Texture Clothing: Comfortable, Sustainable & Pretty

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Teresa Remple from Texture Clothing. I've been buying Texture Clothing for years now - first at I Heart Rummage shows, then at outdoor festivals and most recently at Urban Craft Uprising. Her clothes are soft and comfy - exactly the kind of thing you want to slip on to run to Sunday brunch - or wear to work - or laze about the house in. Basically, you'll just never want to take Texture off.


Comment on this post and you'll be entered to win a pair of Knit Mitts! Heck yes! They come in all kinds of awesome color combos. And if you're all smitten with the rest of Texture, you can use the coupon code: pretty20 to get 20% off at checkout. Now don't say I never did nothin' for ya. Get on it though, the code expires one month from today.

Now, I can never seem to interview someone like a normal person so I ended up asking Teresa a bunch of weird questions. Following are the ones that she deemed okay to answer.

Q: To your knowledge, do you have all your teeth?

A: *Yes, even the 4 wisdom teeth I had to have pulled out.  I had my dentist drill holes in them and added them to a sweet macramé hemp necklace!



Q: How and why and when did you start Texture?

A: *I think it was about 10 years ago now…after studying design at night school, and thinking that I was going to get into costume design for the theatre, I decided to put a biz plan together and start a line.  I borrowed some money and started sewing!

The comfy skirt is one of my favorites.

Q: House or apartment?
A: House

Q: Do you have an evil cat?  
A: Nope, but the neighbours’ cats keep the rats away…

Q: If monkeys came down from space and told you that they wanted to take away your favorite thing - what would you tell them to take? (keeping in mind that they can read your thoughts and will demolish you if you lie) 
A: This is a difficult one! I sorta want to say my ‘morning cuppa coffee’.  So I’ll say that. final answer.

Q: What do you dream of doing that you're not doing yet?  
A: Speaking Spanish.

Q: What do you do besides run Texture?  
A: Hike, dance (salsa), can locally grown food, travel to sunny destinations in which to CHILL OUT.

Q: Where do you eat food and what kind of food is your favorite?   
A: As of late, a very rare steak is at the top of my list…I have also been enjoying Vietnamese food.  (the tamarind tree, in seattle, is amazing!)

Post Pants: I'm coming for you.

Q: What is the last class you took?  
A: A workshop on textile art (screen printing, among other things…)

Q: Have you ever been walking around and smelled feet and then realized that it was your own feet?
A: That just happened to me last night.  I promptly washed my feet.

Q: Do you have any clothing that isn't Texture? Where is it from?  
A: I like wearing clothing made by friends of mine!  Togs Design (Tabitha Savoie:Vancouver, BC), Rebe (Debby Weiss: LA, CA), Sweet Skins (Mira Farin:Eugene, OR)

Q: How do you celebrate things? 
A: By gathering with loved ones…eating well…drinking a cocktail.  The usual.

Okay, that is all people. Leave a comment on this post and you will be entered to win a pair of sweet Knit Mitts. One winner will be selected on Monday, March 21st, 2011.

And remember, you can get 20% off your Texture purchase by using couponcode: pretty20. It's good for an entire month from the date of this post.

Best Mail Day Ever!

I think some of you are aware of how very much I like to get mail.

Others of you might understand how awesome Chocolate is. Yes, I capitalized Chocolate and bolded it. It deserves to be capitalized and bolded. It's that good. 

And finally, there are those of you who may not understand it - but who have definitely seen my obsession with glitter and potty humor. 

Now, today - the mail brought me all of the above. Plus, it make me feel a little famous. Yes, famous-ish.

The first package I opened was a little painting I traded some Shower Art to She Said Pop for. Yes, it says, "Glitter Poop." Yes, yes it does. I'm the luckiest lady ever on the whole planet.

I'd also like to mention that She Said Pop also sent me two nails - so that I can hang up my painting right away. Those of you who sell art: take note. I didn't even know how much I would love and appreciate a gesture like this - but I do. I do. Whenever I buy art, I can never find anything to hang it up with so it sits around until I can make it to the store to buy nails. So - thank you. Thank you. thank you. Everyone should do this. 

The second package was a mystery. I wasn't expecting anything else in the mail. Although, I should say that with the caveat that I have just about the worst memory ever on the whole planet so it is entirely possible that I was expecting something in the mail.

Anyway, I opened the package and it was filled with goodies and treats covered with chocolate from the folks at Meylah. How awesome are they? They sent me chocolate and they made me feel famous-ish.

The best part: My husband is out of town this week so I don't even have to share any of them. Yes!

