Weekend fun at West Elm Chicago

I spent Saturday afternoon at the Etsy pop-up shop in the Lincoln Park West Elm. The store looked fantastic — West Elm did a beautiful job of choosing a location for each artist and integrating their products within the store's layout. I enjoyed wandering around meeting all the local artisans. Man, what a nice bunch of people. Above is Susan from Up in the Air Somewhere.


Kristin from Toast and Jam DJs provided tunes for shopping. I'm not sure who her friend is, but he has an awesome face.


Here's Angela of CircaAD putting something in a tiny bag. Perhaps a necklace with angel wings; they turned out to be a curiously hot item on Saturday.


These laser-cut brooch ladies looked on, modeling fashionable dresses.


Shoppers could purchase wood-block artwork from Lucius Art.


Or Chicago screen prints from Hiroshi Ariyama.


Meg from White Nest displayed her beautiful cushions and had the advantage of a comfy spot for a nap if needed.


Parched shoppers refreshed themselves with all-natural sodas from Seasons Soda.


Hungry shoppers fortified themselves with cocoa orange ice cream cake provided by Salted Caramel. "Hey, see that guy? He needs cake."


Here are Shawna X and Emily from Kissen Studio offering good-looking stationery and pillows.


Jack of Ethically Engineered told us all about making soap in his solar-powered studio. See that fellow with the orange purse? That's my husband Alex, to whom I owe a huge thank you for carrying my stuff all afternoon. A secure man is not afraid to be seen with a handbag.

Thank you to West Elm, Etsy, everyone who came out to support the work of independent craftspeople, and all 12 terrific vendors:
Nourishing Notes
Isette
Virtuality Studio
Second Chance Ceramics
White Nest
Shawna X
Up in the Air Somewhere
Lucius Art
Ariyama Studio
CircaAD
Ethically Engineered
Kissen Studio
Keep making wonderful things!

This Saturday: Etsy pop-up at West Elm Chicago

Need something to do on Saturday afternoon? Come mingle with me and local Etsy artists selling their goods at West Elm in Chicago. This pop-up shop is one day only, so don't blink or you'll miss it!

Saturday, June 22
1pm – 6pm
West Elm
1000 W. North Avenue, Chicago, IL

If browsing handmade art, housewares, jewelry and paper goods isn't enticing enough, let's add some free food and entertainment:

Handmade soda by Seasons Soda
Mini chocolate-orange creamsicles from Salted Caramel (I told West Elm there had to be something orange or I'd refuse to come.*)
DJ-ing by Kristin Marks from Toast & Jam DJs
Photo booth fun by Smilebooth

Spread the word and RSVP here on Facebook!

For a complete list of participating vendors, visit West Elm's blog. The good stuff pictured above: Rabbit by Lucius Art, mug by Second Chance Ceramics, card by Shawna X, bowl by Up in the Air Somewhere, pillow by Kissen Studio, State Street print by Ariyama Studio, pendant by Isette, pomade by Ethically Engineered.

See you Saturday!

*Kidding. I said nothing of the sort. But it was fun to write because it made me sound like a famous person for a second. Or at least a DIY maven, though I am not certain what that is.

Etsy pop-up shop at West Elm Chicago

Announcing a fun event for Chicagoans and visitors! West Elm asked for my input as they host a pop-up shop of local Etsy sellers inside their Lincoln Park store. The event will be Saturday, June 22 from 1pm – 6pm at the North Avenue location. Come hang out with me and browse through lovely handmade jewelry, art, home decor, stationery, and more. There will be delicious refreshments, plus I've heard rumors of a DJ and a photo booth...

For a complete list of the participating Etsy sellers, visit West Elm's blog. Grab somebody and come on out!

Find the event on Facebook here to RSVP or share with a friend.

Here's sampling of the wares below. Better start planning right now where you're gonna hang that chipmunk.

"Go Vote" illustrations by artists

Americans, did you do it yet? To help with motivation, GoVote.org has a gallery of hundreds of illustrations from artists nationwide. You can even update your Facebook cover image with this one. Enjoy! The illustration above is by Yours, Roxanne.

Craft Social time again

Sign up over here for the next Chicago Craft Social, holiday edition, on Friday, Nov. 13. Come eat treats and make handmade gifts and ornaments. We could also use some more project leaders, so if you haven't led a table before and would like to, email me.

The second Chicago Craft Social

A random sampling of photos from the August 14 Craft Social:

We oohed and ahed over Edwin Monfero's fruit sculpture demo.

A shot of the room. With a couple guys there in the foreground making advanced paper airplanes. Way to represent, gentlemen.

