YAS contemporary lifestyle

News from yasmintoo!’s Universe September 23, 2009 1. Part 2 of the series on Selling and Pricing Crafts is now posted on HubPages: http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Develop-a-Business-Strategy-for-Selling-and-Pricing-Your-Craft 2. New blog on Hoyt Johnson, III, textile artist on http://tuesdaysdesigner.blogspot.com/2009/09/tuesdays-designer-hoyt-johnson-iii.html 3. New blog post on ChickenScratch, an eco-friendly, etsy shop creating and selling vegan, paraben free soy massage candles. http://creatinggreen.blogspot.com/2009/09/chickenscratch-vegan-paraben-free-soy.html I am always interested in surface textile designers and eco-friendly artists and craftspersons. Contact me if you would like to be featured on a blog. y.sabur@yahoo.com .

Stephanie Borg, a Tuesday's Designer sent the following via email: "Hi all, I've submitted a piece for an online competition on saatchi's online gallery. If you would like to view and vote for me, go to the link below (1 is the lowest score and 10 the highest) : http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/showdown/index.php?showpic=231810 Thanks to those who have already voted, and thanks in advance to those who will :)) Stephanie " You go Stephanie.

I had a great week and I'm looking forward to a busy and fulfilling week ahead. The San Diego Quilt Show was Saturday. What a treat. The quilts were beautiful and creative. It was good to see so many San Diego, Southern California and Arizona quilting guilds and organizations represented. After the show I went to the San Diego Continuing Education North City Center MAC lab to scan in some hand drawn strikeups for my next textile projects. Saw old classmates, friends and had a quick minute to speak with Randall Cornish, the leading font expert in San Diego, and an instructor at NCC and UCSD. I've created three new blogs. Tuesday's Designer is now a separate blog. Tuesday, September 22 will see the first post featuring Hoyt Johnson and his colorful resist textiles. You can follow the international designer's blogs at http://tuesdaysdesigner.blogspot.com/ . CreatingGreen.blogspot.com is the new home of what was the Eco Etsy feature on Wednesdays. The first post will ...

Pillow by Master Craftsperson, Katherine Maccoll, from the 2009 Smithsonian Crafts Show Business Plan or No Business Plan (This is Part II A of a series of articles for craftspeople on Developing a Business Strategy for Selling and Pricing Your Craft. Part I is for beginning craftspeople (I prefer the term craftspeople vs. craftsman), and offers a simple formula for pricing your work. Part II is for mid career and mid skill level crafts people. This section is composed of three articles. Part III is directed towards full time craftspeople with a high degree of craftspersonship that anticipate earning a living from creating and selling their crafts.) Developing a Business Strategy for Selling and Pricing Your Craft Developing a business strategy for correctly pricing your craft work is the difference between being able to work full time as a craftsperson and accepting the label DIY. If your goal is to become a master of your craft and market the results, you'll need to put a ...

Yes, yes, I know it has been several weeks since you saw an Eco Etsy post on yasmintoo!  ytooty has been busy with out of town company, writing articles for hubpages.com, getting the marketing set up for the yasmintoo! digital fabric (expected in the shop no later than the middle of October), taking a silk screen class and brushing up on Illustrator. Now, Eco Etsy is baaaaaaaaacccccccckkkkkkkkkkk. Image: Lavender Soap from Etta + Billie!! (Lavender is my favorite plant, so you know I had to select this image as the first one.) Welcome to Etta + Billie!! Handcrafted natural eco-conscious bath and body products. Etta + Billie products are made from organic oils, botanicals, and essential oils. Synthetics (including fragrance oils), petrochemicals or parabens are never used. Image: Organic Anise Peppermint Soap The E+B motto: Etta + Billie = Real, Honest Beauty. About Alana Rivera of Etta + Billie:  I am from a small town (pop. 7,000) in the middle of beautiful no whe...

Tuesday's Designer is a yasmintoo series of blog posts on textile designers whose work I find beautiful, intriguing, yummy and worth further exploration. Previously featured designers live and work all over the globe. So far, Tuesday's Designer has delved into the work and creative design process of Nedra Williams from Oakland, CA, USA; Liz Scott, also from the US; Silvia Maria Canu from Sao Paulo, Brazil; Emmanuelle Marion of Ireland; and Caroline Wall, who works and lives in Britain. (Posts on Nedra, Liz and Silvia are archived here .) This week's Tuesday's Designer is Stephanie Borg , a citizen of the World, whose work is heavily influenced by the Sultanate of Oman . Image: Artemesia , Diamond Repeat, Palette 2 Stephanie's colorful and contemporary take on traditional textile design motifs is refreshing. I was most taken by her bold and striking use of color. Take a look and see what you think. Stephanie is a self-taught artist who has ...

