gobs of goodies!

image by Teryn Wilkes

Our goodie bags this year were full of wonderful items donated by some of our favorite inspiring shops and companies. The bags themselves were from Hands on Hemp, a thoughtful local business that makes reusable fruit, veggie and bulk bags. We thought it would be fun for the bags to have an afterlife and are always searching for ways to make our event earth conscious. It makes us feel good. :) The design on the front was by the uber talented, budding pattern designer Katy Clemmans, who won a contest we ran in the Art of Surface Pattern Design e-course (which I loved!). Many of the items found in the goodie bags reflected the essence of our event and what we stand for ~ a creative, healthy & sustainable way of living. We were just thrilled to have such fantastic support from our growing community and couldn't wait to give our participants their bags full of treats! Our awesome intern ~ Laura ~ worked really hard pulling all of the pieces together for this project so big thanks to her! 

Below you can find the fantastic companies and boutiques that contributed to our bags and a little bit about what makes them so lovely. We are incredibly grateful to them all!

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Bead for Life: a wonderful organization dedicated to empowering women through handmade crafting

Bird Dog Press: our favorite letterpress and design studio

Bell Frida: a new, unique local boutique with handmade clothing and folk art from mexico

Colorado Chautauqua: the beautiful venue where our event is held and did you know the Makerie is carrying out their 100 year old original, wonderful historic mission? 

Common Threads: a local high-end consignment boutique that also hosts a wonderful variety of creative workshops

Cured: our town's brand new wine, cheese and cured meats boutique ~ you must try their fresh bread baked daily!

Dish Gourmet: a favorite local deli and catering company who provided one of our yummy lunches ~ their customer service is outstanding

Fabricate: a new modern fabric shop and sewing studio in Boulder that we're super excited about ~ what a great addition to our local handmade community!

Fancy Tiger: our Denver crafting mecca full of boutique crafting supplies and a wonderful variety of creative workshops; we loved having their adorable pop-up shop at the Makerie again this year

Firefly Handmade: our beloved Boulder handmade market that features incredibly well-curated indie-craft artisans ~ how we love that they put on the Makerie Market and treasure our partnership!

Fiskateers: still can't believe all the crafting and sewing tools they provided for our classes and goodie bags ~ a serious treat for all

Horseshoe Market: a seasonal open-air handmade and flea market in Denver that is always full of inspiration

Ink Lounge: a fantastic Denver screen printing studio where we printed each goodie bag by hand

Larabar: one of our favorite natural energy bars and love that they're local

Love Grown Foods: this fantastic Denver company is devoted to changing the world with love and granola (and they are some of the nicest and most generous people you'll ever meet!)

Mollie Makes: an excellent creative publication from the UK that lives and loves handmade

Old Glory Antiques: a truly wonderful Denver antiques & home decor boutique that we adore in countless ways; their love and support of the Makerie just amazes me! 

Pangea Organics: a Boulder-based skin and body care company that uses only natural and organic ingredients ~ and you can certainly feel it

Petite Purls: the most adorable children's knitting online publication

Quarry Books: a fantastic publishing company with beautiful and inspiring crafts, food, and lifestyle books

Roost Books: another wonderful publishing company, focused on publishing inspiring crafting, cooking, gardening, and lifestyle books to celebrate creativity and the natural world

Savory Spice Shop: our neighborhood spice shop, with a huge selection and the most friendly, helpful staff (we have a crush on them ~ it's true)

Shuttles, Spindles & Skeins: a yarn, spinning, and knitting shop in Boulder that offers excellent fiber arts classes taught by lovely local experts

Sunset Magazine: a fabulous national magazine featuring the coolest happenings in the west, fresh ideas, yummy recipes, and oh so much more... they happen to be one of our favorite publications ~ we heart Sunset! 

