Thank You San Francisco!

Thanks for a great show San Francisco! The Renegade Craft Fair was a huge success, and it was so fun to finally do a show on the West Coast. Thank you to everyone who came by the booth!

I have one more day in the city, so I'm going to spend today museum-hopping (I'm heading here and here) and eating delicious food (starting with peaches and pastries and going from there).

Thanks again to everyone who stopped by! The scarves were a big hit this weekend, and if you couldn't make it to the show you can find them in the shop here. The indigo scarf is going fast, so grab it while you can!

See you again soon, San Francisco!

Photo by my amazing booth mates.

The Scarves

The scarves are finally here. Three brand new, hand printed, 100% cotton, natural dyed scarves, block printed with my designs.

This is a project I was working on the whole time we were in India: I spent a long time searching for a block printer to work with and finally, in Kutch, we visited a printer who ended up becoming a good friend. He works exclusively with natural dyes, and who I knew could do good things with my designs.

The three designs were printed by hand using the ajrakh method, where the design is printed with a resist paste rather than a colored ink. This creates a darker background with a lighter design where the dye resisted the image.

The three natural dyes I worked with were madder (red), indigo (blue), and logwood (purple). The block printing studio is surrounded by huge vats and cauldrons of dye that have been fermenting for years (or decades in the case of the indigo) to give just the right color.

 

The block printing is done on long, padded tables, and each textile can take anywhere from several minutes to several weeks to print, depending on the complexity of the design and the number of colors used.

 

 

The fabric goes through several rinses to get all the dyes out, and is then laid in the sun to dry:

Then packed, shipped and sent to me in the US. I've been keeping this project under wraps since I started working on it, but it feels so good to wear something I designed myself (I'm wearing the logwood scarf as I type). I'm beyond thrilled with how they came out. You can find them in the shop right here.

San Francisco Renegade This Weekend!

For the first time ever, I'm heading to the West Coast for a show! This weekend I will be at the San Francisco Renegade Craft Fair, on July 21st and 22nd at the Fort Mason Festival Pavilion. I'll be there with suitcase-loads of cards, tea towels and more, so come stop by the fair and say hi! I can't wait to see all you San Francisco friends, and I'd love to meet any readers who stop by the booth!

So stop by and say hello, and I'll throw in 10% off your purchase if you mention this post. See you there, San Francisco!

Henna-Inspired Floral Wedding Invitations

This is a custom wedding invitation I worked on for a couple getting married in California this fall; the bride is Indian and her fiance is not, so she wanted something Indian-inspired without being too literal. I went with a burnt orange color palette to reflect the fall wedding as well as the Indian inspiration, with a bold floral border on the invitation and the envelope liner.

The border was inspired by the florals used in henna, with the small lines and details that are seen in henna designs. The whole thing was then tied together with a bright red ribbon to add one more pop of color to the invitation suite. Perfect for a fall wedding!

*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of the bride and groom.

2013 Calendars Now in the Shop!

There may be six months left of 2012, but I just added the new 2013 Letterpress calendar to the shop! It was a big seller at the Stationery Show this year, so I wanted to share it with all of you online.

The calendar is a deep turquoise color, with a hand-painted design inspired by the intricate wall paintings we saw in Jaipur this spring. The old palaces we visited would be covered with these tiny floral and geometric designs on every wall, painted by the same families for hundreds of years. I used the same layout of borders and flowers to paint the design, then transferred it to a plate for letterpress printing.

You can find next year's calendar right here in the shop!

Wedding Sketches

Working on some sketches for a custom wedding invitation this week; I love the way the second flower came out so much I'm thinking of turning it into a block print.

When I work on custom designs or non-block-prints, I usually draw them out by hand and play with pens and sharpies to get the design right, then scan it in and adjust in Photoshop. The corner drawing below is for an envelope liner like this one; I think it's going to look beautiful!