Trillium Artisans Pop-Up Shop + Holiday News

I'm now working in downtown Portland, because Trillium Artisans is participating in the Pop-Up Shop program this holiday season!  We have a cute little shop located at 318 SW Taylor Street and we'll be open through December 31.  Then, it's back to Foster Road (our new location on Foster Road, since we moved the store one block east in mid-October, just a couple of weeks before we moved downtown!  It has been a whirlwind to say the least). 

So come see our little store if you are in the downtown area - we have lots of great gift ideas and everything is made from recycled and reclaimed materials by local artisans.

We are participating in the Little Boxes event on Black Friday - you could win an ipad just for shopping at local boutiques!  Get 10% off at participating stores with a receipt from one of the other stores.

We also have some events planned for every Thursday evening in December.  On Dec. 1 from 5 - 7 pm you can make Kanzashi Fabric Flowers with the one and only Sister Diane!  (I am super excited about this!)

These are some pictures of the shop that Lee took.  You can see more in this facebook album. 

I will be having a trunk show there on Tuesday, December 13.  Come visit me!  I'll be there all day from 11 - 7.

I'm not doing any holiday shows, so if you are looking for my items locally please visit Trillium or any of the other stores that carry my work such as Silver Moth, Presents of Mind, Knack, Collect Craft, Mag-Big, SCRAP's RE: Boutique, Redux, or Tender Loving Empire. 

Not local?  Order from my Etsy shop on Cyber Monday (Nov. 28) and get 25% off with the coupon code PDXETSY2011.  Check out other participating PDX Etsy shops here.

Chuck and I are off to our swing dancing class!  Happy holidays everyone!

Trillium Artisans 10th Anniversary Holiday Sale - Saturday, November 14

It's Trillium Artisans' 10th anniversary! Join us for our annual Holiday Sale and Open House.

Date:	Saturday, November 14, 2009
Time:	11:00am - 4:00pm
Location:	Trillium Artisans store
Street:	9119 SE Foster Road
City:	Portland, OR

Meet the artisans.
Enjoy wine and goodies.
Shop for locally handmade, eco-friendly, fair trade gifts, made from recycled and reclaimed materials.

Giving recycled is twice as nice!

Take 20% off your ENTIRE purchase during this event.

(Shop with us throughout the holiday season! Our regular store hours are Tuesday-Friday from 10 am - 6 pm. We'll also be open every Saturday from 11 am - 3 pm, November 21 - December 19.)

Preview our items online on our website, on Etsy, or on World of Good by eBay.

I'll be at the holiday sale this Saturday from 11 - 2, so come before 2 if you want to say hello to me - but it will be going on until 4, and everything is 20% off which is great! You'll find all kinds of beautiful work from more than 40 local artisans, including Eye Pop Art cuffs, clocks, mirrors, magnets, and suncatchers.

I work at Trillium on Tuesdays and Fridays, and some Wednesdays. Come see me at the store some time! We've also just opened up a new Trillium Annex at SCRAP. I took a batch of merchandise over there yesterday and helped Bethany set up a little store in a designated area of SCRAP's big warehouse-like space. It looks really cute! My black cuffs and suncatchers can be found there, and I hope to add clocks, bowls, and other items soon.

Seven Planet grand opening & trunk show

On Saturday, September 12, I had the privilege of setting up a display at Seven Planet, the new "flagship" green general store that just opened on NW 4th & Couch in downtown Portland. Aysia, the manager (and owner of Greenloop), invited several of the Trillium Artisans members to a trunk show during their grand opening festivities.
I was really loving the way my bowls looked in these bright little cubicles.


Megan's groovy marble-covered bowling balls and stained glass suncatchers:


Kristen set up outside with her lovely pillow covers. She was right next to the new location of the 24-hour Church of Elvis!

The ribbon cutting:

Aysia at the cash register (I don't think she moved from this position all night):

Some of the live entertainment:
Emily Baker of Sword + Fern with her jewelry made from recycled auto parts:



Amazing mural on the ceiling (by Chris Haberman, of course - I love that guy!):
Melodie and Suzie came by toward the end of the evening, and together we checked out the Old Town Block Party, saw some amazing dancing Chinese dragons, and rounded out the night when Chuck met us for appetizers at The Republic. Loads o' fun in PDX!

New techniques for Live Debris project

I'm working on some new Mandala Spinners for the upcoming Live Debris event which opens Saturday, September 19. The installations will be up through September 26.

For this project, I have collaborated with fellow Trillium Artisan Anitra Cameron of Coffee Pot People. She helped me figure out how to mount my painted records onto metal "stems" and provided me with a treasure trove of vintage radio knobs which I will be using to hold the records in place on the stick. She also gave me the idea of cutting and shaping the records to make them like pinwheels.

I've been working on this for the last couple of weeks and am getting very excited about it! It has been way too long since I've made anything totally new. If these survive the installation, I am hoping they will be a new product for Eye Pop Art - finally, I will have a garden art product!

I don't have any pictures of the finished products yet (because they aren't finished!) but I wanted to share my new painting technique because I am super happy with it. It is making it much easier and faster for me to paint the records.

After priming the record, I simply draw the design with a black Sharpie.

Then, I paint right over the design with my acrylic paints. I add gel blending medium to each color in order to make it dry slowly so that I can blend the colors together without them getting all chunky. Then I add a good deal of water to the paint to make it nice and thin and transparent. I am going for a watercolor-type "wash." This keeps the paint from obscuring the design underneath.Once I've laid on all my colors, I use a clean brush to blend the edges where the colors meet. This gives it a soft, blended look. It also makes the records look amazing when they are spinning, especially the ones with the swirling rainbow designs.



