Make It

Featured Crafter - My Paper Crane

Artist: Heidi Kenney, www.mypapercrane.com
Craft: Felted goodies

Heidi Kenney of My Paper Crane is a craft superstar. Her plushies are wildly popular and she recently got major press when she was featured in an NYTimes article (it's no longer available online, sorry). Her blog is a fun read that is photo-heavy (a major plus) and has tidbits about her business, new designs and personal life. Via her blog, I learned that Heidi and her husband are planning to purchase their first home. That's alot of plushie toilet papers! Heidi is very web savvy and as a result it was a breeze finding additional info about her. Peruse the links below and get your dose of inspiration, extra soft.

What does the name “My Paper Crane” come from?
The first time I tried origami, I was making a paper crane. When I was finished I was so amazed that a simple square of paper could be turned into something so beautiful! The name My Paper Crane tries to embody that thought, the idea of taking something simple (wether it be fabric, paper, etc.) and turning it into something amazing. [via the FAQ at www.mypapercrane.com]

My Paper Crane at MySpace

Heidi sent me the link to her Flickr so I could pull some pics and it sucked me in for like an hour! There are great pics of her home and craft room (i.e. where the magic happens), and photos of craft events she's attended in addition to tons and tons of plush goodness.

Talk about multi-talented, turns out Heidi also collaborates with Aeolidia (this month's expert) on web design projects.

Kraf-o-La Interview

Craftzine Interview

Featured Crafter - The Quilters of Gees Bend

Artist: Gees Bend Quilters, www.quiltsofgeesbend.com/

Craft: um, Quilting

Gee’s Bend is a small rural community nestled into a curve in the Alabama River southwest of Selma, Alabama. Founded in antebellum times, it was the site of cotton plantations, primarily the lands of Joseph Gee and his relative Mark Pettway, who bought the Gee estate in 1850. After the Civil War, the freed slaves took the name Pettway, became tenant farmers for the Pettway family, and founded an all-black community nearly isolated   from the surrounding world. During the Great Depression, the federal government stepped in to purchase land and homes for the community, bringing strange renown — as an "Alabama Africa" — to this sleepy hamlet.

The town’s women developed a distinctive, bold, and sophisticated quilting style based on traditional American (and African American) quilts, but with a geometric simplicity reminiscent of Amish quilts and modern art. The women of Gee’s Bend passed their skills and aesthetic down through at least six generations to the present. In 2002, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in partnership with the nonprofit Tinwood Alliance, of       Atlanta, presented an exhibition of seventy quilt masterpieces from the Bend. The exhibition, entitled "The Quilts of Gee’s Bend," is accompanied by two companion books, The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, and the larger Gee’s Bend: The Women and Their Quilts, both published by Tinwood Media, as well as a documentary video on the Gee’s Bend quilters and a double-CD of Gee’s Bend gospel music from 1941 and 2002. [via http://www.quiltsofgeesbend.com/history/]

I was lucky enough to see the Quilts of Gees Bend exhibition when it came to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts about a year ago. Below are my pics that I was able to take of the exhibition before a security guard spotted me and gave me a disapproving finger wag (no photographs allowed, whoops).

I love these quilts. Aesthetically, they've got a clean contemporary look that I like, coupled with the warmth of handmade craft. My appreciation of the aethetic qualities is deepened by learning about the background of the quilters (African American females, descendents of former slaves), their techniques (self-taught, no training) and materials (leftover clothing scraps, burlap bags, cloth found around the farm). I spent my high school years in Birmingham, AL and my mom is still there, so there's the Southern connection as well. I'm glad to see that these ladies' works are being accepted and praised in the art world, and I'm sure they are enjoying some of the financial rewards (I hope so at least), I just always feel a little uneasy when rural African American artists are fawned over in the mainstream art world and their works are displayed in the rarified galleries of Boston and NYC (as a temporary exhibit, mind you) and then something like Hurricane Katrina happens, which devastated poor black southern communities who are still trying to rebuild to this day. Food for thought, that's all I'm saying (that and don't get me started on the gross wealth disparities that exist in the world, that's a rant for another time). For now, here's a visual feast for the eyes, courtesy of the Gees Bend quilters.

