sonofasailorblog

Day Trip to Round Top

As we’re still recovering from the madness of SXSW I have my eye on another festival coming up in a few weeks: the Round Top Antique Fair. This particular festival may not bring a “secret” Justin Timberlake show, collaborations like Usher and the Afghan Whigs (wait, what?), or free Taco Bell tacos but, to put it simply, if you’re into cool old stuff this place will be your mecca.

[Photo: Head Over Heels Design]

Check out more about this fantastic event after the jump…

2013, you’ve got big shoes to fill!

as we move into this new, fresh year, we are reflecting on the ways in which our lives and business have grown in the year preceding. what an amazing year we had, with such monumental personal milestones. we wanted to share some of the highlights of 2012…

more after the jump…

hey y’all! we’re heading to houston!

in our first appearance at a houston event, we’re pleased to join AIGA for their 3rd annual Design Craft! formerly Ctrl+Art+Create, the American Institute for Graphic Arts is hosting this exciting outdoor fair at Market Square, and we couldn’t be more pleased to be a part of it.

the forecast calls for a high of 79 and partly cloudy, which sounds delightful for a day of shopping (or vending, in our case!)

come say hello and snag a gift for the ladies and gents (yes, gents—-we have awesome unisex leather bracelets!) on your holiday list.

see you in H-town!

finds | travel

as we head into the holiday season, i’ve been thinking about all of the travel we’ll be doing. i’m determined to become a more efficient and stylish traveler—-if we’re going to buzz around as much as we have been, i’d like to do it well! after the jump are a few things that i’m thinking will up my game!

I’ve had a hankering to head out west for quite some time now. I think, for one of our next vacations, I’m gonna get Billy to head out to Marfa with me! After the jump are a few of the places I’ve been dying to check out…

bay area bonanza!

hey y’all! we’re tromping around san francisco this week, and totally enjoying the 60s temperatures. it’ll make for a pretty pleasant weekend, as we join hundreds of amazing makers for the fifth annual renegade craft fair!

i love that we get to come back to the bay area twice a year for this fair. it’s the best opportunity to stretch out our trip and traipse around our old stomping ground! we’re plotting and scheming some visits we need to make: st. francis diner, SCRAP, muir woods, voyager, blue bottle coffee, pier 24—the list goes on and on! recommendations are always welcome, too.

so, did a little tradsies with Acorn and Archer at Renegade. now i’m totally geeking out on their amazing website—-the photography and design is making me want to step up my game! so glad to have met carolyn. she’s the tops! can’t wait to receive my Polaris rings!

brooklyn: a recap

so, we made it. off on a weekend adventure to brooklyn for the most recent renegade craft fair, christine (fail) and i ventured off to the city to see what could be made of it. from the start, we weren’t getting any relief from the heat—-which we were hoping for at the start of our austin, texas summer time. i took note of the fact that i ought not take air conditioning for granted, as all texas destinations have it!

but we ducked into a cute spot in williamsburg, lodge, for a beer and a blt. a blueberry ale and a pork slap did us just right before we wandered the neighborhoods a bit more.

i wish i had taken more photos—-we visited a few really cute spots. on Christine’s recommendation we ducked into Catbird just before it started pouring. pretty sure i could spend the entire day in the small, perfectly appointed shop, we eventually had to brave the rain to get some dinner.

i shouldn’t complain about the heat too much, as we ended up having perfectly lovely, clear skies for the show. a bit of rain as a bookend was not a problem for me. i’ll deal with a bit of heat during the show to stay dry! the wind, though, was another story. pain in the ass, it was! poor christine lost a mirror in a particularly strong gale.

billy an di were very pleased to have finally put the finishing touches on our display. we’ve gone through a few iterations, but have arrived at a setup that we’ll let ride for a while! it will be nice not to have to redesign/rebuild/re-everything our table displays again for a few more shows! i think they turned out rather well!

we had a good number of Karve pieces out on display, and were lucky enough to catch the attention of Brooklyn Magazine. we are so proud that they chose our booth, specifically the Karve pieces to feature as one of the “Ten best things we saw at the Renegade Craft Fair” in their BK Style section!