Caroline Wall , and her wonderful textiles, was the featured "Tuesday's Designer" post last week, September 1, 2009. yasmintoo! experienced technical issues with the images for this post. My sincerest apologies to Caroline. The issues are now resolved and I invite you to take another look at this British textile designer and her work. yasmintoo!

This is another post on my textile design process. My design and business strategy is to combine hand processed surface textile design with digital technology. Design Strategy This weekend, I completed (well, kind of) the sets for the orange and turquoise shibori fabric. The idea is to have at least three coordinating fabrics that can be mixed and matched for quilting, garment, accessory, and interior design. The problem in designing with digital processes is all of the possibilities. Eventually, I have to force myself to release the work into the universe and move on to the next pattern , motif , design . Short recap The original fabric is 2 yards of white, 5mm, silk habotai. The fabric was dyed several times using a variety of shibori or resist processes. Digital photographs of the fabric were uploaded into Photoshop, then into Illustrator for creating motifs and patterns, and finally back into Photoshop to be saved as tiff s. This is the orange shibori set. The set c...

I find this stuff so exciting. This is the small repeat for yardage created from the turquoise fabric. I think an image of the original fabric is in a post from September 8th. I wanted to use sections of large shibori pieces to create several lines of yardage. After dying the fabric, I used my digital camera and took about a dozen shots each of three pieces of the 5mm, 2 yard long, silk habotai fabric. The images were cropped and sized in Photoshop. For this pattern I took the image back into Photoshop again to zero in on just a very small section of the fabric. The background is a larger section of the same fabric under a 70% transparency layer in gold. The blocks are formed from three copies of the motif.The block was then repeated three times. I added the lines for interest and to tie the background colors in with the motif. This will be an extremely small repeat 3.5 inches by 2. Just perfect. Below is one more pattern - this will look like a check when it is...

I love both surface textile design hand processes and the new technology. I work on combining both. Giving myself the thrill of everything that can go wrong working with fabric, dye, and resists, and the calm, orderly, but somewhat plastic and predictable sense of achievement derived from designing with software. I dyed this fabric using several shibori processes, pole wrapping, measured free hand wrapping, over dyeing, folding on a diagonal and who knows what else. The fabric is 5mm, silk habotai. Both fabric and supplies are from Dharma Trading Co . I freely admit that I am supposed to be working in a fall/winter color palette. Having difficulty getting there. It has been 100+ degrees in San Diego at 7pm. So much for maroon and olive green. Okay, after washing, rinsing, washing again and pressing while damp, I got out the digital camera, pinned the fabric to my layout table, climbed on the ladder (the fabric is two yards long), and started shooting away. I always take a bunch...

(This the first Tuesday's Designer post on yasmintoo.blogspot.com. You can check out previous Tuesday's Designer posts on the old blog http://yasmintoo.wordpress.com . ) The series began in the US, moved on to Brazil and Ireland, now we are in Britain. Caroline Wall is a freelance textile print and graphic designer with 10 years experience working predominantly for the UK fashion industry. Her designs are bright, fresh and contemporary. About Caroline - Caroline has produced fashion prints, graphics and textile designs for numerous retailers in the UK fashion and interior design industry. Using a combination of hand-drawn skill and computer-aided design, she develops both commercial and bespoke (custom for those of us in the US) designs in collaboration with client requests. Design process - Artwork is prepared ready to send to manufacturers in order to print onto fabric in line with factory specifications. Designs can consist of all-over prints, placement prints or e...

Finally, the T-shirts arrived. I like them. Digitally printed image of the yasmintoo! 9th Street Botanical lino cut print. Colors are Great! On sale at the shop . What do you think?

(This is a three part series on Pricing Craft Items. Part One is for beginning crafts people and offers a simple formula for pricing your work. Part Two is for mid career and mid skill level crafts people. Part Three is for full time crafts people who anticipate earning a living from creating and selling their crafts.) Incorrect pricing effects all crafts people. It devalues our work, time, effort and skill.  Part One – Pricing Craft Items for Beginning Crafts People Before we jump into how to price just a few words. Quality Materials . Use the best quality materials you can afford. A beautifully crocheted baby blanket worked in a dollar-a-skein acrylic is not of the same value as a beautifully crocheted baby blanket created with Peruvian, organic cotton . Better one quality blanket at a higher price than five cheaper products. Craftspersonship is about doing your best, with the correct equipment and quality materials (including creative use of recycled materi...

Hi everyone yasmintoo! in now on Blogger. You can still read  Tuesday Designer posts featuring up and coming, international and eco friendly textile designers. Your Wednesday visit will find an Eco Etsy article on, what else, eco friendly etsians. In September organic makers of bath, body and beauty products are featured. And, of course, everything that is happening behind the scenes and in the http://yasmintoo.etsy.com/ store. I like my new neighborhood.