Further Reading:
http://www.purlbee.com/display/ShowJournal?moduleId=515416&creatorId=74658
http://extremecraft.blogspot.com/2006/03/gee-whiz.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gee's_Bend,_Alabama
http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2005/05/15/the_blurred_line_between_purity_and_profit/   Washington Post Article on marketing the quilts

Featured Crafter - Amy Butler

Artist: Amy Butler, www.amybutlerdesign.com

Craft: Textiles, Handbags

The first time I saw Amy Butler's work, I was not impressed. I heard the words midwest, rural, floral and automatically made a snap decision that this was not for me (I am an urban fashionista after all). I must not have taken a good look at her products the first time around because I recently rediscovered her after hearing some buzz about her upcoming book, In Stitches and I think I misjudged her. Or maybe my tastes have just changed because now I like her style. In any case, she's a very talented designer, seamstress and a heck of a businesswoman, and for that I have endless respect.

Her site is gorgeous, simple, and provides alot of great behind the scenes info and pics about Amy and her creative process. We also learn that Amy has been married for 15 years and has worked daily with her husband since 1990. Nice!

all pics via amybutlerdesign.com

Part 1 of Amy's podcast with Boutique Cafe
Part 2 of the podcast

Decor8 review of In Stitches

"About Amy"

Amy's Inspiration

Featured Crafter - 31 Corn Lane

Artist: The Sperber sisters, www.31cornlane.com/

Craft: Handbags, Accessories

31 Corn Lane is the handbag company operated by four sisters from New Jersey. The name of their company is their childhood address and their childhood experiences greatly influence their design process. When I look at their website and pictures of the girls, like the one below, their energy just explodes off the page. They are living their dream making accessories and playing in a rock band- The Boxes- and having so much fun doing so that it's contagious.

                           

I didn't find any info about the company on their webpage (maybe I overlooked it?), but here are two interviews about their business.

http://www.fredflare.com/diary/31cornlane.php
http://electricsweatshirt.com/2006/04/rad-times-with-amy-sperber-from-31.html

                        

What advise would you give our readers who want to start their own companies or bands?

      A giant pearl of wisdom that we have learned from starting our own company is: IF YOU MAKE IT, SOMEONE WILL BUY IT! And maybe even send you a nice e-mail about how much they like it and how they went to your grade school, even though they never once talked to you then! So don't be afraid or lazy fer another hot second cause time moves too fast and you've got goals to attain and choice items to sell, girl! It doesn't take much. Just start small, think in total baby steps and know in your giant heart that if you keep jamming it out you won't have to have a hovering boss over you each and every day!!  [Source]

You can also check out the sisters at their MySpace page.

[Pictures via: Source, Source, Source, Source]

Featured Crafter: Wendy Mullin

Artist: Wendy Mullin, builtbywendy.com
Craft: Sewing, Clothing design

Wendy Mullin of Built by Wendy is very cool, like almost impossibly cool in a celebrity-friends-as-models-for-her-clothing-line kind of way. But even cool chicks like this have to get their start somewhere.

The basics:

Built by Wendy is a line of women’s and men’s clothing and accessories.

The company was founded in 1991 by Wendy Mullin.

Growing up in suburban Chicago, Wendy learned to sew from her mom and grandma. Later at the University of Kansas she studied by day and sewed by night, selling her handmade clothes to record stores in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Kansas City. She supported herself by doing sewing alterations and working various jobs.

In 1992 she moved to New York where she opened little boutiques in the back of record stores where she worked. In addition she did costume design, styled music videos, and did freelance design.

After gaining some notoriety due to the popularity of her guitar straps, she began wholesaling her clothing collection worldwide and finally moved out of working in her apartment.

Wendy opened her first retail store in Little Italy in 1998. Stores in Brooklyn and Los Angeles followed in 2005.

In addition to designing her collections each season and running her business, Wendy was the creative director for a specialty denim collection for Wrangler Jeans. She also wrote her own sewing book called Sew U (out in September), and designed a line of home sewing patterns for Simplicity Pattern Co. called Built by YOU (out now!) [via http://www.builtbywendy.com/about.htm]

For someone whose brand is so well established and relatively well known, I had a hard time finding interviews and stories about the woman behind Built by Wendy. However, I did find a chat with the guys from fredflare, an interview from Venus Zine, and this interview from zingmagazine.

I remember hearing about the Built by Wendy guitar straps in like every magazine, what, ten years ago? She has parlayed the explosive success of that niche product into a full-fledged creative industry, keeping her cool all the while.