Unanimous Craft: Reporting from the Craft and Hobby Association Conference

Next weekend 1/29-2/1 is the Craft and Hobby Association Conference and Trade Show. Donate to my Kickstarter campaign to fund my airfare for the conference. Then, just sit back and relax while I send you valuable info from the conference via the Unanimous Craft blog. You get cool rewards for donating. You get awesome coverage of the conference. You get it all, baby.

What Can Unanimous Craft Do For You

The question I am asked most often is, "What the heck is Unanimous Craft?" My best short answer is that Unanimous Craft is like Yelp for the crafty community.


I thought I would identify some tangible things you can do with Unanimous Craft to help your small business (and a few things you and your small business can do to help Unanimous Craft.)


THE BASICS
What is Unanimous Craft?
Unanimous Craft is a directory of resources for indie business. People can create listings for resources that they find useful -- and that they think others would find useful. These resources are tagged and organized on Unanimous Craft to make them easy to find and discover.


What are Resources?
Resources can be lots of things: a video tutorial, an excellent blog post, websites for suppliers, indie shops, your own Etsy shop, your blog and your friend's blog. Anything that is related to the crafty community or that might help you run a small indie business.


WHAT CAN UNANIMOUS CRAFT DO FOR YOU?
Increase Your Google Ranking
You know how people are always telling you that you need inbound links - Unanimous Craft is great for that. What's an inbound link? Any link from an external website that points to your website. Inbound links help to increase your ranking in Google searches. If you have a bunch of credible sites linking to your site - you move up in the search result list. Hot damn!


How do you do it?

• Add your Etsy shop as a resource.
• Add your blog as a resource.
• Add your Facebook Fan page as a resource.
• Add your Twitter account as a resource.
• Review these tutorials on how to create a user account (you'll need one to create resources) and then create resources if you need help

Get Feedback from customers
Ask your customers to review you on Unanimous Craft. They will need a user account (to prevent people from stuffing the ballot box) - they, when they visit your page they will see a button that says, "Review this resource." After clicking on that, they rate you from 1-5 stars and then write a review. These reviews move your resource up and down in the popularity contest. The five most popular resources are shown on most pages of the site - including the front page.


Promote Your Individual Blog Posts
When you write a blog post that others might find especially useful, add it as a resource on Unanimous Craft.


Use Tags to Group Stuff
Use tags on your resources to group them together. If you have a street team, ask all your members to add their Etsy shop and include a specific tag that identifies your street team. Then, you can give everyone the url for that tag and you'll be able to see everyone's resources in a big list. For example, our Seattle street team is EtsyRAIN. We had our members create listings that included the tag: etsyrain. Now, when you click on the tag "etsyrain" on any listing, you see the entire list.


You can do the same thing with everyone's Facebook fan pages and blogs - and use the resulting list to follow everyone in your group. It's a great way to get organized without YOU having to update a million documents.



Write Reviews
Each time you write a review, your profile picture shows up in the upper right corner of the Popularity Contest page. This links to your profile on Unanimous Craft. This is especially good if you are a Premium Member and have an expanded profile.


Make Lists
Make a list of your favorite resources, or resources that share a common theme. You could make a list of all the yarn shops in your town, supply stores in your area, shops that buy handmade items on consignment, members in your area's Etsy Street Team or vendors in an upcoming craft show. The options are pretty much endless. Once you have created your list - share it with others by posting a link to it in forums or sending it to friends who might be interested.


If you create a list of awesome websites that you want to post in the Etsy forums, make the list on Unanimous Craft and then link to it from the Etsy forum post. That way you can tag your list to be found in Google searches and add a paragraph or two about you and your shop to the description of the list. Check out this great list of places to advertise and promote your shop as an example.


WHAT CAN YOU DO FOR UNANIMOUS CRAFT?



Make Yourself a Resource Owner
Set yourself up as the owner of a resource. This connects your resource with your profile on Unanimous Craft. Your picture will be shown on the resource page under the heading "Resource Owner."


Become a Regional Craftologist
In exchange for reporting on crafty events in your area, you'll get free advertising and other benefits. To apply, fill out this Regional Craftologist application. Get more details about the requirements.


Become a Premium Member
For just $60 for a full year of membership you get access to some special benefits. You get a more robust profile that gives you the option to link to your shops and social networking sites, front page features, discounts on advertising, special attention from yours truly and a shout out several times a year in Twitter #FF posts. Read about all the great stuff you get.


Advertise
Help support Unanimous Craft by advertising your own shop or blog. Rates are recalculated on a monthly basis determined by site traffic. Currently, one month of advertising is $30 for regular members and $20 for Premium Members. Check out the details.


