Artist of the Month: Beth Hess of WunderAround

The following post is by Beth Hess of WunderAround

I love making colorful, beautiful pieces of blown glass that help make your everyday feel special. Handmade by Beth Hess, each piece of Wunder Around glass is built layer by layer with heat & air, starting with a gather of clear glass from a 2,080° furnace in Hyattsville, Maryland.

I think the stuff of everyday life can be special—from the glass you drink your morning juice in, to the bowl that collects your junk mail. And that having a fabulous vase to put flowers in is a great excuse to bring some home, to surprise your coworker or say thank you to your mom.

My seasonal offerings include blown glass pumpkins, which make a great addition to your mantel or table, and colorful blown glass ornaments add handmade sparkle to your tree year after year. New for Fall 2014, I have created handmade terrariums feature clear glass and clean lines. They are great for air plants, small plants and the tiniest of fairy gardens.

You can find more about Beth’s products and process at her website, Etsy store, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook pages!

Advertisement

Artist of the Month: Emily Landsman, EHL Creations

The following post is by Emily Landsman, Owner of EHL Creations, the Herban Lifestyle June 2014 Artist of the Month.

I have been a photographer for more than twenty years and enjoy finding new ways to look at ordinary objects. I love taking kooky pictures with my many different Polaroid cameras and using the images to make greeting cards, belt buckles, tiles, magnets and more. Polaroid transfer prints are made by under developing Polaroid pull-apart films and transferring the images to non-photographic surfaces. The resulting images have an antique or ethereal quality. Polaroid image lifts are made by developing Polaroid pull-apart films as normal, soaking the image to remove it from the paper backing, and transferring the emulsion to non-photographic surfaces. Each print is different and has its own characteristics.

You may have heard that Polaroid is no longer producing instant film. I collected dozens of packs of several different types of film for my artistic usage before they became unavailable. Once all existing film is used, this transfer process will no longer be possible, making these images all the more unique.

You can find more about Emily’s pieces on her Etsy Store and Website 

Artist Artist of the Month: Lisa Seyfried, Color Me Reckless

 

The following post is by Lisa Seyfried, Owner of Color Me Reckless, the Herban Lifestyle May 2013 Artist of the Month.

Color Me Reckless started 3 years ago.  I had just finished grad school, was unemployed, and scared.  My stress reliever has always been to crochet, so that summer, I wound up with baskets full of crochet hats, scarves, and blankets.  It seemed like a good time to start selling it all!

It took me a while to find what I really liked to make for people. When I boiled it down to what I liked to make, and what people liked, it was housewares and blankets.  So the new version of Color Me Reckless was born! Now I sell carefully crafted crochet housewares, and create beautiful custom blankets for baby showers, weddings, and birthdays.

 

What I love the most is seeing the reaction when people unwrap a blanket that has been made just for them. I try to factor in anything I know about the person (their favorite colors, snippets of their history) so the blanket becomes a story about them.

 

I think that’s the same for the housewares. Yes, it’s simpler, colorful small items, but those items tell a story too.  A Soap Saver Bag can tell the story of what mood I was in when I made it (you can tell by what colors I selected!), and then it continues to tell that story when those colors resonate with someone else.

 

You can find more about Lisa’s crochet creations on her website and Etsy store.

How to Make Gift Tags from Repurposed Cardboard

I like to offer tea to anyone who visits my studio, so I keep a box filled with a variety of herbal and black teas. Last week,  I refilled my tea box with the two most popular flavors, which happen to be made by Tazo.

As I broke down the boxes to put in the recycling bin, I noticed the beautiful pattern on the inside of them, and realized they would make wonderful gift tags. You can do the same with any other lightweight cardboard. Whenever I come across packaging that has an interesting pattern or a colorful solid side, I make it into tags.

A while ago, I purchased a hole puncher designed specifically for making gift tags. While this is a super-convenient way to make them, you can also just cut out your tags freehand.

I like the classic tag shape of this particular punch. You can find a similar one by Uchida on Amazon.

I then used a small-sized round hole punch to create a hole for a string or ribbon.

Finally, I threaded a 14″ piece of twine through the hole. And, voila, a lovely repurposed cardboard gift tag. I was able to make 10 tags from a single box. You can have fun experimenting with different packaging. Happy crafting!

Introducing Herban Crafts: Crafting a Better World!

Karen Lee of EcoKaren and I have partnered on a new social enterprise, Herban Crafts, that will offer a job and social skills training program to unemployed women in transitional housing in the DC and NY areas. To support our programming, Herban Crafts will sell DIY kits for various types of earth-friendly products. The kits will be manufactured, in part, by the trainees as part of their job skills training.

The first set of kits will teach people how to make their own organic bath and body products, and we will be adding additional types of kits in the future. We believe teaching people how to make their own products is empowering, and we also see it as an opportunity to teach people about the importance and joys of working with organic, fair trade, recycled and repurposed materials.

Our mission is multi-fold: to promote self-sufficiency while also supporting the health and wellbeing of people and the planet; and to help address the problem of unemployment, a contributing factor to homelessness, by offering a hands-on job and social skills training program for unemployed women living in transitional housing.

You can find more information about the company and our mission on our IndieGoGo campaign page where you can also pledge to help fund our initial production of kits. Suggested donations start at just $5.00, and there are lots of great rewards for our sponsors! And if this is something that you believe in as much as we do, please help spread the word to your friends on social media and via e-mail. And we hope you will follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest for updates!

For an idea of our overall mission and plan, you can view our presentation from the 2012 Global Health and Innovation Conference held at Yale University on April 22, 2012.

