i'm back!!

the holidays kept me pretty busy this year. but here i am to share some news. my trunk show was fun and successful even though i didn't get many visitors. i think i will chalk that up to the fact that i didn't really promote as much as i should have. but one really amazing lady did almost all of her shopping at my show. she bought 8 items! her husband dragged her out before she spent another dime at one point and then she came back.
christmas was awesome, we got a gorgeous tree. i got a nintendo ds FINALLY!! so exciting!

and below take a peek at some of the new items that are in my etsy store right now!

sneak preview part 3

friends think maybe i am making things too complicated on myself by creating different accessories. but i say i have creative A.D.D. so i don't know what else to do with myself. maybe it also comes from the fact that i have a hard time buying accessories for myself so i have been having fun making them and it's really neat to make things that i haven't seen anywhere.

anyway here's a sneak peek at some more jewelry that will be at my HOLIDAY TRUNK SHOW on dec 12!

delicious town

i can't believe how amazing etsy is. i have a hankering for some type of maple syrup dessert. within seconds of searching on etsy i found this:
vegan pumpkin spice whoopie pies with maple cream filling!!!!! looks scrumptious for sure, i will have to order these VERY soon get yours by visiting nubbycakes etsy shop.

sneak preview part 2

ooh la la the ruffle clutch in charcoal reclaimed leather and studs! has a removable strap and organic twill interior. i wanna take it out drinking with me.

sneak preview

just finished this clutch yesterday, it's for my upcoming holiday trunk show dec. 12. made from reclaimed leather, it also features a removable strap, i'm hungry so that's all i can write.

holiday trunk show!!!!

during the holiday season i usually like to partake in various craft fairs but money has been a little scarce. the good news is that this has made a little fire under my behind to finally plan a holiday shopping extravaganza of my own. i am having my own holiday trunk show!!!

in my quest to offer a diverse selection of fine handmade goods i have taken up jewlery making, hammered pieces to be specific. i really like working with metal, it just another extension of all things beautiful to adorn yourself.

so, come on down!!!! december 12 from 11am - 5pm
it's the holidays, time to celebrate and shop. come by to mingle and find contemporary handcrafted items for the special people on your gift list.

sterling silver jewelry, knitted hats, reclaimed leather clutches & special guest homegrownheavyz: maker of deluxe sized skateboards!!

drink SHOP & be merry!!

next up

after lunch at randazzo's in brooklyn yesterday, i drove to cedarhurst with my leftover fried clams drenched in medium sauce, happily cramming them in my face at stop lights. the mission was to pick up some leather coats at the thrift store on central avenue for my reclamation process.

while absorbing the mindless exchange a lady was having with her bluetooth device shoved in her ear, i found a huge black trench coat - it had shoulder pads maybe i should keep them in case this '80's comeback gets really out of control - and a dusty mauve metallic jacket. pretty good score!

so today after cutting pipe for boilers - oh that's right, a little part time plumbing never hurt anyone - i got to dismantling the jackets.

so i have some work ahead of me.

delicious town

in my ever lasting crusade to stay healthy and lose a few lb's i try to come up with belly filling low-cal dishes. salads are a fun but mostly an unbearably unsatisfying meal for a true food addict such as myself. (i usually fill them with hearty additions.) with the days getting colder i have a need to bury my face in something substantial. i have no picture of this dish - sorry i know i am a super visual person so i'm sure this is truly annoying.

step in my recipe for vegetable stew:

butternut squash (i bought the pre-cut version from trader joe's)
onion - 1 whole small or half a large
carrots - 3 or 4
celery - 3 or 4 use the heart of celery with the leaves this has the flavor!
zucchini - 1
olive oil - enough to coat bottom of pot
salt - 1/2 tsp
pepper - 1/2 tsp
oregano - 1 tsp
cumin - 1/2 tsp
adobo (non msg version) - 1/2 tsp
paprika - couple pinches

very simple:
heat the olive oil on medium in a large pot - toss in butternut squash get a quick braise - chop up and add onions, carrots, celery and zucchini - sautee together until everything softens a little and add the spices - cook a little more and cover the veggies with water with until a little bit of the veggies are still peeking out - cover and simmer the pot for a half hour or until the stew thickens up and the veggies are all soft - serve and be happy.

i like.....

new jersey

this handmade button brings a smirk to my face. smirking is fun.
get one at ugly kitty's etsy shop.

