Andre The Giant Has A Posse

If you know what this means.....you are automatically cool.

If not, here is what I am talking about.

Once upon a time (1987ish) there was a young girl and her brother was a skateboarder. She was a very crafty, very nerdy, figure skater sort of girl. Her brother was a very cool, very straight edge, very skateboarding sort of fellow. He had some fabric patches, and later some vinyl stickers that had a silk screen print that said "Andre The Giant Has a Posse" with a image and some other stats for the pro-wrestler. The younger nerdier girl said to her brother and his friends "what does that mean?" and they told her if she didn't know, she wasn't cool enough to know..... brothers can really suck sometimes.......

Fast forward 20 years to 2007ish and that nerdy girl is now a rock star crafter, who never forgot how if felt to want to be a part of something so cool, so esoteric, that if you didn't know what it was you probably aren't cool enough to be a part of it. Enter Etsy.com and the CT Etsy Team. Etsy is not so cool that you need a password, but it is still just indie enough to be cool. Oh, and the Andre The Giant and later OBEY patches--they didn't mean anything--just like the name Etsy- doesn't mean anything.

And here is my homage to the OBEY patches:

Not quite Andre The Giant, but cool for sure. I'll have the stand alone patches at the Craftastic on April 13th ($2) as well as a few of the zipper pouches ($8). A portion of the profit will go back to the CT Etsy Street Team to help promote the rad, indie crafters in CT to advertise, host markets, and generally make Etsy as big as Andre The Giant.

Oh, and they were my first trip into the extra cool, extra indie world of homemade silkscreens. I am in love. I used actual silk for the screen, and I think it worked better than tulle or stockings.

I took the handmade pledge. The handmade pledge is a promise to make or buy handmade and fairly traded items for holiday gifts and ask that others do the same for you. Seems simple enough. So go take the handmade pledge, feel good about yourself and support indie artists and designers in your in your community (including your global community). The link is on the left of my page header. Go do it, I'll wait for you.......

Speaking of. Here is a quick preview of one item I am working on for the craft fair in Chicago and etsy.com. This season I am trying to take my focus away from silk scarves ( although I'll still have some) and move it more towards re-purposed and recycled found objects. The wallets are made from plastic grocery bags fused together and made into something other than landfill. As Martha might say- It's a good thing.