There’s still time left to apply – deadline is Sunday, August 1st. From the Puces Pop 2010 crew:
Our 6th edition of Puces POP is coming up and it’s time to send in those applications! Puces POP returns along with Fashion POP, the Record Fair and Gear Swap, Lil’Biz and the newest addition to the family, Vintage POP! This year, the Puces POP weekend of crafty madness, kids workshops and DIY frenzy goes down on October 2nd & 3rd.
You know the drill!
Send over 3-5 good, clear pictures with your application.
If you have an Etsy site, a facebook group, a website or online store please send us a link.
Make sure you’ve filled out all the requirements of the application and make it good!
Tables are 6 feet for $100+ tx. and spaces are limited!
Sound good? We look forward to receiving your applications! Send them over to puces.pop@gmail.com subject PUCES POP APPLICATION 2010 by August 1st with the following info. Please do not hit reply to this email, but rather send us the application in another email. Thanks!
YOUR NAME & BUSINESS NAME
WHAT DO YOU MAKE?
WHAT FAIRS HAVE YOU DONE BEFORE/ PRESS?
DO YOU HAVE ANY SPECIAL REQUESTS?
WHY DO YOU WANT TO SELL AT PUCES POP & HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT US?
We look forward to seeing your new work!
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Notre 6e édition de Puces POP est de retour et il est temps de nous envoyer vos applications! Puces POP nous revient avec Fashion POP, la vente de disque et échange d’équipement, Lil’Biz et la dernière addition à la famille, Vintage POP! Cette année, la fin de semaine de frénésie DIY, d’artisanat et d’ateliers pour enfants se déroulera les2&3 octobre.
Vous connaissez la chanson!
Envoyez nous 3-5 photos qui représentent clairement votre travail.
Si vous avez un site Etsy, un groupe facebook, un site internet ou un magasin en ligne, envoyez-nous le lien.
Assurez-vous d’avoir bien répondu à toutes les requêtes de l’application.
Les tables mesurent 6 pieds et coûtent $100 + tx.
C’est bon? Alors allez-y! Nous avons hâte de voir ce que vous nous avez préparé ! Envoyez le tout à puces.pop@gmail.com avec le sujet APPLICATION PUCES POP 2010 avant le 1er août en incluant les informations ci-dessous. S’il vous plaît, ne répondez pas directement à ce courriel, mais répondez plutôt dans un autre courriel. Merci!
VOTRE NOM & VOTRE NOM D’ENTREPRISE
QUE FAITES-VOUS?
À QUELLE FOIRE AVEZ-VOUS PARTICIPÉ / PRESSE?
AVEZ VOUS DES REQUÊTES SPÉCIALES?
POURQUOI VOULEZ-VOUS PARTICIPER À PUCES POP?
COMMENT AVEZ-VOUS ENTENDU PARLER DE NOUS?
You may have noticed that Spin Off Stuff looks a little bit different today… the blog is getting a makeover! I wanted to make a few changes like move posts to the centre of the page, add new feature buttons to make it easier to navigate and get to the content you want, add more categories, etc. It’s been a bit tedious with several challenges but so far so good…I’m hoping to be done this weekend and will let you know soon how it went.
I know I’m late jumping on the Miu Miu 2010 Spring/Summer DIY bandwagon but I still love this line! The cat, dog, swallow and nude women prints are so iconic. So last Thursday we held a Pop-Up summer fashion accessories workshop on how to make your own Miu Miu summer brooches (read the workshop recap here).
Inspired by all these tutorials I used a different material for creating Miu Miu brooches and keychains: Shrinky Dinks! If you’re not familiar with SDs, it is plastic material that shrinks after you bake it. A must have for every crafter – there are so many uses for it. It was perfect for the brooches/keychains because the end result is really durable. You can find it at a big box craft store and occassionally in dollar stores (although usually these ones have images already printed on them).
Above are the Quick Fix photo instructions. Photos can be found on my Flickr page.
Below is the tutorial for creating your own DIY Miu Miu brooch or keychain:
DIY Project: Spring/Summer 2010 Miu Miu Brooches and Keychains
Materials
Shrinky Dinks
Permanent marker
Pencil crayons
Scissors
Toaster oven
Large paper bag/cardboard
Glue gun
Plastic string (for cat whiskers)
Brooch backing or keychain hoop
Hole punch (if making a keychain)
1. Take a Shrinky Dink sheet (8×10″) and using a permanent marker trace out one of the images on the smooth side of the sheet. I used Miss at La Playa’s templates of a cat, swallow and nude woman and enlarged them. You can find those enlarged versions on my Flickr page.
