renegade la....

be there!!!!!!!!

i'm busy, busy making and would love for all my california peeps to come out!

i'll be at booth 24, which is kinda towards the back. there's so much happening- workshops, vendors, food and such, so make sure you have some time to spend. the LA Times wrote about some of the workshops. more info on all that's happening here.

Driving Directions:
Use 1245 North Spring Street as your Destination Address when Google Mapping/MapQuesting, etc.

101F Northbound or Southbound
Exit Alameda Street, turn right at the off ramp and Alameda turns into North Spring Street. The park will be on your left.

I-5 Freeway
Exit Broadway, go west and stay in left lane. When Broadway splits in two directions, take North Spring Street to the left.

Renegade Craft Fair Los Angeles
July 24-25, 11 am - 7 pm
Los Angeles State Historic Park aka The Cornfield
1245 N Spring Street
Los Angeles, CA

i'm going home...

... to california for about a month. a little business a little pleasure.

i'll be participating in Renegade LA and sharing a booth with allison of Monkeys Always Look.

SHOP UPDATE: the shop will be going on a vacation too starting Friday July 16 - 30th.  emails me if you got a questions and please be patient with me i'll have these goons demanding my attention at all times...

buddy lee and dexter, originally uploaded by miniature.rhino.

thats a good idea.....

smart ish right here. my boy, being the punk kid he is has a gazillion buttons and i love this idea of creating a display of them. this genius kit by becky of sweetie pie press is for the display of her security envelope buttons.

no longer empty

on my visit to governors island today i rode bikes - for free! and stumbled across the exhibition the 6th borough,  by No Longer Empty, an organization that creates public art exhibitions in vacated storefronts and properties in nyc.    the show was spread out in a few homes.  since the island was once a military base there are many buildings and last year these were all just locked up and empty.  i remember peeking in the windows and wanting so badly to explore.  so it was fun to take a look around the houses and see art in this unexpected domestic setting.

my favorite was a room full of paper cut outs of cats, bats, gofers, monkeys and butterflies.  cute explosion! i like things that show a process and extraordinary effort - and this did!  each image came from a 2-d book and was cut so that it would come off the page in 3-d and there had to be layers of housands and thousands of cut outs.  the roof was completely covered in hanging bats!!

via

bespoke....

bespoke: an item custom-made to the buyer's specification.

much of the work i do is custom, made to order embroidery.  not sure how it happened really. i went school for photography and thought i'd be a teacher.  i embroidered my families DNA as part of my thesis project and it's just become part of my daily life since.  never, never  would have imagined that, but it suits my obsessive nature, and my insane love for detail.

so here i am embroidering for a living.  it's without a doubt one of the dumbest business models.  ever.  (i'm half joking, half crying.) these little stitches take for-ever and all the other things involved- cutting fabric, creating and transferring the pattern, and mounting the embroidery- are equally time consuming. and then there is (trying!) to manage a small business....  it's all kinds of frustrating (and i know, i know also rewarding too, to be your own boss and such, but this is a pouty kind of post).

which brings me back to bespoke work. learned the word from becky of sweetie pie press, who mentions it here.  so i am behind on my custom embroidery orders. i am always behind and always will be, by the very nature of the this kind of work.   i wish very much to cross off many things on my to-do list and here are some i can proudly check off (and sorry for those who are kindly waiting):