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craft
L&G is totally stoked to be in April issue of Dwell! ...we're actually in there twice! First feature is of the piggy bank along with other neat items...
here's piggy the Dwell website.
...and the second feature is of my Mega-Doily rug project under Meg's "Crafting a Meaningful Home" book!
Yay! Double awesomeness.
I had to work last Saturday to finish the VERY last item for FAB.
But it was seriously ROUGH....probably the roughest day I ever experienced.
I had to sit outside under the blinding sun...
Then had get my picnic sheet out to sit and hand crochet the Mega-Doily Rug for the day...like some sort of farm peasant! 
And to make matter worse....
.
...this work environment is just plain absurd.
I think at some point I even fainted....but no one believed me and just said I looked like I was sun tanning...or got drunk and fell asleep!! They've never had to work in the sun, crocheting a rug while being intoxicated on a Saturday! What do they know!!
ok...MAYBE I doze off a bit...but not the whole time!
Our latest thrift find....a cool handmade rug of unknown origin...
We found this in a thrift store outside of LA for only $6!
The real color was supposed to be dark indigo...but sun faded to this purple, which I LOVE even more!!
It makes me happy to see all these lovely colors & patterns every time I get home or leave the house.
Wish I knew more about it....Does anyone have any insight about what type of rug this is?
I'm also SUPER excited to have some terrarium ornaments & kits at UCU this weekend.
We did this for our Brite Terrarium Wonderland Workshop couple weeks ago, and figure this is also a good opportunity to share what we created!
These will be available at our L&G booth with ornaments already made, and also the kits for the DIY peeps out there.
The workshop was a collaboration between our friend Nicholas Nyland where he did the lovely illustrations and I designed the kits!
Each kit comes with:
Instruction, ornament ball, ribbon, soil, activated charcoal, various moss types, and a surprise white animal figurine.
Once I started making them, I just couldn't stop!! It was like putting together a miniature world...or more like a miniature WONDERLAND...
The great things about these ornaments is that you can keep them up beyond the holiday season especially for someone like me who never get around to do much holiday stuff! Who really has time to put up lights in & outside of the house, decorate trees, go gift shopping, wrap the gifts, send out Christmas cards, AND bake holiday treats?...oh I guess that's most people, huh?
With the little time I have to do the fun holiday activities that most people gets to do...my little terrarium ornament is a nice little added festivity in our boxes-stacked-and-shipping supplies filled house!
L&G is gearing up for this weekend's UCU show. We're totally excited (and delirious from lack of sleep) since this will be our first time showing all our own things. We've been having fun figuring out our displays and and playing shop!
Besides our staple Chalk Piggy Bank & Superior Servers, we're also preparing lots of other exciting things! Some vintage finds, some holiday goods, and one-offs that we'll all be debuting this weekend!
We're taking this opportunity to try new things by making limited runs and see how they go!
Here are some photos of what we'll have
We're playing around with some small slip cast things....
like these ceramic gems
...and these salt & pepper creature paws.
Vintage MINI Superior Servers....which is pretty much regular flatware...calling it mini just sounds cuter.
Vintage repurposed Daily Affirmation Mirrors.
And remember this?? I did a guest post on Poppytalk back in 2008. Besides this "Booh-Yah!" doilie, there will be other ones, too!
Vintage wallpaper ornaments & gift tags on wood.
Phew!! Didn't expect the list to be this long!!
I think that's it?.....oh how can I forget....there will be some treats, too at our booth if you come by!!
More sneaky peaks tomorrow!
When I heard from Abby (of Abbytrysagain) who's co-organizing with Chelsea (of Frolic!) this amazing looking "Little Winter Market" I was more than excited and impressed. Especially when you put two super talented gals together in making it all happen...you know that even with them calling it little, the result is going be mind blowing! This "Little" market is beyond little when you see the quality of work from the 20+ artist/craftpeople who will be participating!
Date:
November 6th 11am-6pm
November 7th 11am-5pm
Location:
The Cleaners at The Ace Hotel SW 10th and Stark, Portland, OR
I can't wait! We're actually gonna take a little road trip there to hang out in Portland, eat good food and check out this lovely looking market ......
I can already tell that I'll be drooling over everything...food, things, people, bikes...you name it.
There's no stopping me.
So excited to see that Tanya Aguiniga was able to raise $8000+ to accomplish her Artist Helping Artisan (AHA) project over the summer!! I mentioned her project and donated some back in early spring, and it's just amazing that she was able to achieve her goal and make it all happen...just like that!!
I was stoked to receive a lovely package from Tanya with an original print and a charming handmade doll for help fund the project with a little bit that I had to contribute. I'm just inspired to see that all this can happen when someone has a mission, to get support, and then actually making it happen. I really I hope to do something as amazing as that someday. 
Pompom hat, and a little baby on her back! It's simply too cute!
I'd love to see these wonderful handmade animals, too!
Also there's a great article about Tanya and her trip to Chiapas on Sight Unseen sharing some photos taken from her trip and even her LA studio!
Ahhh. My favorite pieces of jewelry that I own are those dipped dyed rope bracelets & necklaces!