2. You can colour in your image with pencil crayons on the rough side of the sheet (I decided not to to leave the brooch white). Then cut out the image, leaving the black outline intact.
3. Pre-heat your oven to 325F. Cut out a piece of brown paper bag or cardboard that will fit in your toaster oven. Place your cut-out pieces on to the bag and put in the oven. You will see your pieces start to shrink curl up onto themselves – not to worry because that is the magic of shrinky dinks! They are ready to take out of the oven when the pieces lie flat.
The photo above shows how much they shrink – to about 1/3 of its original size and much thicker. Plus the paper is hot – use an oven mitt to remove the paper.
4. Using a glue gun, attach the cat’s head to the body. Then add whiskers: I cut out plastic string and glued them to the front of the cat’s face.
5. Then attach the brooch backing to the back of the cat.
6. Your brooch is done!!
Here’s a blue cat keychain I made: before you pop the pieces in the oven, hole punch a hole at the top of the piece. Also if you colour the image, you can use clear nail polish to seal the back of your piece so that the colour doesn’t get on your clothing.
Here’s some photos from last Thursday’s secret special pop-up fashion accessories workshop at Young Jane‘s on Dalhousie St. in the Market. We whipped up some Miu Miu-inspired brooches using shrinky dinks and Pucci-inpsired pattern wrap bracelets. Tutorial on the brooches in next post!
Thanks to Mika at YJ for being such a fabulous host!
Here’s part 2 of my Saturday stroll through the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition (TOAE) last weekend at Nathan Phillips Square. In the last post, I featured shots of artists who work in mixed media/sculpture. This post features highlights from screenprinting/silkscreening/illustration artists. There was lots of fresh work at the Exhibition I hadn’t seen before – it was hard choosing which one to take home.
If you couldn’t make it this year or are curious to know what kind of work is shown, hopefully this will give you an idea. More photos can be seen in the 2010 TOAE set on my Flickr page.
Here’s some of my screenprinting/silkscreening/illustration faves (with some background info mainly taken from each artists’ website):
Leyre Arroyo Abaroa‘s work focuses on the idea of shared interior spaces with a standard of social behaviour and the interaction between people in these spaces (e.g. having drinks a bar, bridal parties). She use a mixture between painting and illustration.
Beth Frey‘s illustrations were on display. Although her background includes painting, sculpture, performance, and video, she became attracted to the portability and simplicity of materials that drawing provided, and now primarily works with pens and markers on paper, working elements from her other disciplines into her pieces.
Daphne Gerou is a Toronto based visual artist whose overall art practice points to drawing as a primary medium. Positioning cuddly animals in the context of war and darkness, her works infuse a sense of eerie innocence lost and gained.
bespoke uprising was created in 2007 by Roisin Fagan in Halifax, Nova Scotia. All Roisin’s products are handmade, from dyeing the cloth to screenprinting her original drawings to embellishment, pattern drafting and sewing. Her hope is that her company will “bring Maritime romanticism and an artisanal flare into nurseries the country over.’
Over towards the north-east end of Nathan Phillips Square was work from current students (a fave area of mine to check out at fairs and exhibitions). Sabrina Scott is an emerging student artist who’s work mixes nostalgic images of religion and Canadian history with uncanny futuristic elements such as UFOs and robots. She also produces handmade journals. She won the Best of Mixed Media (Student) award.
The work of Neil Lapierre, another emerging student artist, were illustrations which featured bright surreal Cubist-esque figures in unusual situations.
Three hours of intense viewing during hot sunny weather – so much to see at the TOAE! Here’s a photo of Nathan Phillips Square while I was taking a break. If you are planning on going to Toronto next summer try to fit this Exhibition in!
I took a mini-trip to Toronto this past weekend and found out just in time that the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition (TOAE) was on. So I hiked over to Nathan Phillips Square in the heart of the city on Saturday and strolled for over three hours through the hundreds of white tents showcasing established and new artists from all over Canada. Thanks to the mint chocolate chip ice cream that kept me going through a the scorching Saturday.
The quality of work at the Exhibition amazing and it was refreshing to see all this talent in one place. As I walked around I was really drawn to mainly silkscreened/screenprinted/illustration pieces, as well as mixed media/sculptural pieces. So I’ve broken down higlights in two separate posts into these two separate categories.
For those of you who couldn’t make it this year or who wanted to apply and were curious to know what kind of work is shown, hopefully this will give you an idea. More photos can be seen in the 2010 TOAE set on my Flickr page.
