Check out the show this weekend March 25-29, 2015 at the Direct Energy Centre (Canadian Exhibition Place)!
For the first-time visitor, the One of a Kind craft show can be overwhelming due to the influx of people and strollers, never-ending carpeting, high vaulted ceilings with harsh, fluorescent lighting, and an undistinguished sense of where booth section types start and end. But wondrously, there are guidebooks and maps, a featured artisans section in the middle of the exhibit room, and service staff who can kindly help you make your way around the seemingly vast array of choices you come across as you move from aisle to aisle, or dart from one corner to the next interesting booth of products you lay your eyes on next.
Naturally, I am drawn to a variety of different things - bright colours, dainty jewellery, ornate lace, organic soaps, industrial recycled metals - you name it - I have a knack for a lot of different niches. Of course, I had to stick to my goal in mind: looking for intricate products that could inspire me to design two potential FÅÇÅDE projects, silk scarves and leather/wood engraving or woodprint.
Today, I narrowed down my search for vendors:
screen-printers, those that designed scarves, silks, pocket squares, ties, leather bags... then went on a random tangent and spontaneously explored after I had visited the following...
Screen-printing and fabrics
Natasha Patterson (
Whiteout Workshop) from Alberta screenprints on t-shirts, infinity scarves, mini pouches amongst other textiles. She also experiments with screenprinting on wooden panels which she stains a variety of tints to give off a warm finish. She has a great theme of the kitschy outdoors (i.e. catalogue cutouts of bicycle ads, trees, birds, cameras) Great use of colours too invokes a warm living room feel of motifs. Miniature rabbits, shelving, and fixtures all decorate her teal-painted booth.
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| Screenprinted infinity scarves and t-shirts at Whiteout Workshop |
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| Screenprinted Panels(Wood) Whiteout Workshop |
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| Whitespace Workshop Made in Alberta |
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| Whiteout Workshop Packaged Infinity Scarves |
Heidi from Whistler photographs and paints hyper-saturated images onto her textiles - using a sublimation process she uses her own photographed images as the printed visual texture for her set wearables. I was amazed at the similarity in her toques! Double lined with a cotton-spandex mix, and made to be worn inside out! Great minds think very alike :) (I wish I took more photos at the show - I looked at my phone later and realized I only had two from her booth. Hence the product photos from her website)
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| Heidi the Artist: Leggings in many colourful prints |
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| Heidi the Artist: Pretty silk chiffon scarf |
I immediately fell in love with when I spotted her colour palette from afar - a wash of 'pastel neutrals' - you know sand, bone, flesh, ivory, light grey, lilac - very soft and muted colours that look great on all skin tones! Anyone who knows me well, knows I love the middle of the colour spectrum - all nudes, neutrals, greys, the
in between colours as I like to call them. She experiments organically with using walnut as her screenprinting dye, staining her cotton-silk blended fabrics with various tones of brown. She jokingly admitted to crushing up her own
iron supplement pills, which creates a chemical reaction of darkening the intensity of the brown colour. Cute, cute.
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| Apothecary display at Tania Love |
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| Trying on my favourite Tania Love silk scarf! Super lightweight and pretty |
I was walking around the
Rising Stars &
Etsy Creators section and was instantly drawn to
Natalie Eldershaw's work as
Print and Needles. Her general aesthetic for woodland, third-eye chakras, mandalas, the female hippie figure, and deerheads resonates very closely to my own. (
I swear we have never met before or encountered each other's work) She tie-dyes fabric, silk-screens, and sews her fabric all from her own home. I ended up buying a sweet silk-screened change purse from her as well to keep all my business cards collected from the day.
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| Prints and Needles Screen-printed Tote Bag |
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| Prints and Needles Screen-printed Clutch Bags (left) and Lunch Bags (right) |
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| Prints and Needles Change Purse with a |
Leather Goods and Heavy-duty Printing
I was drawn to seeking out
Uppdoo, after mentally favouriting a limited edition purse they designed for OOAK's Water-Themed Competition. They design and manufacture luxury and custom-made wallets, change purses, and cross-over purses that contain two different components: a hand-held cosmetics bag component in different patterns + a leather casing with a strap to hold it all in, in different colours - black, nude, brown. After speaking to the owner,
Ricky Shi, I learned the water-themed purse was printed with a custom and delicate water image by another vendor at the show,
Resurfaced (that's teamwork guys!)
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| The Uppdoo Water-themed Purse with custom printed leather case |
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| Uppdoo Custom Purse: Choosing a body with a leather casing |
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| Uppdoo: I love it! the tassels and the gold-toned zipper too. |
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| Uppdoo: Two ltd. edition purses exclusive to OOAK. One on the left is made of recycled cork! So cool. |
PART II with more reviews in my next blog post. STAY TUNED!
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