with our displays rocking and some good attention, we feel like we made a good showing at the fair! it was great to see some other renegade regulars, as well as meeting some new friends!

i was super excited to score this beautiful Caldera bracelet from Teresa at Stone & Honey. yeah, it goes with my Eolian earrings. i think i might be done spoiling myself for a little while. (a little while!) plus, look how great it looks with our Bexar bracelet and my gold bangles from fail!

so, on our day off, we had a nice, relaxing day of digging through hundreds of boxes of jewelry findings! CJS Sales (Crafts, Jewelry, Supplies) specializes in vintage components, and is a veritable wonderland of jewelry findings for designers. I felt like Augustus Gloop in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory—-and coming away with over 30 pounds of components, i think it’s a pretty accurate description.

this place is truly incredible. Elyse, who owns the warehouse with her father, was fantastic about helping us to navigate through the narrow paths of box upon box of treasure. throwing suggestions our way every so often, and encouraging us to “move things around! dig!” Elyse was great.

at the end of it all, christine and i came away with some super special findings. i brought home a full collections worth of beads and metal that i think billy agrees will make a great line! stay tuned for that…

if you ever find yourself in midtown with a couple of hours on your hands, and nothing that you can’t get dirty on, do yourself a favor and hit up this place. (if you’re a jewelry designer, that is—-it’s wholesale, folks, so you have to have your tax id!) i am so thankful christine shared this treasure with me. not to mention how fun it was to spend a few hours digging around for treasure with her! after 17 years of friendship, it’s nice to play with your friend for a while!

after lots of hard work, lots of luggage hauling (that 30 pounds of jewelry didn’t carry itself home…) and lots of excitement, i was so happy to come home to my husband (that’s still so new!) and take wednesday off. we floated the river, y’all. i was hot all weekend and austin was 109° when we got back—you know we went straight to the cold waters of san marcos!

but we’re back in action, and have some great stuff brewing!

we’ll keep you up to date with all of it here!

xoxo

brooklyn magazine likes us!

so we have a lot to write about from the brooklyn trip, but we’re taking today off! in fact, we’re going to go hop in the river when i’m done writing this. (it’s hot here, y’all)

but, i wanted to share this link with you guys—-we’re thrilled to have been chosen by Brooklyn Magazine as one of “The 10 best things we saw at the Renegade Craft Fair!” We’re honored to be among the ranks of some other awesome designers, and their photographer, Winnie Au, got some awesome shots. I was pretty certain that my photo was going to be a mess of hot, wind-blown squinting into the sun, but she rocked it!

we’ll be back with more about the trip, but for now, thanks so much to Brooklyn Magazine, to Rebecca Willa Davis for selecting us, and to Winnie Au for getting some great photos!

brooklyn bound…where should i go!?

we’re leaving for brooklyn in a week and a half to participate in the brooklyn renegade fair for the first time! well, i’m going, but not william (this time) i’m sort of testing out the waters, and we’ll both make the journey should this trip bode well for us.

i’m super excited to check out an amazing dead-stock jewelry finding warehouse with christine (of fail) and we’re going to take a trip to Mast Brothers Chocolate on 3rd Street, as well. I went to college with Mike, and have had a great time watching his business emerge from his apartment to a full-fledged chocolate factory in brooklyn.

but i would love to hear some recommendations of places to go while christine and i are on our little adventure! we’re not in town for a super long amount of time, but long enough to see some sites.

where else should we go?

and, if you’re local, come visit our booth, and let’s hope for awesome weather!

i heart renegade…a lot!

so yesterday was our recovery day from a whirlwind weekend at the Renegade Craft Fair here in Austin! we had an absolute blast sharing a booth with Sara, the studio assistant at fail. [Christine was busy kicking butt at WEST, which was apparently a super fun event that brought a bunch of folks to the shop!]

we’ve tweaked our displays a bit since last year, and we were super happy with how they came out. we’re loving the way the brass pops against the darker wood. and, billy let me hit a few things with my neon pink obsession, as well! our DIY tablecloth came out pretty well, i think!