Herban Crafts Global Health & Innovation Conference 2012

Join Us at the 2011 BUST Holiday Craftacular & Food Fair in SoHo!

If you’re in NYC this weekend (December 10th and 11th), I hope you’ll stop by the Herban Lifestyle table at the BUST Magazine Holiday Craftacular and Food Fair Holiday 2011. We’ll be at 82 Mercer St. in SoHo from 11am to 8pm on Saturday and 11am to 7pm on Sunday.

There will be over 200 vendors selling handmade crafts and food. Plus, there will be demos, DJs and more. Admission is just $3, and the first 300 shoppers each day will receive a FREE goodie bag filled with amazing gifts.

BUST Magazine founders and co-publishers, Debbie Stoller and Laurie Henzel, will be signing copies of their new book The BUST DIY Guide to Life. They will also be offering classes on fun DIY projects like how to make your own tiny terrariums, snow globes, and more.

On Saturday, Jay McCarroll, winner of Project Runway season one will be selling affordable bags and scarves from his current line.

Visit the BUST website for a full list of BUST Magazine Craftacular and Food Fair vendors.

[tweetmeme source=”herbanlifestyle” service=”tinyurl.com”]

Join Us at Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn June 11+12!

We are super happy to be vending at the 7th Annual Brooklyn Renegade Craft Fair! It will be held in McCarren Park on June 11 and 12, 2011, from 11am to 7pm each day. We’ll be at Booth 82. Besides an impressive list of some of the best crafters from all over the country, there will also be hands-on crafting workshops, food and more!

The indie-craft and DIY artisans represent both local and national talent, and you will find a vast array of handmade awesomeness including independently designed jewelry, clothing, paper goods, home + garden goods, posters, artwork, plush objects, bath + body products, and much more. We hope to see you there!

For more details, you can visit the Renegade Brooklyn website, and check out the amazing vendors who will be selling at the Fair this year!

[tweetmeme source=”herbanlifestyle” service=”tinyurl.com”]

Please Join Us at the Handmade Arcade in Pittsburgh!

I am super excited to be a vendor the The Handmade Arcade, which will be held at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Hall D, at the corner of Penn Ave. and 10th Street, in downtown Pittsburgh.

The Handmade Arcade has been around since 2004, the first indie craft show of its kind in Pittsburgh. It features a variety of inspired DIY including “innovative jewelry, scary and sweet stuffed creatures, knitted accessories, silk screened prints and tees, felted fashions, hand bound books, spun yarns, stationery, ‘zines, housewares and lots more.”

Admission is free, but the show is very well-attended, so you may want to purchase an Early Bird Pass to get a chance to buy your favorite one-of-a-kind crafty items before they get snatched up!

[tweetmeme source=”herbanlifestyle” service=”tinyurl.com”]

Adams Morgan Very Cherry Pop Up Shop

From March 27 to April 16, you can visit the temporary art and retail spot, the Adams Morgan Very Cherry Popup Shop, featuring the work of several DC-area artisans, including Herban Lifestyle and my new alter ego brand, Snarkyama. Located at 2421 18th Street in the very fun and funky Adams Morgan neighborhood, the store will also have a variety of music, demos and other events.

image copyright Adams Morgan Main Street

The opening of the store was scheduled to coincide with the start of the National Cherry Blossom Festival.  As a community event Cherry Blossom partner, the Pop Up Shop brings together a diversity of artistic styles including original art, photography, ‘green’ artisans, jewelry, sculpture, pottery and accessories.

The Pop Up Shop is open Sunday through Thursday, from noon to 9:00pm, and Friday and Saturday, 11:00am to 10:00pm.

[tweetmeme source=”herbanlifestyle” service=”tinyurl.com”]

Getting Organized

I have set many goals for Herban Lifestyle for 2011, and I just checked a big one off of my list. Get organized! As my company has grown, so has my need for large quantities of herbs, oils, packaging and more. And these items had grown unruly in the 10 x 15 space I have designated for these supplies. So, in January, I hired a friend’s husband to create built-in shelves at one end of my space, and it has made all the difference in the world.

Once the shelves were up and painted, I set out to find containers that would allow me to easily see and access my herbs and other items. Previously, they had been stored in the plastic bags they had come in, which were in turn stored in cardboard boxes. I wasted a lot of time going trying to find what I needed. Now it’s all is plain sight.

Good old Mason jars (which I use for making tinctures and infusions) along with Anchor’s square Frontier jars provide the perfect sizes and shape to maximize the space and highlight the natural beauty of my botanicals. And a series of baskets serve as tidy-looking mini drawers to hold tags, labels, ribbon, bags and myriad other small supplies.

Huge Anchor Montana jars hold large quantities of my most-used herbs, and translucent portable filing boxes keep my wool (hand-dyed by various Etsy crafters) safe and dry, as well as easily seen and accessed.

There is still some extra room for various display pieces and packaging. I am sure that this will get filled up before long. In the meantime, I am enjoying the “white space.”

In a less visible area of the space I have room to store my equipment, more packaging, more display pieces, and shipping materials.

An additional free-standing small white shelf holds miscellaneous glass and metal containers, along with a few pink-colored botanicals and other items.

While it took me a few weeks to find the right containers, then a couple of days to sort and transfer the contents from the aforementioned bags and boxes into the containers, I will net a huge savings of time from now on. Having these previously packed-in, hard-to-see, hard to access items at my fingertips, and easily viewed has saved me so much time. And now I will have time to check off the remaining items from the 2011 To Do List…

[tweetmeme source=”herbanlifestyle” service=”tinyurl.com”]