end of the day, so was good catching up with him afterwards over a couple of pints too.
I had to catch the train early on sunday morning, so missed how that day went, but apparently that was another quiet day so didn't miss too much.
Overall it was a really great being there, and checking out all the work from other universities was pretty interesting too (for many different reason that I won't go into here!).
My next step is to head to spain in the early hours of thursday to recharge my batteries for a week, then come back refreshed and ready to start some new projects and start getting my work and name out there - and just keep living the dream!!
Will be back in a weeks time, so until then - adios :-D