oh YEAH!

most of the time i am a terrible procrastinator. i mean really really bad. i will walk by a pile of clean clothes 20 times and not fold them. it's really not cool at all. shamefully i will tell you that at times the pile of clothes will be on the bed and we sleep with them in the bed. gross.

it is a SHOCK that only yesterday i mentioned reusing leather from previously worn garments to create some of my clutches, and here is one already! amazing.....
i am keeping this one cause i think i should. take a look at my etsy store for more clutches.

eco shmeco

i hate that saying 'go eco', 'be green', 'save the earth'. call me a self hating hippie if you want. i'm happy people are being more considerate to the earth because we only get one, but bandwagoners are annoying. what do i mean by that? i don't know, my vocabulary is limited these days. it's not the sayings or that people are now being enlightened so much as what those sayings bring to mind that bothers me: tree-hugging, slow and low speaking, flowery people. yeeeeah duuuuude save the planet. stop it. just stop. do people actually behave that way or do they think that's how an earther is? i made up the word earther. it's another word for hippie.
maybe it's the ny'er in me but i tend to gravitate towards the loud, obnoxious and funny but educated earth lover. maybe that's going too far. i may not want some colossal sized guy junked up on wheat grass jumping on my table to tell me about his vegetable oil run ford van either. i'd push him off the table and laugh.
you might be asking yourself? why? why talk about this? cause this is a double pronged rant.
a) my dad is a hippie and he is a funny, sarcastic, joyous man. thank the stars. maybe not a full fledged off the grid hippie but we did what we could, mostly we tried not to make garbage. we recycled way before it was cool and had a compost heap.

so b) i'm faced with this issue all day when i make stuff. sometimes i look around and wonder am i just making another piece of junk that will end up in the trash? i think i might also start looking into buying old leather garments and ripping them up to make new stuff.

you know reduce, reuse, recycle duuuuuuuuude!

faux get about it!

new stuff in my store:

pardon my absence

from your life. I have been undergoing much thought about bungaloe, where it's headed and what i like to create. i finally got the faux leather i ordered about 2 weeks ago just in time to make something new and exciting for the Henri Bendel "open see" which was held on Oct 23rd.

well things just weren't going the way i thought they would, i didn't go. BUT i am not too sorry. the last two weeks have been again filled with doubts and questions about what i am doing and what i WANT to do. i spent a lot of time knitting - which is another creative outlet i really want to explore - and just letting things come. here's my newest design it's part of my 'fleather' line of bags and accessories.

that's it for now! i have more designs in the works, one of my other dilemma's is how to change my esty store, stay cohesive and not freak people out because i am completely changing direction.........

maple syrup is lovely

since i am avoiding work right now i thought it might be a good idea to write a lil sumpthin sumpthin on my blog. we recently went to vermont - i think it was 2 weeks ago?? we go there a lot during the winter to snowboard but i always miss the leaves turning extravaganza. it was amazing and lovely. had breakfast in manchester, went to a cute yarn store, drove up mount equinox:

went on an alpine slide at bromley mountain which was AWESOME!!!! also did some shopping in manchester it was a really fun little trip

busy busy

sneak peek of the new clutch design i have been working on:

it's zippered and folds over on itself with a snap closure, there is a slip pocket under the fold and two inner pockets.

take me to delicious town

i drove out to meet my bff in bklyn one night to pick up some stuff. after blabbing about whatever we decided to have something to eat. i remembered her telling me that there was an Ethiopian restaurant nearby when she first moved there. i really wanted to try it but there was also a BBQ place nearby (i heart BBQ, we both do) so we decided to scope out the Ethiopian joint and see if it was something worth giving up the precious space in our tummies that could've been filled with BBQ madness otherwise. there really wasn't much to debate it looked amazing, we could get BBQ anytime.

photo courtesy of Bati's website

the place is called Bati, located at 747 Fulton Street in Bklyn. it was really good, it's the only Ethiopian food i have ever had (yet), so i am no aficionado of African cuisine but we had an amazing time. it had the prefect amount of lighting, i hate eating in really bright places, i like ambiance, it was byob which was cool, our waiter was awesome and the food was great! i loved eating communally with my bestie and tearing off the injera to scoop the goodness into my face.

