press day review

as you may or may not already know (depending on whether you follow us on instagram or facebook!) about a month ago Ladybird Likes and Creighton's Chocolaterie (which is owned and run by my bestie Lucy) joined forces for a press day. we took over a basement for an evening to showcase our items to press and buyers from various different outlets.

truth be told I'd never even thought about doing a press day before until Lucy mentioned she was thinking of doing one, and by teaming up we reduced our costs for the event. we kept things fairly simple - we had some of our product shots blown up to decorate the walls, made up goody bags for our visitors, printed off some invites to send out, and got hold of some free wine to offer.

below are a few shots of what my section of the room looked like - apologies for the less that great photos, but being in a basement the lighting was not ideal! it was weird setting up for a press day, as it was quite different to setting up a craft fair stall. it's far more about showcasing your work than having lots of stuff out for people to buy. I covered some pinboards in a mint green polka dot fabric to pin items to, and arranged other pieces on my trusty cake stands and vintage saucers.

visitors got a first glimpse at some of the photos of the lovely Sara modelling some Ladybird Likes pieces - I'm actually going to blog some of these photos properly this week, so watch this space!

the goody bags contained lots of press material on both brands, along with some of Lucy's chocolate, a pair of my collar clips, and a mini bottle of elderflower cordial from our sponsor. as I ran out of time to get my press kit printed up (I went to Austin three days after the press event so it was a pretty manic time!) I decided to put them onto blank CDs and just pretty them up a bit. I'm a big believer in taking something plain and basic and just dressing it up a bit!

this is Lucy's lookbook for their Summer 2013 range - I absolutely love it, and there is even a picture of me in there (yup, that's me stuffing my face with a chocolate burger!)

Lucy had samples of some of her chocolates out to try - I may have eaten a LOT of free chocolate during the evening, mainly out of nervousness!

it was such a great evening, and the best part was getting to see some of my online pals who stopped by to say hi and have a browse. would you consider doing a press evening for your brand, if you're a fellow small business owner?