Featured Crafter - Naughty Secretary

Artist: Jennifer Perkins, www.naughtysecretaryclub.com
Craft: Jewelry

Jennifer Perkins of Naughty Secretary Club is the reason why coffee was invented, and here's why:

She's an accomplished crafter who runs a very succesful jewelry biz, Naughty Secretary Club.

She is a founding member of the Austin Craft Mafia.

She hosts two (2!) shows on the DIY network: Craft Lab and Stylelicious

She also maintains Babes in Business, a Yahoo Group devoted to women crafters and their small business needs. Yay for finding a new online craft/business resource!

Oh yeah, and she also produces this and co-runs this and she blogs!

If you're exhausted just reading about everything Jennifer does, check it out first hand with a personal account of a day in her life.

So how does one go from a secretary to a multi-hyphenate crafting and media superstar? Here's a great interview with Jennifer in which she covers how she got her start, the biggest hurdle she encountered and advice for marketing and promoting a business. Good stuff here.

Any Advice for Marketing and Promoting your Business? I get asked this question on a daily basis and would love to eventually write a book on the subject. My rule of thumb has always been “It is 40% what you can do, and 60% how you market it”. I live by this rule. Marketing and promotion is so crucial to a business. You can have the most awesome arm warmers this side of the Mason Dixon line, but if no one besides you and your best friend know that then you are not going to be selling very many.

Further Reading:
DIY Network bio of Jennifer Perkins
Great pics of Jennifer's totally retro, kitschy home.

Featured Crafter - Rena Tom

Artist: Rena Tom, www.renatom.com
Craft: Jewelry

Rena Tom is all over the place. When I was first looking for indie jewelry designers online, her name kept popping up everywhere I turned, and with good reason. She has a great eye for color, balance and design and she's a master of getting her name out there. Besides her own website, Rena's designs are also available on Lyrical Beauty, Stars and Infinite Darkness, and Anezka Handmade among others.

About Rena:

Rena created websites, logos and collateral for both big corporations and little startups in San Francisco for 7 years before deciding to indulge her artistic tendencies and create her own line of products. Classes in screenprinting, letterpress and bookbinding helped point her toward designing a line of notecards and stationery, as well as modern, colorful wedding invitations and baby announcements. Jewelry design was a natural development stemming from her love of color and texture. Most recently, she opened her first boutique in the Park Slope neighborhood in Brooklyn.

The boutique is Rare Device; color me jealous: I'd loooove to be a crafter/storeowner one day, like Rena.

As I mentioned before, Rena is all over the Internet. She just did a podcast at design*sponge in which she speaks a little about how she got her start and what trends she likes for her store. It's cool to hear the voice behind the crafter, literally.

Featured Crafter: Jill Blissen

Sorry I don't have a Crafter Interview up today. I'll post it later this week.

Artist: Jill Bliss,
Craft: Everything

Jill Blissen of blissen is a multi-tasker extraordinaire!
She has her fingers in so many different pots, she's like the Winnie the Pooh of the indie design scene: books, cards, posters, tshirts, wallets, prints, oh my!

As always, from her About page:

blissen blissen specializes in handmade small edition items available exclusively on blissen.com, while larger edition items made in collaboration with other small businesses are available in independent shops across the u.s. and worldwide.

jill bliss
my life and work are naturally full of color, sly humor and hand-tinkered style. with a penchant for collaborative endeavors and sharing, my world grows a little larger as each new co-conspirator hops aboard.
raised in two distinct environments, the suburban technological sprawl of silicon valley and the natural rural slowness of northern california, i must confess i prefer the irregularities of nature than the perfection of technology. no matter where i am, i need to build, make, and improve things with whatever materials are at hand.
besides my work for blissen, i also sometimes find time to design for select clients - especially individuals and small companies that enjoy working with recycled or sustainable materials like i do! you can also find my art and design work in quite a few exhibitions and boutiques.

That's all well and good, but how did Jill Bliss become Blissen?
Aha! She has a "History" page:

blissen.com came to be in may 2001, and from the get-go was small scale-minded and reused-material crazy. conceived as a fun project, blissen was originally a webspace for jill bliss to sell self-made illustration books and small objects from left-over materials. enthusiasm for originality, clever reuse, making things, collaboration, experimentation, and the d.i.y. spirit led to a small growth spurt at blissen a year later. since then, blissen has offered a carefully selected range of goods from friends old and new in the san francisco bay area and world-wide. along the way, we've all proudly become a part of a vibrant, growing community of small-scale artists, crafters, and designers - a modern world-wide arts, crafts and design movement.