So around last August we briefly mentioned that Meg Mateo Illasco is working on some home decor book....but we forgot to mention that both Chika & I are also gonna be her book!!
Ok, you totally want to hear the whole story, right?
Well...let me tell you! It was a total serendipitous thing.....
It all happened on lovely mid-July day in San Francisco when Chika & I traveled there to sell our goods at the Renegade Craft Fair......
But this particular day was more than any other craft show days we worked at. We had the pleasure to meet Meg for the first time that day when she was doing book signing for her book "Craft Inc."
I decided to get a copy of her book to have her autograph it since I'm a big fan of her work and I love the book and wanted to get it for a friend..but instead of acting like my normal self....I some how turned into a giant dork too shy to say much besides looking awkward and mumbling some less than significant words like "uh..your books is, uh, really cool...yeah...I like how you talk about business...and stuff...but for crafters....uh...that's pretty cool...yeah, totally."
Well...those weren't the exact words..but I'm sure it was pretty close. :P
But of course, Meg was totally cool and SUPER friendly and just started asking me what I do...and as it turned out, Meg actually knew about our work!! AWESOME!
On top of what was already an exciting interaction with Meg, things just escalated from there. Next thing I know she was in our booth checking out our stuff and chatting with us as if we're already friends (I love friends!)...and JUST when I was thinking that things can't get any awesome-er..Meg all of a sudden says to me "Hey, I'm working on a home decor book and is looking for people to submit some creative projects with a personal story, you guys wanna do it?"
I looked at her like a deer in the headlight....then looked at Chika who also had the same look as me......I looked back at Meg and thought "Could this be real?!"....then realized I should provide some sort of response since she asked me a question....then finally I responded with great confidence "......yesssss?????"
I totally thought it was too good to be true and thought maybe she just wanted to feel it out and so I was prepared that at some point we'll get an email from Meg saying that she found someone better with a better project or for whatever reason.....but everything fell into place....and we realized it was truly official when both Chika & I went back in SF 2 weeks after we met Meg, and found ourselves hanging out at Lisa Wong Jackson's lovely mid-century modern house doing a photo shoot with Meg, Lisa, Joy, and Joanna with Thayer Alllyson Gowdy the photographer for the book. Everything happened so fast I couldn't even register it all!!!
The book will consist of of 25+ other well-known designers/artists/crafters each with a DIY home decor project that has their personal stories or memories. We were thrilled when Meg told us all the awesome people like Joy from Oh Joy!, Lauren & Derek of The Curiosity Shoppe, Lisa Congdon, Lisa of Good on Paper, Cathy Callahan of Cathy of California, Tootie of ReForm School and more were all contributing to the book!
With a power group like that, I don't even have to know what sort of projects they are doing for me to just KNOW that this book will amazing!
Here's some photos from the shoot. I want to live in Lisa's house!
Lisa & Virginia (Meg's lovely assistant) in their matching striped shirt watching the photo shoot take place.
Below are the projects that got shot that day....
My Mega-Doily Rug....Oh how I wish my living room looked like that....it looks much better than my long skinny coffee table sitting on top of it...
For Chikabird, we made a Coat of Arms for the Dupe with all the graphic icons that represented us and then we wood burned them!
Joy's beautiful gold leaf glass lamp
Joanna's lovely stamped door curtain
An here's everyone sitting down for a nice lunch break. It's amazing how exhausting styling a shoot is! There were lots of moving objects back and forth going on, standing back to look at it, framing the shot with our hands, tilting our heads, squinting, and then repeat....
Yum yum almond croissants from my FAVORITE SF bakery, Tartine!!
I still couldn't really believe that this whole book thing is actually happening even after several months in when we already done the photo shoot and submitted the instructions and story...for some reason I just feared (and was trying to prepare myself) that there would still be a chance that we could get edited out.....for simply looking stupid in our photos or something like that...but they decided to keep our project! Even though I wouldn't argue one bit that I probably do look a little stupid in the photos... :P
I'm just more than excited the fact that not only will this be our FIRST time getting published in a book...it's gonna be in a book by Meg along with an amazing group of people that we've always found inspiring, too!
There's just too much awesomeness all around! Can't stand it!
The real book is plan to launch this early fall!
Stay tuned!
If anyone is around this weekend in Seattle, please come by and say hello and check out our exciting new line of notebooks and cardcases with Piano Nobile at the BIG holiday Urban Craft Uprising show!
Did I mention that they have a dog named Bauhaus, and also owns a sweet vintage Vanagon and Volvo?
Okay, so come to UCU to see all the goods in person! You can also go to our shop to check out the entire PN collaboration line.
This weekend I'll be at the first Summer Urban Craft Uprising (UCU) indie craft show!
Here's a little sneak peak!
Another new exciting items we're gonna have are these notebooks we're debuting at UCU! These are made with LOVELY hand printed fabric by Isabelle of Piano Nobile. We recently befriended Isabelle and Nicholas and they're wonderful enough to print these fabric in time for us to sell at the show! I'm drooling over them myself....don't worry, I'll wipe off my drool. 
AND our dear and super talented friend, Ingrid will be selling her awesome bags at our booth as well! I'm totally excited to see what she'll be bringing!