First up mixed media/sculptural pieces with some context (mainly taken from each artists’ website):
Neil Klassen‘s large portraits marries tar with the stern faces of the Old West to draw comparisons between these rebels and the Big Oil culture experienced globally today. His work on view, Outlaws, aims to raise questions about the implications of the world’s dependence on oil as a resource.
Lizzie Vickery‘s large scale Digital C-prints capture everyday moments, some in minature form.
Magdolene Dykstra‘s figurative sculptures express snap shots of conflicted existence: hurt, depravity, brokenness mixed with hope. Each character develops from the interactions with the people around her.
Jenny Clark‘s ceramic work features maiolica glaze with nature inspired designs.
Gillian Farnsworth’s paintings use repeated house and landscape imagery as a vehicle to experiment with texture and materials. She uses rusted and polished steel, wood, plaster, collage, and encaustic applied in layers. Thematically they strive to express a personal experience while searching for a unique Canadian identity. They also address the organic versus the synthetic, in relation to our disappearing landscape and the rebuilding of artificial replacements.
Joan McNeilcollages are architectural and abstract, qualities which arise from her background as an architect. She works with all kinds of papers; painted paper, magazine cutouts, wallpaper, street posters, tracing paper, old drawings, old books, old letraset. The papers are glued on to a wood panel, sealed, and coated with epoxy resin which gives added depth and a shiny, hard finish.
Marjolyn van der hart‘s paintings are inspired by her memory, imagination and suspended moments of her daily life. Each painting is layered with several images, tissue paper and modeling paste. Through the use of texture, color, and contrasts of light, she aims to stop the viewer in their tracks and register the narrative.
Lucky Jackson uses bold lines and collage elements in her pieces . Vintage fabric, embroidered stitching, pastels, guache and wood grain are all employed to create graphic and strong, but still intimate and personal portraits
Last, and one of my favourites, is Marianne Corless work. Her large-scale 2-dimensional mixed media pieces are made largely from recycled fur. They include fur flags and fur portraits, including the Queen, the Queen Mum, Prince Charles, Celine Dion and Marilyn Monroe. designed to provoke thought about Canadian history, and to provide a sensual experience using the powerful qualities of the material.
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Next post: silkscreened prints/lithographs at TOAE!
I was super excited when local Ottawa knitting artist Greta Grip (check out her Winterlude Urban Cozy Artist profile) invited me to assist her with her “knitting big” installation at a group show at Blink Gallery last month. The show was called “Pop Shop” and was poking fun at the National Gallery of Canada across the street and their summer blockbusterPop Life.
Greta had created 14 ft knitting needles measuring 94 mm in diameter. She used long cardboard tubes and papier-maché that had been sanded down and then painted grey. For yarn, she ripped up large pieces of fabric and wrapped it into a ball.
A couple weeks before the show, we sat down with a needle each and whipped up a swatch of 10 stitches acrows and 10 rows down.
She added her name to the ends of the needles:
This was our finished swatch before the show:
Compare to the Guinness Book of World Records holder for largest knitting needles: Julia Hopson of Knit Wits, Penzance, Cornwall.
Julia knitted a tension square of ten stitches and ten rows in stocking stitch using knitting needles that were 6.5cm in diameter and 3.5 meters long. These were ten times the size of a standard 6.5mm and 35cm long knitting needle. The yarn was rope of 12mm in diameter. Does that mean Greta’s were a wee bit taller?
If you’re still in Ottawa post-Canada Day celebrations you’ve still got time to check out the Capital Craft Market in the Byward Market (celebration central). The CCM features 18 hip, modern & handmade designers from across eastern Canada and admission to the show is free. You’ll find stunning silver cuffs by Annie Lespérance, hip felted decor pieces from C Comme Ça, sweet, vintage-inspired dresses from Montreal label Simone’s Rose, and many more.
Here’s the details:
The Capital Craft Market
July 1-3 + 10am-5pm each day
Byward Market Square’s 2nd Level (George & William Streets) www.capitalcraftmarket.com
(Thanks to Urbanite Jewellery maker and show producer Krista Leben for passing the info on).
So for us Canadians this Thursday is Canada Day, which means it’s the country’s birthday and equally as important it’s a holiday and more time to DIY!
I’ll be posting a couple Canada Day-related tutorials this week to get you in the mood for celebrating the country’s 143rd birthday, whether you are lounging on your patio with a beer, somewhere abroad spotting backpackers with the Canadian flag sewed to their gear, or in Ottawa watching the fireworks at Majors Hill Park.