Tell Your Friends
If you have crafty friends, tell them about Unanimous Craft. Recommend our Facebook Fan page to your friends. #FF our twitter handle: @unanimous_craft to your followers. Blog about us (and grab any of the images off our Share the Love page), add a sentence to your follow up email for orders that asks people to review you on Unanimous Craft, post links to lists or resources that you think are great in crafty related forums.


THANK YOU
I think that about covers it. The Intermediate Level at least. Thanks for making this project such a pleasure to work on. It's takes a lot of effort - for sure - but it's also really, really fun.

Urban Craft Uprising, Winter 2010

 

Okay, so to say that I went a little over board at Urban Craft Uprising is putting it lightly. For sure. It can't be helped though. When one sees a bowl supported by ceramic baby arms, one has to purchase it immediately. Kniffin Pottery. They're neat.

I was vending at UCU -  selling Shower Art with Mr. Gale - so I didn't have as much time as I wanted to wander around all the booths. I did make sure that I took several quick passes through everything and that afforded me enough time to at least spend twice what I had budgeted so I guess I actually had more than enough time to look around.

Urban Craft Uprising is my favorite show. Hands down. Crafty Bastards and Crafty Wonderland (next weekend in Portland) are tied for a close second (only because they both involve travel). Oh, wait. But then there's the Renegade shows. Ugh. Okay. They're all so good.

The first day of Urban Craft is my favorite day of the year because it's the day when I know there will be another whole day of Urban Crafting.  Yay~! The second day of Urban Craft is the saddest day of the year because I spend the whole day thinking about how it's almost over. Sniff.

It's a great show in many respects. It's well run and organized. Everyone really seems to sell tons. There are bazillions of people around (9800 this year!). Great vendors are selected through the jury process. Lots of help from volunteers. Crafty book author signings. Crafty demonstrations. And this year - FOOD vendors! Yay!

Normally the concession stand at the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall is open and food sales aren't permitted. This year no concession stand (What? No pretzels and hot dogs? Okay by me!) and instead there were vendors selling awesome soups (5 different kinds each day!), cookies, candies and breads. I had soup from Got Soup? both days - Pumpkin Coconut Thai soup on the first day and Chicken with Wild Rice on the second day. Both delicious!

Here's my one piece of constructive criticism: The food was on one side of the room. The tables were on the other side of the room. The soup bowl was really full. I had to walk my soup through the crowd to get to a table. Dangerous. I made it - but not without yelling, "Hey, I've got soup here. Watch it!" a couple of times. Luckily it's a problem easily solved by either moving the food or filling the soup bowls less full. One of those solutions has to be devoid of red tape and bureaucracy. All that said, there were probably tables right next to the soup that I just didn't see. Let's not remove that from the realm of possibility, okay.

Our two days were filled with inspiring, creative vendors and the nicest customers ever. A friend of mine came by the booth and exclaimed, "People are waiting in line to buy art!" Pretty cool. Pretty darn cool.

Some Stuff I Bought:

Oh my. I got a handful of these "You Shitty Cat" cards. How could anyone resist? Well, anyone with a cat anyway. Especially my cat.

I plan to give them to my cat for every holiday. (and if you're looking for a really loud, annoying cat - please do let me know!)

These are made by Kyle of Power and Light Press. She is in the process of raising money on Kickstarter to build a mobile print shop in the back of an old delivery truck. Help her out.

My awesomely hilarious friend Moxie  (who is also the President of Urban Craft Uprising) wrote this book, I Felt Awesome.

It's super Funny. Perhaps - and I do not say this lightly - the funniest craft tutorial book ever written.

Moxie is not the most excited about shameless self-promotion which is why it was super fun to buy her book and wait in line to make her autograph it. Bbwwwwwahahaahahahahah! Squirm!

Awesome!

This is Moxie.

She is obsessed with needle felting. For reals. She makes fantastic needle felt sculptures and sells kits so you can learn how to needle felt too.

It's like she's sort of the needle felting champion of the world.
If that kind of thing existed.








More Stuffs I Bought and People I Met: 

Emily from Tako Fibers: http://www.takofibers.com/	Texture Clothing: http://www.textureclothing.com/	Tender Loving Empire: http://www.tenderlovingempire.com Tiny Boat Sculpture by www.cartoonmonster.etsy.com
Old School Stationers letterpress calendar: http://www.oldschoolstationers.com/	MeMe Cosmetics: http://www.memecosmetics.net/	Bag from Xobruno (who inspired me to start framing my embroidered doodles) http://www.xobruno.com/ and my new Urban Craft Uprising apron.
This is for reals the best soap in the world. Estrella: http://www.estrellasoap.com/	Awesome headband from Schmancy: http://www.schmancytoys.com/	Vegetable bag from Wonder Thunder: http://www.wonder-thunder.com/, Truffle Sea Salt by Secret Stash Sea Salts: http://www.secretsalts.com/ and Crewel embroidery kit from Tako Fibers: http://www.takofibers.com

Crafty Bastards - The Vendor Edition #2

Let's go over a few of the peoples I had time to meet during Crafty Wonderland.

