And the winners are....

Bari and Carly! Congratulations, and thanks for your comments on my blog. The earrings are in the mail and should hopefully arrive some time next week. I have been an absent Blogger this past month. After stating publicly that I am committed to my blog and updating it more often I proceeded to slack off! My only excuse was moving and then not being able to set up the wireless network with my husband's old PC and my Mac. They just weren't getting along and it required a professional IT guy to come and sort things out...

This Saturday we are off to Oaxaca Mexico to visit my husband's family for 3 weeks. I will do my very best to post some pictures of my trip along the way. We'll be taking a laptop with us so it should be possible! Oaxaca is full of rich textile traditions. The weaving and embroidery from this state is incredible. I'll try and capture some of this on my blog to share everyone.

Hasta Luego!

Blog Give away!

Hi!

I realized this morning that my 1 year blog anniversary just passed on May 19th. Although my ChicaCraft blog got off to a rather slow start and I only managed 30 posts in 1 year, I can feel it's momentum starting to grow. At least I am just as enthusiastic about the craft blogosphere as I was a year ago. In fact I am even more enthusiastic than ever, and for this reason I think it's time to give back to the blogging community! I really feel I've made a few friends through my blog and that is the most rewarding part of it all for me. Reaching out and connecting with other women who share my same creative interests and passion for fabric!

I don't have many sewn crafts on the go because I'm moving in 1 week. I do however, have lots of jewelry that would like to find a nice home. So, if you happen to drop by my blog before Sunday May 25th at 10pm, please leave me a comment and say hello and introduce yourself! Up for grabs are the two pairs of earrings shown here. The first pair are faceted aqua marine clusters with sterling silver lever back ear wires, and a finished length of 2 1/2". The other earrings are mother of pearl with a longer finished length of 3 1/2" Let me know in your comments which pair you would prefer.

If you are interested in any of the other jewelry I design, you can take a look over on my other blog Astarte Designs. I had great plans to re-open my Etsy store this month but the imminent move changed all my well laid plans! Hopefully by the end of August I'll have time to set up my shop again.

I Should be packing...

But instead I'm sitting here carving rubber stamps. It's amazing how productive you can be when procrastinating about doing other more important things! You see, we are moving in 10 days! Yippee! We had a last minute opportunity to move into a 2 bedroom townhouse in a Co-op across the city. With the average price of a home in Vancouver now at $600 000 (yes that would be six hundred thousand)!! we have decided moving into a Co-op is the best option for us at this time. With the Winter Olympics being hosted here in 2010 the housing crisis is only going to get worse!

I've been sick with the flu for the past 9 days which gave me time to finally figure out how to save Illustrator graphics for the Web. Hence the new Blog banner and other embellishments. It took a year of me doubting my ability to teach myself how to do this, but finally - with absolute determination I gave myself an afternoon to figure it out. Low and behold I found a great tutorial on the internet and by following along, I was able to walk myself through it. If you are like me and still wondering how people put their amazing graphics into their blogs, check out this easy to understand tutorial. Just scroll down to the title "save for web".

If you haven't checked out Magda's blog Craft Pudding please do! You may just get the sudden impulse to start carving rubber stamps! I have all the supplies in my craft box from at least 10 years ago when I was messing around with printing on fabrics. My personal interests haven't swayed that much in all these years....at least I'm consistent!

Woolly Embroidery

I've been meaning to share this discovery with all the embroidery enthusiasts out there. It's a new release from Chronicle Books titled Woolly Embroidery. Chronicle has been kind enough to translate the original version into English from Japanese. I love the modern simple shapes of the designs highlighted in this book, as well as the "woolliness" of them - which I guess is consistent with my love for crewel work.

If you collect books on embroidery you should definitely consider adding this one to you library!

Fashion Conscious - Tarisan & Blinkley

As promised (although a bit delayed) - I want to continue sharing some of the inspirational designers I've stumbled upon in the past few years. What continuously inspires me are women who manage to combine their passion for design and craft with social consciousness. Another such woman who qualifies (in my eyes) is Sarah Takesh. Her heritage is Iranian but she was raised in the United States. After stints working as a design assistant for Donna Karan and Michael Kors, she now lives and works in Kabul Afghanistan where she creates her own line of gorgeous women's clothing.

Sarah works hard to create economic oportunites for the women of Afganistan that just wouldn't exist if people like her were not investing their businesses in this area. She employs the creative talents of local women to embelish her clothing designs of hand loomed silk with elaborate embroideries and bead work. She even encourages them to create their own designs instead of following a set template!

Her designs are elaborate and stylish without being too fashion forward. As you can imagine in a country with a history of the Burka, the clothing is also tastefully modest, but stylish enough to appeal to her foreign markets.

Check out some of her new clothing lines here.

People Tree - Fair Trade Fashion

In the next few weeks I would like to share with you some of the inspirational designers I've discovered in the past few years. You will notice a common theme connecting them all, which is their interest in combining social responsibility with their businesses. These are values I respect a great deal, and I hope to some day make my mark in the world, while contributing to the economic livelihood of a community somewhere. (Most likely Mexico, because of my own personal connection to its people).

Safia Minney is an extraordinary visionary and pioneer in the world of Fair Trade Fashion. You may or may not have heard of her Fashion Company People Tree. It is based out of Japan (where she lives) and the UK (where most of her designers are located). The Mission Statement of People tree is "to use fashion as a tool to help the world's most marginalized people". Wow - what a great idea! It's so true that the world really doesn't need "another" new fashion label. So, why not at least make one with a good cause behind it?

People Tree works with 50 Fair Trade Groups in 15 different countries around the world to create beautiful clothing made of organic cotton, using fair trade practices and safe and natural dyes. The goal for the designers is to create fashion forward clothing using the MOST amount of labor possible! This goes completely against conventional thinking for mass produced clothing production. The designers for People Tree intentionally design hand techniques such as embroidery, beading or hand woven details into the garments so that more people will be needed to create the garments - thus giving more people a chance to earn money!

People Tree also offers internships to Fashion Students looking for work experience in the area of Fair Trade fashion. If such a thing had existed back when I was a design student I would have jumped at this opportunity!

A little progress...

I've been working away at this embroidery project in my spare moments for the past two weeks. It's finally starting to look like something...I'm teaching myself as I go along (to be totally honest I haven't embroidered anything in at least 18 years)!

Three books I've found enormously helpful are "The New Crewel", "The complete Guide to Embroidery Stitches" and "The Embroidery Stitch Bible" .

Have I mentioned that I replaced my eBay "habit" with an Amazon one?! You see it's just that I really hate shopping. I loathe it in fact. Then I discovered you can shop from the comfort of your own home and I haven't looked back. You know you've got issues when the six books Amazon is "suggesting" you might find interesting, based on your "user profile" - you already have!! I've got 3 more on order that haven't arrived yet... I'll share them next week.

Hope you had a great weekend!
Jodi