STC Craft: a marvelous publishing company with beautiful and plentiful crafting books 

Uppercase Magazine: a gorgeous publication with endless inspiration and creativity ~  we were quite honored to be a part of issue # 12 

Wild Yarns: a super special Denver yarn boutique, with classes and social gatherings to support the handmade community ~ they generously hosted our DIY coffee cozy making station

Yoga Junction: a fabulous Louisville, CO yoga studio that taught our splendid Makerie morning classes

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Thank you so much again to everyone for their tremendous contributions! 

~xo

goodie bag contest design winner!

We are thrilled to announce Katy Clemmans as our goodie bag designer for 2012! We ran a contest in The Art & Business of Surface Pattern Design e-course I took (& loved!) and were totally impressed with all of the thoughtful and fantastic entires. I wish we could have used all the designs! We loved the way Katy described her winning design:

"I have created sheafs of 'corn' from the Makerie logo by adding long stems. The vertical presentation creates a pleasing stripe pattern and the random upside down sheafs give a quirky feel. I think the corn theme compliments the retreat's nature element, going hand in hand with organic foods, health, and the great outdoors! It's a really positive, happy and nurturing design for the goodie bag."

Katy was so kind to share her story with us and we wanted you to get her know her too.

"I studied graphic design at Salford University in the North West of England, and from there kind of fell into a career in design for television after getting a fantastic graduate job at the design department of the BBC in London in 2000. I have worked in TV ever since, and thoroughly enjoyed my career to date, but have always held onto my passion for print and all things 'pattern'.

Recently I have been designing wedding stationery for friends and family and dipping my toe into the world of surface pattern design, and discovered a total love for it. I had been trying to find a way of making money from my designs when I heard of the Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design course. The course sounded like an absolutely perfect foundation for me to make a proper go of establishing myself as a surface pattern designer and help me achieve my goal of working for myself, loosening my ties with the city and moving out to the countryside with my husband. I feel this is such a brilliant opportunity to put my love of creating patterns to great use, and one day hopefully it will pay the bills.

I'm brimming with ideas and can't wait to complete the course and get on my way to being a fully fledged surface pattern designer. I would love to see my designs on all sorts of paper goods, homewares, fashion accessories - in fact everywhere! I still hope to launch my own range of wedding stationery in 2012. To see my design on the Makerie goodie bag is (hopefully) just the beginning!"

We have a feeling she's on her way. Congratulations Katy! We absolutely love it.

Thank you to everyone who took part in the contest and to Beth and Rachael for supporting such a fun design challenge in the class.

Happy Wednesday!

~xo

spectacular surface pattern design

I have been taking this amazing Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design course online ~ created by the dynamic duo of Beth Nicholls and Rachael Taylor ~ and wanted to share a bit about what's it been like. From a student standpoint, it's been amazing on every single level. From the impeccable organization to the thoughtful exercises to the amazing interviews with prominent people in the pattern design industry, from the jam-packed information that has been so beautifully designed into each week to the supportive, inspiring community, I just can't say enough! I realized that since starting the Makerie, I haven't made much time for any making myself, which is a little bit funny because it was the making I loved so much that was the whole reason I started the Makerie and remains at the heart of what it's all about. I still struggle with finding balance and giving all the things I love in my life the right amount of time and energy ~ raising children, making time to spend with my husband, working on the Makerie, making meaningful, healthy homemade meals and goodies for my family, exercising, spending quality time with friends, being creative with my two kiddos, getting proper rest, and finding time for a little of my own creativity too. It's this last piece that always seems to fall to the bottom of my priorities at this time in my life, yet it's one of the things that brings me so much happiness!

