Wednesday, September 21, 2011

My first Party Decoration and how I got started...the good and bad of it.

Here's the VERY FIRST
party decoration I ever did.

It was over 20 years ago.

I find it funny and a quirky coincidence (?) that
it was something to do with guitars since
we now have a complete website devoted to 
guitar centerpieces.

We've done many other themes thru the years.
So why was the first thing I ever did a guitar thing?
Hard to figure.

I didn't make the decision to make this boy with 
a guitar. Someone asked me to.

How it came about was that I was sitting at
the bar of our favorite restaurant with my husband.
We were eating a late afternoon Saturday lunch and 
enjoying the surrounding
company and having a drink or two.

A party planner was doing a party in the downstairs 
banquet room which was an extremely 
popular party venue at the time. 
She kept coming upstairs about every 1/2 hour (or less) and 
ordered a drink and was chatty and friendly. 
We struck up a conversation. 

She asked what I did and I told her one of the things 
I had recently done was paint the doors of 
this restaurants ladies and mens room with a caricature 
of a woman and a man...sorta
vintage 1920's style people. 
A 40-ish man with a moustache and a big busted elderly 
sophisticated woman with a hat.
(It was that kind of restaurant....kinda colorful and funky and fun. 
Darn...I wish I could find a picture of those doors now.)

She asked me if I could do a figure of a boy playing a guitar if she
gave me a photo of his face.  I  figured I could try.

I have to say I worked really hard on it for hardly any money.

But it worked out well and she asked me to do more stuff.

I did and I did and I did some more. Wow... she kept me busy.

Actually she kept me very busy until things fell apart for her because
she had a drinking problem...and some other issues too like a chronic
"runny nose" and a need to wear sunglasses indoors. I was slow to catch on to
the "issues" and the fact that her 2 employees were doing their best to keep
the business going until even they gave up. They branched out on their own
and she went to rehab and then into another line of business.
Isn't life so messy sometimes?

By then, my name was getting known around town as 
someone to call for themed bar/bat mitzvah and sweet 16 party 
decorations and I started working with lots of people. 
And here I am today. 
Still working with lots of people.