Picnic Craft Fair in Portland, Maine

Morris & Essex booth

August 28th. Perfect weather, amazing and beautiful day in every way. Thanks to everyone who stopped by! And special thanks to my sister Amy and to Paz, who both stopped by to help out! And to Mike, who worked all day long at the booth with me! We sold tons of stuff, had a fantastic day, and ate the best pulled pork sandwiches and iced teas from the food carts. Highlights: met and traded with fellow vendor Colleen Kinsella, who is a friend of my sister and makes really great prints; we traded some of my shirts for some of her prints! Erin Flett, who makes gorgeous pillows and prints, and who I met via Etsy – she lives just a few minutes from my parents’ house in Gorham!

Erin Flett Booth – Picnic Portland

And I got to meet and trade work with Jennifer Judd-McGee of Swallowfield, whose work I have admired since I stumbled across it on the internet a few years ago and thought “that’s so cool, she’s from Maine!”

Swallowfield

Plus Diane of Ferdinand, of course, who is awesome and makes awesome stuff and helped to organize this perfect day.

t-shirts from Ferdinand

There was great music all day too. And nautical fun times with Meghan, Emily and Kit at the after party. Best day. Only downside? I came down with the worst cold the next day!

renegade craft fair

June 5th and 6th we headed to Brooklyn to set up the Morris & Essex booth at the Renegade Craft Fair – it was a great time and a big success!! Thanks a million to everyone who stopped by and visited, bought stuff or said hello, and ESPECIALLY to EP and Caroline who hosted us and all our stuff at their beautiful apartment AND put in tons of work helping us set up the booth and sell things and bringing us snacks and generally making us happy! (and a special thanks also to Leslie who stopped by to feed us freshly-baked strawberry rhubarb pies, just at the very moment when I was about to die of hunger!)

Morris & Essex booth -photo by Lisa! thank you!

this post is a work in progress, more details to come, about our trip and the fair…

craft fair saturday

had a table at a really cute craft fair in Colegiales on Sunday.
it was sponsored by this shop: www.ca-nas-ta.org
it was tons of fun, gorgeous weather, met lots of nice new people, sold lots of cards!

awesome.

yesterday mike showed this to me: the beard cap. from craftzine.com.

Handmade 2.0, New York Times Magazine

it’s a (long) article about Etsy.com and “the new craft movement.” it’s always weird to see something familiar summarized for the masses and enlarged to New York Times proportions.
Here is the article.
“Meanwhile there is also the more salient matter of how to make a rewarding, meaningful and satisfying living without having to give up on those ideals. The women who have led the craft movement don’t want to work for the Man. But many are also motivated by having reached adulthood at a time when the Man is slashing benefits, reneging on pensions, laying people off and, if hiring, is looking for customer-service reps and baristas. This is not a utopian alt-youth framework; it’s a very real-world, alt-grown-up framework.”

yay! design*sponge post

almost every morning when I start my work day, I check my email and then I take a peek at design sponge, a daily design blog where there’s always some new and fun pictures to look at. because the site has become such a pleasant part of my daily routine, i feel really excited and proud that Grace featured my new website and stationery on Wednesday! Click here to read that post.

Milton

Milton the Magical Flying Tiger
Originally uploaded by elizajanecurtis

This is old news but I was just reminded that it’s something cool I want to share. In October I worked on a really fun project, constructing a very special hand puppet, Milton the Magical Flying Tiger. Milton is from Mexico, where he lived at the very top of a magical mountain. He loves to eat marshmallows and macaroni!
Milton went to live in a magical zoo as part of Crazy Dreams, a Halloween house for kids ages 2-10 at the Clemente Solo Velez Cultural Center in the Lower East Side.
Kerri Mahoney was art directing the house and I was very excited when she asked me to contribute a magical animal puppet! Milton took a couple of solid weeks of hard work. Making big squishy animals is harder than it looks. He’s made of felt and thread and stuffing and glue and cardboard and and plenty of blood, sweat and tears. He’s got a soft fuzzy furry belly and he likes tummy rubs.
Milton was on the TV! NY1 News did a little story about fun halloween activities for kids: NY1 archived story