First up is how to make a Canada Day stencilled pennant bunting (or string garland), one of the more popular projects in the handmade scene right now (check out a great tutorial roundup courtesy of whipup). mixed with traditional Canadian symbols such as the maple leaf, the moose, hockey sticks and knitted toque (cue the cheesy closing ceremonies of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games). I love how such a simple idea as piecing fabric triangles together can completely transform a space, inside and outside, and how it’s so easy to make.
You’ll notice that rather than use red and white (colours of the Canadian flag), I opted to replace the white with a striped silver fabric (coincidentally it ended up looking like birch bark and so added some unexpected woodsy flair).
Fabric (I used red light cotton and striped silver fabric leftover from hemmed curtains or use any other colours/leftovers you have)
Black marker
Clear/white adhesive paper (Mactac)
Sponge brush
Black fabric ink
Stencils (Download and print the templates here: beaver, maple leaf, moose, canoe, hockey sticks, inukshuk, knitted toque, crown)
Pins
Sewing machine
Hairdryer (optional)
Iron (optional)
1. Create a triangle pennant template: Using your piece of cardboard, measuring tape and marker, draw a triangle approxiamtely 9″ wide by 11″ deep, then cut it out. You can find a template for a smaller triangle here.
2. Cut your triangle pennants: Pin or tape the template to the material.For the thicker silver fabric, I used pinking shears to cut out the triangles. (I cut out 4). For the lighter red cotton fabric, I cut one triangle and then a second one so that I could sew them together to make the pennant sturdier and hang better. (I cut out 10). If you buy thicker fabric for all pennants you can skip Step 5. For my bunting I had a total of nine pennants.
3. Prepare your stencils: Print out or draw your stencils. You can use the ones I’ve collected on one page here or create you own. Make sure its size is smaller than the centre of the triangle. (There should be about 1″ of space around). Trace each stencil onto the adhesive paper with the black marker. Cut out each stencil so that you have a negative.
4. Paint your stencils: Adhere a stencil to the middle of the triangle. I decided stencil would be on the silver pennants. Using your sponge brush, apply black fabric paint to your stencil making sure you get every nook and cranny. Repeat for each triangle using the different stencils. Tip: make sure the paint is dry before removing the adhesive otherwise you may lift up some of the paint. Use a hairdryer to speed up drying.
5. Sew sides together: While letting the paint dry, match up one red triangle with another red triangle and pin together. Using your sewing machine, sew along the sides leaving a small hole at the top. Turn inside out. Repeat for the rest of your red triangles.
6. Pin pennants on ribbon and sew: Unravel your ribbon and leave about 15″ of ribbon free. Pin one triangle at this point under the ribbon, then continue pinning each triangle so that the point of one pennant meets the point of another pennant underneath the ribbon. Using your sewing machine, sew down either side of your ribbon to the pennants to secure your triangles. Unravel another 15″ of ribbon then snip.
7. Optional: Iron your triangles so they are nice and flat.
Your Canada Day bunting|string garland is ready to hang! THE END
For inspiration on Canadian symbols and fashion I came across this au courant article from the Ottawa Citizen. Also, the Globe and Mail is teaming up with Facebook in the days leading up to Canada Day, asking Canadians about what our true national symbols should be. (E.g. I wanted to stencil poutine on a pennant but not sure how I could capture that). For all you Canadians out there, what symbols do you think should be added ? Are there any crafty-related ones that should be included? The closest one I could come to was a knitted toque. I’m sure you’ve got better ideas and I’d love to hear them!
Photograph by: Bruno Schlumberger, The Ottawa Citizen, June 2010 article on Canadian fashion here
I am so excited to be contributing to one of the best blogs in the city, Apartment 613, as a friendly, neighbourhood guest fashion columnist for the new series The 613 Style File!
Combining our love for mixing and matching prints and patterns, vintage and designer clothing and accessories, other fashion blogs around the world and a curiosity for why people dress the way they do, my friend Lauryn and I are joining forces to feature fashion eyecandy around Ottawa every third Friday of the month (usually). We’ll also try to provide some context as to what each person does in their everyday lives, their style influences, and what they like to do for fun in the city.
Although Ottawa’s not normally known for being a city full of stylish people we’re looking for those little nuggets that make you do a double-take and inspire you to pull out something interesting and fun for work the next day, for a night on the town or even doing your groceries. Goal: debunk the myth “the town that fashion forgot”and inject some quirkiness into the city.
In the future we hope to do more in-depth profiles and interviews and different themes as well (e.g. stylish senior citizens, velo fashion, awesome ties). If there’s certain themes you’d like highlighted or want to get involved, let me and Lauryn know.
So next time you’re on the street, watch out! You may see two snap happy girls out and and about asking to take your photo.