I love this process because it is SO much less time-consuming than my usual method, which involves drawing a design, painting it, and then outlining the design with black paint using a small brush. That takes forever. I'm really pleased about discovering this time-saving alternative.

The next step for me is to cut and bend the edges of the painted records to form them into pinwheels, and mount them onto the metal stems. I'll have 12 of them planted at the Eastbank Esplanade (east end of the Hawthorne Bridge) starting next Saturday.

I hope you can make it down to see them along with lots of other cool art and activities, including a Dandelion Bench by my friend Tim Combs of the Reclamation Project, and all kinds of other great stuff to help promote the wonderful concept of making art from discarded materials.

Check it out! All the info about Live Debris is here.

Here are some more photos of my process:

I Love Portland

Last Saturday morning, I attended the graduation celebration for the City of Portland's Economic Opportunity Initiative (EOI). You may recall when I went to this last year - I was one of the "graduates" of the program. This year, I went as a staff representative for Trillium Artisans, the nonprofit where I work, which is funded by the EOI.

We had seven artisans graduating this year, and one of them, Tim Combs, was a speaker at the event, along with Mayor Sam Adams, (above) and EOI Program Manager Lynn Knox (below).

Here are some pictures that I took of Tim. I was up in the balcony and the lighting was bad, so these didn't come out so hot. But Tim did a great job talking about Trillium's community and ways it has helped him learn to market and sell his art. He even mentioned Etsy!

Afterward there was coffee and chitchat, but we didn't stay long. Chuck, who was sweet enough to come with me, was wearing some Dartgun buttons and was thrilled when Mayor Sam shook his hand and said, "Dartgun." hee hee!

We bailed out of City Hall pretty early and headed down to the waterfront. It was a beautiful day!

We checked out the new location of Portland Saturday Market, which has been moved to Waterfront Park under what looks like a big hangar.

Lots of familar faces and booths that have been at the market for many, many years. I hope the new location will be successful for them! It's still under the Burnside Bridge (which you can see a bit of in the picture below)!

In some ways it seemed a little too crowded and cramped to me - maybe the aisles between rows of booths are narrower? But it also seemed cool - new, fresh, and clean, and will probably be an even better spot for tourists. Apparently there is no ATM on site (like there used to be) and that was a little discouraging, so we didn't end up getting food. Alas, no Horn of Africa, no Jalisco's burritos for us. We just went home and made sandwiches. (Update: I am so sad to hear that Limey passed away and no longer has his yummy British food cart - no more pasties, no more cuppa tea. Sigh. Lea, thanks for letting me know.)


I just wanted to say that I love Portland! I love the fact that I live in a city that funds a program like Trillium, which helps artists to become business people. And I love it for finding a new and better home for Saturday Market. I love living in a vibrant, creative, beautiful city. I feel really lucky to be here.

Some Orangey Goodness

One of my favorite blogs that I love to read from time to time (I really don't have as much time to spend reading blogs as I'd like) is called How About Orange. It's awesome. So, yesterday, I took a brief break from lying in bed dying of "the plague" (as I am doing right now) to catch up on this groovy blog, and through it I discovered a great flickr group called Orangey Goodness. I immediately joined and tossed some of my orangey photos into the pool.

This led me to discover this awesome coffee cup from Peacock Modern, which I am coveting:

I actually have several cups like this one - four green ones with psychedelic oranges on them, an orange one with cherries, and a blue one with a pear. They are so cool!

Let me tell you that Orangey Goodness was exactly what I needed to cheer me up after being sick in bed like this. I missed work yesterday and even had to miss Sister Diane's class at Trillium Artisans on "Attracting Customers Through Social Media." I'm bummed. I'm now going to go eat a nice juicy orange and go back to bed.

Giving stuff away on Posh Mama & Green Earth Journey

My Roman Record Cuffs were featured last week on Posh Mama (a social network) and Capitola Girl for their "Friday Findings" post. The theme was "Wearable Music." Jamie Daniels' necklace from the Trillium Artisans shop was also featured.

I also decided to sponsor their weekly giveaway, and just found out the winner is Shelly from joyfulgirlnatural. I'll be shipping here one of these Basic Black Bracelets:

I am also sponsoring a giveaway over on Green Earth Journey. It will be happening on March 23rd. Check out the blog for more info, you could win a Mod Mandalas Coloring Book!

Photos from the Beach, Good Morning America, and other news

Here are a few photos from our recent anniversary trip to the Oregon Coast. We had such a nice time - the weather was warm, sunny, and gorgeous. It was a very much-needed vacation - something we haven't done since our honeymoon 13 years ago.

In other news:

• I have added some of my spring line items to my Etsy shop - including new bowls and cuffs. Click over and have a look!
• I received a wholesale order from Frock - my Basic Black cuffs are now available there. Check out this awesome boutique at 1429 NE Alberta in Portland.
• The band played a fun inauguration party Tuesday night at Backspace here in PDX. If you haven't heard our tunes yet, have a listen on myspace: http://myspace.com/dartgun or http://myspace.com/andthevignettes. We were supposed to play a show last night up in Longview, WA but cancelled because Chuck got sick. Next show: Saturday, Feb. 7 at the Know, 2026 NE Alberta.
• One of my Feng Shui Mirrors made from an upcycled vinyl 45 rpm record (this purple one from Trillium's shop on World of Good by eBay) was actually seen on Good Morning America! They did a "Just one Thing" segment on eco-friendly decoration tips for the Obama girls' rooms in the White House, and included my little mirror. Here's a link to the video. You can't see it that well, but it's there! Here are a couple of screen shots:

Pretty cool, huh?

Eye Pop Art has also recently been featured by Artsy Rubbish and Green Living on Squidoo.