I give major kudos to Jill for her green-friendly practices and her emphasis on reusing materials.. The links below are various interviews that reveal more about the woman behind blissen.
http://www.sfist.com/archives/2005/08/15/interview_jill_bliss.php
http://fredflare.com/diary/jillbliss.php
http://www.homeofthesampler.com/interviews/blissen.html

Featured Crafter: Lisa Price

Artist: Lisa Price
Craft: Bath and body products

Lisa Price, the founder of the Carol's Daughter line of beauty products, got her start by experimenting with product recipes in her Brooklyn kitchen when she couldn't find the kinds of products she wanted. Now her company boasts over 300 products, financial support from Will Smith and Jay-Z, and celebrity clients Mary J. Blige and Jada Pinkett-Smith on the website. The company does little to no advertising and instead depends on the positive word-of-mouth of its devoted customer base. Without a doubt, Lisa Price has made it!

Unfortunately, the Carol's Daughter website doesn't have much info about the story of how Lisa got to where she is today, but she has written a memoir devoted to the subject called, The Sweet Smell of Success. I haven't read this myself but it looks like one worth checking out.

To tide you over until you get your hands on the book, I've gathered a few articles on Lisa that tell a little more about her and her business.

http://www.blackenterprise.com/exclusivesekopen.asp?id=1149
http://www.wwd.com/atworkwith/101938
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=1405821
http://www.go-brooklyn.com/html/issues/_vol27/27_19/lisaprice.html

Featured Crafter: Jonathan Adler

Artist: Jonathan Adler
Craft: Ceramics

Jonathan Adler is a wildly successful ceramic artist. I remember first hearing about him several years ago when his signature pieces started appearing on a new show called "Will and Grace." As you know if you've read my first post, "Welcome" I am obsessed with the "About Me" pages on crafters' sites. Jonathan's does not disappoint. The story of his life and career trajectory is told in timeline form, which allows us to see that it took approximately sixteen years from the time he first tried pottery at summer camp in 1978 to when Barney's placed their first order for his pots in 1994. Since that time, Jonathan has built a design empire that has expanded to include storefronts around the country and a line of textiles, bedding, furniture, and more. But he started out just like you and me: a crafter with a dream.

A unique feature of the site is Ask Jonathan, which allows you to pose questions that could possibly be answered by Jonathan on the website. It was in this section that I found the question and answer exchange below, which contains valuable pearls of wisdom for crafters with ambition:

 
Matthew:
What's it like going from humble potter to renowned designer? 

Jonathan:
First of all, j'adore being called a renowned designer! Merci!
As for my career journey, I consider myself very lucky. When I quit my heinous job in the movie business and decided to try making a go of it as a potter, I knew that I was making a lot of sacrifices. I assumed that I was sacrificing any chances of success, money, fame, or glamour to pursue my passion for clay. I was totally fine with that sacrifice if it meant I would be happy.

When I first started my business, my idea of success was spending my weekends hawking my wares at rain-soaked craft fairs. Just being able to find an audience for my work would have been enough. So, I'm ecstatic to have the unexpected and quite fun design gig I have now.

My transition from production potter to furniture, textile, lighting, and interior designer involves lots of serendipity and pluck and luck and thought. I think that for me the most important thing was thinking of my work in a philosophical way rather than purely looking at the formal characteristics of my designs. In other words, when I first started I thought of myself as the "striped pottery guy". But, then I thought about what the point of my stripy pots was. I realized that I was trying to say a lot with my hand-thrown stripy pots. They were about good design and craftsmanship and modernism and they were definitely happy, unlike the dour minimalism that was so common.

The formal language was stripy pots, but the point of my work was Happy Chic. Suddenly, I realized that I could make improbable leaps in my work and my choice of media (from clay to pillows to furniture to retail design) as long as it all fell under the rubric of Happy Chic. When you look at my collection, you will see lots of different products and colors and patterns, but I hope that the main thing you see is a consistency of spirit and a lot of beautiful stuff!

I love Jonathan's Happy Chic aesthetic. How great to have a job that makes you happy and allows you to spread happiness to others. Jonathan's partner is Barney's Creative Director Simon Doonan, another multi-hyphenate who balances the occasional sassy appearances on America's Next Top Model (one of my faves!), with his regular column in the Observer and his Barney's gig. What a great creative couple. I love them!