we also successfully launched the first ten pieces from our Karve edition, and are working on creating the remaining pieces as we speak! stay tuned, we’ll be adding a few of them to our Etsy shop any minute now…

one of our all-time favorite parts of participating in Renegade is getting to see (and buy!) other folks’ items. it’s so inspiring to meet other creative folks that are in the same business of making, and getting to know the people that frequent the shows! it’s such a great community. plus, we made it home with some super great goodies!

little minnow is the booth that we were directly across from. i didn’t mind staring at them for a great deal of the weekend, as i’ve had a pretty decent design crush on them for quite a while! billy was all over their tank tops (summer. texas.) and i snagged a tee and a tea (towel)! if our walls weren’t already stocked to the brim with artwork, we’d have picked up a print or two, as well!

we made friends with Cassie from The Mossy Fox, who is pretty much the cutest ever! i’m loving her color combos and had to snag a necklace and bracelet before the end of the fair. she’s from Houston, but much to the dismay of us Texans, we’re losing her to Arizona next week! either way you cut it, her shop and blog are adorable.

so, have you seen lisa chow’s illustration? her dollhouse and city love illustrations are absolutely delightful—-full of wonder and wit and available in sets of 10 postcards. done! go get some! oh, and look for paintings coming from lisa soon—-we’re so excited to see them!

so, i’ve got this on now. it’s a tiny little gold-fill anchor from Diament Designs. Libby is absolutely awesome—she and her man Jared were two of my favorite new friends made at Renegade! she has an amazing assortment of jewelry, you have to go check it out! (i wish there was a Jessica bracelet…the name pieces she has are adorable!)

MAKEatx had their booth rocking full of amazing laser-cut wares. I absolutely love their cards and earrings, and this invitation to an upcoming event is pretty much the best invitation i’ve seen… a double-sided-laser-cut-sleeve with a unicorn on one side and colored paper in the middle. instant love. this is going on the wall—-I can’t wait to hang out with these folks again soon!

lastly, i’m so excited to have picked up this beautiful embroidered matriyoshka necklace from Poppy and Fern. We met Rachel and her husband at a meet the maker event over at Parts & Labour—-they are a pretty amazing couple! you know when you meet someone and instantly want to hang out more with them? yeah. like that.

speaking of those sorts of folks, we finally got to meet Kirsten from Triple Max Tons. we discovered her blog after she wrote about us last November, and we instantly loved her style! now, fairly addicted to her blog, we got to meet her in person! she’s just as addicting! we also got to hang out with Danni and her husband Nick of Oh, Hello Friend. we met at the Renegade SF Holiday fair, but we just got the chance to hang out after the fair this time in Austin. they are a super awesome couple from LA, and i love her style. i love meeting great folks, and i look forward to familiar faces at upcoming fairs!

hopefully we’ll see y’all soon—-we’ll be in Brooklyn June 23+24 and San Francisco July 21+22. keep your fingers crossed for Chicago, and we’ll let you know about London…wouldn’t that be fun!?

check out more great shout-outs and Renegade coverage here, here, & here!

balloons in the morning!

we’re renegade-ing it up! come see us today and tomorrow!

getting all stocked up for Renegade Craft Fair this weekend!

we’ve got new packaging, new displays, and a few one of a kind pieces from our new line that we’ll be debuting! we’ll try to give another sneak peek before Saturday…

the wedding!

i’ve mentioned many times over the last year that william & i are getting married. well, we got married! there was lots of planning, lots of DIY, and it was all very exciting! march 31 was the date that it all went down, and we wanted to share a few photos of the day.

first, though, we want to give a huge shout out to our photographer, Alisa Ferris. she was absolutely incredible. we were married at Casa Rio de Colores, which is a bit of an insane wonderland! it is full—-absolutely full—-of visual stimuli. just all sorts of stuff, all over the place! (hard to describe, go take a look!) Alisa captured the day beautifully and managed to single out small moments and settings in the chaos of it all! we’re sooooo happy with how the photos came out, and are appreciative of how much she kicked ass!

so here’s a peek at the day, after the jump. all of our friends came together to help make it so beautiful and personal for us. (we stacked the deck for “help” though, by having an enormous wedding party!!!)

thanks to everyone who worked their tushies off to create a gorgeous event!