Photos from my walk to work last week…
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New Orleans
New Orleans Style King Cake Necklace, made by Flambeaux Design Company
Want to see what I did all day Sunday? Here is the beginning of it:
This is the first in this year’s series of Larry Ragusa king cake videos. There will be one per week, now through Mardi Gras! (You might remember me posting about these last year.) You won’t see me in front of the camera for these – I’m just helping out behind the scenes! (Although I did spend this morning learning how to use iMovie and making my first webcam video. Don’t worry – it’s not THAT kind of webcam video – it’s a submission video for a crafty tv show. I can’t let you in on any extra details right now, but keep your fingers crossed that I’ll be able to tell you more soon!!!)
What else? Oh yeah! This Saturday, January 14th you can find me at the The Crossroads Arts Bazaar At The New Orleans Healing Center on St. Claude Avenue. They’ll be doing an all day art market from noon til 9pm. There will be complimentary wine (!!!), and Cafe Istanbul (inside the building) will be showing the Saints playoff game on the giant screen in high definition and surround sound.
What else have I been up to lately? Besides the usual, I’ve been prepping my spring event schedule, and I’ve also been working on a new little side project blog, Cool Stuff We Like. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s been fun so far!
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My friend Eileen is a local jewelry artist and a wonderful woman. She’s the sister of another friend who is in Noisician Coalition with me. (Only I knew them both separately for quite sometime before I found out they were brother and sister! Only in New Orleans…)
I’ve been carrying some of her work at local events during the holiday season, including the holiday ornaments with artwork by her mom and brother. You see, her husband lost his job just a few short weeks before Christmas, and they have young children, and suddenly Eileen’s jewelry sales became the primary income for the family. She was already planning to expand her line this year and start doing more wholesale to boutiques. She’d even registered for a booth at the Dallas Market wholesale tradeshow this month – all before they found out about her husband’s job. Now she’s been scrambling to make sure she can get there, and she could really use some help.
Eileen currently has a Kickstarter page up for her Bygone Beads line – which is crafted exclusively from vintage glass Mardi Gras beads, some of which are up to 90 years old! She’s trying to raise the funds to make sure she can launch this line nationally at the Dallas Market later this month. She’s got some great rewards available for backers – plenty of handmade goodies!
There’s just a few short days left in this Kickstarter campaign – it’s all or nothing, so if the project doesn’t get funded all the way by Thursday January 5th, Eileen won’t be able to make it to Dallas Market. If you can, please pledge or pass this message along to anyone you know who might be interested. Eileen is a great woman, and she totally deserves to launch her line and bring her vision of New Orleans past and present to the rest of the country!
Bygone Beads on Kickstarter
Bygone Beads on Facebook
Eileen’s Etsy shop
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A little belated shout-out goes to my friends at InvadeNOLA for including my Skeleton Cameo Necklace in their holiday shopping guide in the 2nd issue of the InvadeNOLA Guide to New Orleans. THANK YOU!!!!
If you haven’t seen it already, you should head over and check it out. They also featured a lot of my favorite NOLA brands, including Shultzilla, Dirty Coast, Branch Out, Defend New Orleans, Brandi Couvillion and some fellow New Orleans Craft Mafia members: BongaChopShop and Flambeaux Design Company.
Another one of my favorite free online fashion magazines, VivaLaModa, is back with a new issue. VivaLaModa focuses on handmade & vintage fashion themes, as well as new and emerging designers. To celebrate their newest issue, VivaLaModa is doing a giveaway of a $50 gift certificate for an Etsy shop (the winner will choose their favorite Etsy shop, since site-wide gift certificates do not exist yet for Etsy). To participate, people just have to subscribe to email updates, letting them know when the newest issue comes out: http://www.vivalamoda.net/mailing.html
The winner will be chosen from the mailing list emails a week before the new issue (March 2012) is out. The giveaway is explained in the first pages of the magazine. Check it out here.
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An extra special reason for why you should come to the New Orleans Craft Mafia’s 6th Annual Last Stop Shop holiday party & craft market tonight (and why you should get there early):
Free goodie bags for the first 25 people. My awesome messenger tote bags filled with handmade treats from our whole gang!
AND an extra special reason you should come to my Peek-a-boo Pop-Up Shop this weekend:
Super fun handcrafted burlap pillows with silly Southern sayings. This is the collaborative project of Kerry of Bayou Salvage and her mom. These were really popular at the last edition of our Pop-up Shop, and they’re sure to be a big hit again. Can’t come? You can order online at their Etsy shop, I Reckon, but hurry because this weekend is the cut-off for Christmas delivery.
Hope to see you this weekend! Have fun and happy holidays!!
Event details:
New Orleans Craft Mafia’s 6th Annual Last Stop Shop
Thursday, December 15, 6-10pm
The Big Top, 1638 Clio Street, New Orleans, LA
Peek-a-Boo Pop-Up Shop
Saturday & Sunday, December 17-18, 9am – 6pm
Color Me NOLA, 4815 Magazine Street, Unit 2, New Orleans, LA
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Friday night I went to support some of my favorite local fashion designers at Haute & Handmade: A Showcase of Southern Contemporary Couture, a fashion show at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. My friend Kerry Fitts, of Bayou Salvage and the New Orleans Craft Mafia (you know, the one I’m doing the Pop-up Shop with this weekend??) was one of the featured designers! Plus some of my other local favorites, like Andrea Loest and Amanda Deleon, were to be featured as well, so I didn’t want to miss it.
I spent some time in the lobby, waiting for the show and people watching with some other New Orleans Craft Mafia members, including the ever so stylish Rebekah of 504 Stitches and Heather of Unique Products:
Then it was on to the show! I fell absolutely in love with the colorful pieces of Lorna Leedy of Fancy Pony Land:
My co-worker Rachel modeled for Rebecca Rebouche, and had amazing forest-child hair for the occasion!
I knew I was going to love the designs by Andrea Loest and Amanda Deleon:
And of COURSE I loved the pieces by my friend Kerry of Bayou Salvage!!
The 12-year-old wunderkind fashion prodigy Grayson Gold was a crowd favorite:
And of course the featured designer of the evening, Natalie “Alabama” Chanin, put a beautiful collection of clothes down the staircase runway:
Afterwards, a few of us went out with Kerry & her parents to celebrate at the nearby The American Sector restaurant at The National WWII Museum. All in all, a fabulous evening!
I’m adding some more pictures from the evening to my Flickr page if you want to see even more!
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