A big part of Module 1 of the pattern design class is drawing. What I have adored so very much has been rediscovering how much I truly love to draw and it has brought back many memories of my love for this as a child. I have been thinking about how I won a drawing contest at Zoo School camp way back when. I drew a giraffe and being the shy person I am, was so embarrassed to walk up to the front of the auditorium to accept my prize. (I wish I could find that drawing!) No wonder I find myself happily lost in illustrating lunch notes for my little ones! I often regret never applying to art or design school. Oh why didn't I listen to those little voices that have been nagging me all along? I could have spent weeks just working on the drawing prompts in the course, and plan to do the wonderfully creative exercises presented many times over. Just this short spurt of creative instruction has helped to see the world already in new ways. I'm creating patterns in my mind out of everything I see! The class assignments were broken down into wonderfully simple exercises, which made it easy for an untrained artist like me to follow and feel inspired by. I even did some of them with my 5 year old, which was one of my favorite afternoons we've spent together. There is nothing like witnessing the uninhibited artistic nature of children!

As much as I have loved making a little time again for my own creativity, it was not nearly as much as I would have liked to dedicate to the course. Due to various circumstances, I was not able to put the amount of time and energy I had wanted and hoped to. I like to give everything my all so this was hard for me! Oh how I would have loved to duck away to a cozy cabin for an uninterrupted week to play with drawing and patterns and color ~ and while we're at it, let's add in a wood burning fireplace, my favorite warm tea and anything from the bread group right out of the oven. My time is often not my own with two young children, work responsibilities, a husband that travels a lot, and just the general busyness of family life. We all try to do it all, don't we?

The pattern design class has been awesome in many ways and made me realize once again, not only how important creativity is in all our lives, but also how hard it can be to make it a priority. The beauty of this e-course allowed me to wiggle in the time at my own pace and yes, sometimes even in my pj's! It also made me think about the reason I started the Makerie ~ an uninterupted weekend dedicated to giving the gift of time and space to play and create ~ away from the demands of everyday life.

I am so grateful to Beth and Rachael for pouring their hearts into this e-course and for all I've learned so far. I can't wait to explore my own style of pattern design over time and I'm super inspired by the amazingly talented community ~ hence the over 2600 photos in our class flickr pool and a super fun contest we launched to design our 2012 Makerie goodie bag (more on that later!). My goal is to repeat Module 1 when it's offered again this spring, and then carry through to Modules 2 & 3. There is so much more I'm craving to learn! So if you have the chance and you are interested in any type of pattern design ~ fabric, stationery, greeting cards, home decor, etc... ~ I highly recommend giving this a go. And the beauty of it? You really don't even have to be an 'artist' at all. Just ask me!

~xo

finding creative time

Maybe similar to you, I'm always searching for the best ways to find life balance. I go through phases where I make a list of my priorities and plop it in a place where I can glance at it (a lot!), sometimes I create daily to do lists (and openly admit to adding really easy things so I can just check something off!) and most recently I made a chart for what my 'ideal week' would look like from the time I wake up to the time I say goodnight, and even including the eight hours of sleep I've learned I need to function properly. Some days I think I've found it ~ that ever elusive feeling of meeting everyone's needs and a few of mine too ~ and other days everything seems lopsided.

I try to be mindful of where I spend my time and energy, and one of my goals this year is to bring back more creativity into my little world again. Starting the Makerie has been a dream come true in countless ways and the planning of it is a magical experience full of very hard work. I often think about the reason I started the Makerie and the heart of it all ~ the power, joy, peace, calm, inspiration and playfulness creativity brings to your life. I love to make things ~ so so many things that it would take more than a lifetime to finish the projects I have on my list.

Although I haven't made much time for any making or creating myself this last year, I have an insatiable appetite for learning anything new creatively and I'm ready for a new challenge. I'm thrilled to be taking an amazing e-course on Surface Pattern Design with the uber talented duo of Rachael Taylor and Beth Nicholls that starts next week. I'm psyched to be a student again! It's such a great growing experience to try something out of your comfort zone and stretch yourself creatively. I'm a wee bit intimidated but it's such a good exercise in remembering firsthand how our retreat participants often feel. I want to experience that over and over again so I can always look at our event with fresh eyes and an open heart, knowing exactly how it feels to be in your shoes. So here we go! Wish me luck and know that I will be practicing what I preach!

xo