Contemporary Arts & Crafts Movement?

So, I'm sure I'm not the first person to have this revelation, but I think we're in the middle of a contemporary Arts & Crafts movement. The market for handmade items seems to be huge right now and people are loving the unique in a world of mass-production.

The Arts & Craft movement began during the Industrial Revolution, as a response to mass-produced items. William Morris was a leader of the movement, which believed in true materials and traditional construction, as well as simplicity of form. Guilds and workshops sprung up all over the world that made things by hand, with exceptional quality and exceptional materials. There was also an socio-economic aspect to the movement that proposed reforms to society.

I find this history to be very relevant today. We're in the midst of a technological revolution. Almost everything anyone can buy is a result of industry and mass-production. Even our food is mass-produced! Almost everyone has a computer in the US and a ton of people have smartphones, which are essentially tiny computers. We use them for everything. In the midst of all of this, websites like Etsy that sell handmade crafts have sprung up and had great success. People that are used to having something that's the same as their friends and neighbors seem to now want things that no one else can have. Having items that are unique or handmade is something that's been made cool again. We now want items that no one else could have, they might be able to get something similar, but they couldn't get anything exactly like it and so those items are increasing in value every day.

I make handmade crafts for fun and post them for sale on Etsy (Check out my shop! ), but I know a few people that have made very successful businesses out of handmade crafts. I think it's kind of awesome. I do wonder though if it comes out of a backlash against the current technological trend, as the Arts & Crafts movement was a response to the Industrial Revolution or if people end up having some desire to be able to make things by themselves, with their own hands instead of relying on factories and machines. Does the Green movement factor in at all? I think it does in some respect, but I don't think it's a major force for the current Handmade trend, but has perhaps piggybacked onto it. What do you guys think?

It begins… with bags and baby things

So I finally finished my paying freelance gigs and got around to finishing my craft items and making an Etsy store over the weekend. (Check it out at ShirtsandThings) It's been a lot of work, but it's also been a lot of fun. Especially the baby bibs because I got to draw and hand print them myself.

The idea came about because some friends of mine are having a baby and I can't make it back to Philadelphia for the shower, but I thought I'd send them a present anyway. Since I was making one, I decided to make a few more, which is good because I have a few misprints.

I made the bibs from the sleeves of t-shirts. The idea came after I was making the reusable bags and I wanted to use as much of the shirts as was possible because it doesn't make sense to upcycle a shirt into something else if I'm going to throw half of it away. I pressed the edges of the piece down and sewed them, to reduce fraying and then made the strings out of other left over pieces of the shirt. I had to sew two of these pieces together to make them long enough, so it might not look pretty, but it gets the job done without having to use any other material other than the leftover shirt bits. This technique also made them pretty strong, which is good because they'll probably get tugged on.

A lot of the fun came in coming up with a robot drawing. Since it was a bib, making it a robot with a spoon, fork and mixer seemed to make sense. The printing process was a lot of trial and error and I think I immediately got silver ink all over myself as soon as I started, which is unsurprising since I was always the person in class that would manage to get paint on my face. It took about 3 tries to get the exposure time right for the set up that I was using. It was kind of weird because it would look like the unexposed photoemulsion had all washed out, but the ink wouldn't go through in some areas and if you looked really closely, you could see that it actually hadn't totally washed away. When I finally got the exposure time correct, things went really quickly. I had opaque ink, but I hit them twice just to be sure. I did run into one snag in that the silver ink dried faster than I expected and got kind of clumpy, so it wasn't going through the screen quite right and made lighter prints.

So then I had to post things on Etsy. I must admit, I'm still having a few issues with photography. The light and cameras that I have tend to wash the colors out quite a bit or won't focus well. I think I'm going to try a set up with sunlight today and see if that makes any difference. For now though, they're up. Some awesome reusable bags made from t-shirts and some robot baby bibs that make excellent baby shower gifts. At least, that's what I'm using them for. :)

Up-Cycling

I've had the idea about doing this project for a long time now. It started out as me just wanting to make my own screen printed items, but aftera year of volunteering at Philly AIDS Thrift Store (www.phillyaidsthrift.com) and seeing how many items that were in perfect condition were discarded by their owners, my idea took a bit of a turn. Luckily, these items were donated to a place where they would be resold and reused and if their condition wasn't perfect, they'd be sold to rag makers and all for a good cause. How many items were just being thrown away?? In addition, I've been a graphic designer in the apparel business for a long time now and I've seen how much waste goes on there. Things don't get printed perfectly every time, so there are a lot of misprinted t-shirts that end up straight in the trash. All of these things turned my idea into finding blank t-shirts at thrift stores with a non-profit mission such as PATS or a local Dallas store that benefits a womens' shelter and printing fun designs on them. This way, I'd have fun making the stuff and be green in the process.

Then I thought about those misprinted shirts or the shirts that weren't in good enough shape to be resold and came up with ways to use them. Making reusable bags is my first idea, but I had a lot of scrap left over, so I had to think of something else too. I have some friends who are having a baby and I couldn't get back to Philly to go to the baby shower, so I figured I'd make them something and send it. I could use the scrap left over from the bags and make bibs (or, as I like to call them, baby napkins). Then I could print on the bibs and it'd be up-cycled, handmade and awesome. I only have a bit of scrap left over because I use as much of the shirts as I can. I'll post again on the bibs and how I made them, but the picture at the top shows the small amount of scrap left over from one shirt. I get two bibs, a bag and really just the collar is left, with really small scraps trimmed from the other pieces.

These are just the first ideas I've had for up-cycling. I'm sure there will be many more as this project goes on. I'd love to hear thoughts and ideas though!