We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Noemi Ayala-antonsen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Noemi , appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?
Yes, finding a name for a business is not easy, business started back in Seattle with the name of Balloons Sweet Balloons, those year we only had 1 baby and her name is Dulce in reference of being our sweet baby, moving to the state of Arizona on 2004 starting over I wanted to keep Sweet on the business name but make it shorter and easy to remember, so A Sweet Party came to be the official name for 20 years now.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
While raising my kids and wanting to be a full time mom, and still having a purpose to make money, self employment was my option, there was no remote jobs back then but there was a window of opportunity doing something on the weekends, balloon decor wasn’t as popular as it is nowadays, I traveled to my country and took balloon decor courses, and that’s how our first balloon decor business started in Seattle, Wa. When we moved to Arizona in 2004 we found out about balloon conventions and I enrolled on some conventions, social media was not what it is today but there was a craft forum in Spanish, and I decided to teach balloon decor in that forum back then called “Fantasias Miguel” I used to send a whole explanation all written instructions then girls used to send me a picture of their work, oh that was very gratifying and fun!
While attending those conventions, my husband enrolled me on a face painting class and my very first instructor was the master of face painting Mark Reid, he may not know but he was my mentor, ever since I got fascinated with the amazing face and body painting industry, I couldn’t stop taking classes, attending conventions, private classes, learning and practicing, business was offering party rentals, balloon decor, balloon twisting and face painting,
Over the years I have gotten more skills, we stopped the bouncy houses, tables and chair rentals due my husband working night shifts, and him having a back injury since he was on the military, etc, but hey I had other entertaining options to offer, I consider my self a very fast painter, so passionate about my job, I deeply enjoy it from a balloon decor to an airbrush tattoo gig, a prenatal art painting, making sparkly glitter tattoos, or paint a face, it joyful to see happy faces and happy costumers.
Our services now are:
Balloon decor
Balloon twisting
Face painting
Body painting
Henna tattoos
Airbrush tattoos
Glitter tattoos
Murals
Craft tables
Giant marquee LED letters and numbers rental
There is no small client for us, we can do a single session for body art, pregnancy belly art, birthday parties, pool parties, block parties, all the way to grand openings, corporate events, school carnivals, church events, weddings, quinceañeras, city events, Easter, 4th of July, Christmas and more.
Some of our costumers/events directly (working direct contract) or indirectly (working under another artist contract)
American Lung Association
Austin Electric Services
First Bank
University of Phoenix
Super star car wash
Botanical garden
Desert Star
IBEW
Metro Valley
Walk a leader foundation
Be a leader
Chess emporium
Equality Health
City of Avondale
City of Goodyear
City of Chandler
City of Scottsdale
Staples
Fairmont Scottsdale Princess
World market
Jake’s unlimited
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
Being on time, is one of them, punctually it’s very important even more when you are offering a service by the hour.
Giving the best of me on every job, if it’s a paint make it as good as it can be.
Making a commitment and keep in touch with costumers.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
This is interesting, although social media is the most important way to be know, my clientele is still old school and get customers on mouth to mouth references, I am the worse person in the planet to manage social media 🙈, this is something I have to overcome and it’s been my resolution every new years for the past couple of years, I really really need to step up my skills and get better at social media interactions, I will make some post on my instagram and facebook page from today August 27th and I’ll publish videos and or pictures of my work before this interview goes public.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asweetparty?igsh=bnd4MnlkeWZ0MWtl&utm_source=qr
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/asweetpartybynoemiayala?mibextid=LQQJ4d