so i have been a little obsessed with our meal that night, for one thing, i'll eat meat, (the chicken stew was spicy goodness ) but i don't really like to eat too much of it. they had a variety of lentil, pea and chick pea dishes that i really liked and the collards were amazing! i needed to figure out a way to spice up my lentil and legume dishes so i started a search last saturday to find out more about Ethiopian dishes. i found out that there is a spice blend called berbere. i really didnt feel like going on a mad search to find all the spices to make a mix myself - i know laaaaazy! and cheap! hey, i am too busy sewing to be tracking down spices and grinding them up to make my own spice mixture. could i find it online?? could there be someone cool enough to make this blend on etsy?? oh there was!!!!!

step in emburke, a great spice shop i found on etsy: freshly made berbere!! and you get a really good amount i was scared i wouldn't get enough but it's a generous portion sure to keep me busy. smells amazing. put some on my tongue tastes amazing. now i just have to obtain some recipes.

annoying

you know what's annoying? when i wake up at 5am with great ideas about what i would like to write about and then i sit down here at my computer and completely forget.........

getting ready for the winter

every winter it's a struggle to find a hat that i like, is comfortable, not kiddie looking and doesn't let wind in my ears. so last year i bought a hat that was long and slouchy, it covered my ears, and was good but not tight enough around my ears. so i took what i liked about that hat, searched around at other hats for some inspiration and knitted this up by modifying an existing pattern i have for a ribbed hat:

it was pretty easy, if you like this hat and would like the pattern just leave me a comment!

faux leather and me

in trying to keep with a mostly eco product, and maybe someday all eco i am considering getting some faux leather. using organic canvas is awesome and i would like to keep using that plus some hemp. but adding some faux leather to my designs would be just splendid.
after months of research i have found two spots to get a more eco faux leather. although the best choice would be if they would start making it from plant cellulose. i couldn't find any like that.

turns out polyurethane is a better choice, but i also have found some that is produced in a less harmful way, which is a plus: no voc's and polyurethane breaks down and degrades unlike vinyl and pvc based pleathers. pleather sounds so uncool anyway. so what is the point of this early morning eco diatribe? i can't wait to dig into a new material and see what is possible, so far i have no idea how to sew faux leather, this could get messy.

fall handmade cavalcade a success!

my fellow {new new} team members put together a fall shopping extravaganza this past weekend. the fall handmade cavalcade was in beacon, ny (about 2 hours upstate) and it was fantastic. the best part of the cavalcade was travelling out of the dirty city and getting to know my teammates a little better. i don't get to see them in person too often so spending face to face time with them was awesome! and i met some girls from the hudson valley etsy team too, it was wonderous. also, i stuffed my face full of cookies and cupcakes so that in itself was worth the trip. here is my table:

printing elbow and much more.....

my elbow is killing me. i can only think that it's from a print job i did for a local church here. 200 shirts in one day all by myself, woe is me (it took me a couple tries to spell woe).

in other news, i'd like to share the process in which i make new screenprints. as you know they are mostly if not 100% inspired by my surroundings and in keeping with that here is the story about building houndstooth:
i really love the houndstooth pattern. i have a pair of flip flops from reef that are houndstooth patterened and they rocked, super rocked. but one of them broke......le sigh.
so i created a new pattern, it's houndstooth but the shape for the pattern is made from this picture of the dayton towers building in my town of rockaway:

so from here i used my trusty computer to create a houndstooth design and cut it out from a spot on the picture:

the next step was to take this and turn it into a pattern:

after that i printed it out on transparency film, and used the film to create a screen, which i used to screenprint this design onto my fabric and then i sewed my fingers to the bone to create bags like these:

and that's that!

rest your pretty little head

i had a lunch meeting with my business manager (aka my bff since kindergarten) complete with arroz con pollo lovingly made by her mom. we decided i need to simplify things a little. taking on too much is making things confusing for me. there are some super women who can work, cook, clean, make stuff, run a small business, etc. without losing it - not to say i've lost it - but i need to maybe be a little less complicated with my offerings for the time being.

as anyone who has been reading this smut may be aware. besides sewing, i also have an affection towards screenprinting, so lets smash the two together to produce some items that are useful and pleasing to look at.

starting with throw pillows, maybe not the most original idea, but too bad cause i like them, so whatev. it's like having a little piece of artwork on your couch.

this is my first attempt, a screenprint of and old school train with the atomsmasher from playland in the background. printed on a handsewn pillowcase i made with unbleached cotton canvas.

stay tuned for more designs and shopping details.