Artist, Robert Ullman from Atombombbikini.net was there. Finally, something at a craft show I can buy for my husband thet he'll really actually totally like. In fact, whenever I ask The Mister if there is anything he wants -- he says, "Bring me back something with boobs on it and I'll be happy." Finally, I was able to make his boob dreams come true.

I also met Diane Koss from Cutesy but Not Cutesy.

I was walking by her booth and did a double-take because she had a bunch of plush monsters with horns that looks sort of similar to this artier monster with horns that I recently purchased at Schmancy (the worlds best vinyl toy and plush store right between my job and my house).

Mine has the Boston skyline on its tummy and has a tiny red bird on its horns.

I fell in love with it. Anyway, when I saw the similar monsters at the show, I was like, "hhhheeeeeeyyyyyyyy, are you....?" And she was.

It was great to meet her and I was pleased that I could recognize her other work based only on her style. 








 

I was doing my 50 mile an hour walk through everything (Well, I would have been if it had been possible to go that fast. Really it was more of a shoulder to shoulder jello wiggle-on with the rest of the crowd) and saw the girls can tell booth out of the corner of my eye. 

Sara Selepouchin's diagrams on tea towels and notebooks make my heart flutter. And the fact that they are hand screenprinted makes them even better. Do you need to know the anatomy of a banjo while you're doing dishes? I submit: yes, yes you do.

I even got to meet some Etsy folks while I was there - which is always like meeting someone famous... or - just someone who is way cooler than you.

Morgan and Julie were nice to me even when I made repeated trips to their booth to demand more raffle tickets for my customers.

Thanks ladies!

My last purchase was a pair of earrings from The Broken Plate Pendant Co.  I love posts and can never find them because everyone else seems to love dangles.

Juliet even helped me pick out the best ones when I couldn't decide between two pairs.




 

It's such a cool concept too. She breaks plates - and turns them into wearable art - earrings and pendants. It's a great way to honor those vintage dishes you've been collecting for no reason whatsoever.

They're gonna break someday, right?

When they do, scoop up the pieces and give Juliet a call.


 

And that ends our travels through the wonderland that is Crafty Bastards. Again, I highly recommend that you go.

For reals. You'll love it.

Crafty Bastards - The Vendor Edition #1

So by now we're all familiar with the wonder that is Crafty Bastards in Washington D.C. but let's get to know the handful of vendors that I was able to talk to while I was there.

#1 Let's talk about Caitlin at Rebound Designs. I put out a call on Twitter to see if anyone had an extra table I could borrow and she was kind enough to answer my plea.

Thanks Caitlin! You have to be a special kind of nice to drag an extra table to a craft show.

Caitlin invented the Book Purse - which is - exactly what it sounds like: a purse made out of a book. I can't think of a better way to create a memorial to your favorite book that might be fallin' apart.

#2 McBitterson's - Tasteless Wares. They were our awesome booth-mates (who also have a really awesome website). Sadly, it was so busy that we didn't really get much of a chance to talk - but it was obvious to me - even without much convo - that we share a similar sense of humor.

McBitterson's makes fantastically sarcastic things with paper and plush.

The giant plush cigarettes with little frowny faces were a big hit. "He's sad cause he's a carcinogen!"Bah-ha-ha!

Figured out while we were there that I had actually seen them at another craft show -- in Madison, WI at the Sixth Annual Summer Craftacular. Neither of us live there. How weird is that?

Jennifer Cooke and I must have shared some sort of florescent pink day-dream obsession. I saw her booth out of the corner of my eye while I was trapped in mine taking everyone's money (mmmwwwahahahahahahah!)

The show was almost over when I HAD to bolt over there and check out her stuff. She prints in multiple colors (one of them florescent pink) which makes for an effect that I personally love. I ended up with a shirt and a bag (I almost had to fight another woman for the bag).

Check out r a e b u r n  i n k if you have also been dreaming in florescent pink.

Also, if you're into making stuff yourself, check out her book Design Your Own Tees and try out some of the printing methods.

I love my purse. So do others. People comment on it where ever I go. So go get your own and quit eyeing mine.

And thus concludes the first edition of the Crafty Bastards vendor highlights. Look forward to edition #2 coming 'round the bend.