Selecting paper requires extreme concentration.

Looks like this lovely woman is stitching something funny onto a dinner napkin.

Meet two of the four organizers, Megan Heep, center, and Megan Hall, right. Megan Heep just posted the instructions for this Green Clean Sample Kit project on her blog if you want to try it out. It was determined you must add the ingredients in the correct order, or you'll make cement. Oops.)

And last but not least, I give you: Mr. Jones! Yes, the engineer came to craft night because he loves me. He made a bunch of spiral bound notebooks with exquisite craftsmanship. What a guy.

A huge thank you goes to Jessie Stevens of Simply Jessie Photography who donated her time and talent. Jessie is hosting an afternoon Open House and evening Launch Party on Sept. 19. To see her new studio and network with other cool Chicagoland people over cocktails, don't miss it! Click here for details.

See more of Jessie's Craft Social photos in the growing Facebook album, and I'll add the whole works to the Craft Social Flickr group soon.

What I was doing at midnight

Let's pretend you're planning an event and you need a way for guests with business cards to display them. Oh yeah, and you have no budget. I present to you: DIY business card trays. (Cardstock that's accordian folded and glued to foam board. Fancy.)

These are the Craft Social business cards I whipped up. We can write in the date and time for future events and give to friends or leave them with businesses. It must have worked, because we've hit the limit for sign-ups. Looks like we'll have 150+. I put a couple cards in the rack to test it, and in my sleepy delirium, just kept going because it was fun.

Photographer needed on Friday night UPDATE: Got one, thanks!
I know all this Craft Social talk must be excruciatingly boring for all the non-Chicagoans, but bear with me for one last thing: Is anyone planning to attend the Social who's good with a camera? Our photographer from last time can't make it, and we'd love to have some halfway decent pix from the night. If you're up for taking some shots, email me. And, uh, we can't pay you, but we might throw your name around some.

Another Craft Social

Back by popular demand, it's another Chicago Craft Social! Join us on Friday, August 14 from 7-10 PM for an evening of desserts and creative projects you can learn to make. New this time: Men are invited. (And hey, we'd love to have a guy project leader or two, so if you know someone, send him our way.) And for those of you who have crafty shops and businesses you'd like to promote, we'll have a table where you can leave your business cards or other goodies to get the word out. To get more details and sign up, go to the Craft Social site.

Chicago fabric swap tomorrow

I just learned of this fabric swap taking place Tuesday night, 6/30/09, at the Rogers Park Public Library. Bring unwanted fabric, trade it in for fake money, and "shop" for something new to bring home. I'm hoping to trade in two yards of dalmatian-print fur I just received by mistake from a fabric company. If you want dalmatian fur, you'd better be there. Details here!

Craft Social was a hit

I'm back in town after a week away. We visited my family, then spent a couple days in Des Moines on our way back to Chicago. (If you're ever there, you have to eat here and here. Amazing. And visit this lovely little shop while you're at it.)

Craft Social, the big event I helped organize the night before we left, went great as far as I can tell. I'm dying to do it again. About 100 people showed up, and I'm not kidding when I say that every person I talked to was so completely friendly and wonderful that I concluded crafters are the nicest people on the planet. And I started hearing rumors from different corners of the room that we need to do a craft lock-in. You know, like in high school, except we make stuff all night long. Just put some cots in the corner in case we get tired. Um, we'll save that brilliant idea for later, but in the meantime, we're already talking about when the next Craft Social might be.

And so that we can stay connected and share our work with each other, here are two new Flickr pools:
Chicago Craft Social, for pix of your projects from the event.
Chicago Craft Community, for pix of other projects you've worked on.

Our hope is to better connect Chicago area creatives and build community. And for those of you who contacted us about holding a Craft Social in your town, we're working on a little package of graphics and guidelines to make things easy for you. Stay tuned!

Make stuff with people

Chicago area ladies, you're all invited to an evening of snacking, chatting, and making stuff! Even if you only feel about 2% crafty, that's okay, because we'll have a variety of projects you could choose from and people to help you. Or bring along that thing you've been procrastinating on and finish it in the company of other creative people. Motivation by osmosis. I'm helping to plan this Craft Social with a few friends, and we are terribly excited about meeting you all! To get the details and RSVP, visit the Craft Social site.

The art of Heinrich Toh

We went to the The Old Town Art Fair the other day for bit and walked through as briskly as the crowd would allow (i.e. at a snail's pace). Alex has pointed out that I get very crabby in crowds, and it's true. So we tried to keep moving, but here's where I had to stop and seriously look: Heinrich Toh. My favorite of the day. To see more, visit his website.




All images by Heinrich Toh.