Celebrate Women and Valentine's Day

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13 @ 6 P.M., THE CROFOOT in Pontiac, MI. Comfortably Lovely will joining a night celebrating women! woot! I will have a table amongst a bevy of artists, crafters while female-driven bands will play all night long.

Handfuls of 100% original re-worked vintage Valentine's Day greeting cards will be available as well as new rings, vintage map buttons, new collage prints and original artwork (of various types).

The event begins at 6 p.m. and runs till 2 a.m. $5 to enter.

Comfortably Lovely will join:
# Veronica Knight
# Rebecca Byington
# Rebecca Goldberg
# Angela Duncan
# Carrie Marchand
# Susan Spector
# Scharolette Chappel
# Nicole Christian
# Lilacpop
# Mio Dio
# Christine Edwards
# Amy Palomar

Recycled Love

Saturday, February 13 at the Crofoot, I will be debuting a potential new Comfortably Lovely regular item: recycled rings.

The rings are made from vintage buttons, game pieces, and any sort of old and fun pieces I can find and turn into a ring.


100% original re-worked vintage VALENTINE'S DAY cards will also be available. Don't forget to buy something for your sweetheart. Or just for yourself!

Shows, hearts and all that lovey dovey stuff

So I'm back in Michigan and I'm testing out the waters with a few upcoming shows. I'm focusing more on artwork and prints, collages and embroidered hangings.

Saturday, January 23, from 10 a.m. - 9 p.m. I'll be at Oakland Mall as part of the event Made In Michigan, put on by Ta-Dah! Productions. I believe I will be one of the few crafters there, so please come on out and say hello if you can.

Saturday, February 13 you better pick up your Valentine's Day gift from one of the many wonderfully creative women, including myself who are showing at the Crofoot Ballroom for Women: A Night of Art & Culture (presented by Phonotropic). Ladies playing music, like my pal in Lettercamp and lots of ladies showing art and crafts like Comfortably Lovely and Asta. It starts at 6 p.m., $5 cover

Hope to see you, fellow crafters, artists out there. The image above a photo of a mixed-media collage that has been finished and framed. It's called Compute Cute. And that's friggin' adorable and you know it!

Valentine's Day

Sure, it's a "Hallmark" holiday, but Valentine's Day just might be *my* favorite time of year to receive cards. So, I just dropped of a limited selection of 100%, original re-worked vintage greeting cards to NAKA in Ferndale, MI.

Naka, by the way, has added a ton of new paper products to the store. It's really great to see! Notepads and sticker sets. fun stuff. I want it all!

If you need more Valentine's cards, send me an email at comfortablylovely@gmail.com and we can brainstorm.

On Holiday

Comfortably Lovely is being put on a temporary "time out," while I move back to the United States (my Etsy shop will remain open). What will happen when I get there, I do not know. Besides the logistics of putting CL on hold (all my stuff will be in boxes for 2-5 weeks), mentally and artistically I'm putting myself on break for a bit. Winter Fling...A Craft Thing was so amazing, but I'm still recovering from all the work and the total AWESOMENESS of it all.

Once I bounce back, I may start selling some things that I've made as gifts but never sold. That might include some embroidery hangings, and more art in general. I'm not really sure. Lots of ideas knocking around in my head.

Many of them I wasn't sure if I could pull off, but after meeting a lot of crafters in Toronto, I've realized that these ideas aren't lame at all; AND that there will always be somebody making items similar to mine. Everyone is a crafter these days and when you have a creative aesthetic in you naturally; there's no reason to change it. And I'm not even sure if you actually could.

Meeting a new Toronto crafty pal in September really made me realize that although at first I was weirded out that we made some very similar items, it actually made me more excited to meet her and pick her brain. I told Kristen that the first day I met her! I was all like, "I make collages like that, and I make embroidery like that, and you're so much better and you're so adorable!!! And I've been wanting to make something like that over there!!!" It went something like that. I knew that if I decided to put on a winter show, she had to be in it! Because in addition to some of our similar works, she had other beautiful pieces of work, including these amazing table runners that many of us are quite jealous of.

Oh, I'm hoping to find a project for these vintage number and letter stickers that my friend Jessica (Krecklo Designs) gave me!!!! There are SO many. So see you in a few.

Hey Toronto, Merry Christmas and a new store added

Today in the chilly and snowy mean streets (more like Parkdale :) of Queen West in Toronto, I was finally able to get down to Good Catch General Store with some Comfortably Lovely cards and notebooks.

If you head to 1556 Queen St. W. fast enough you'll be able to get some one-of-a-kind Christmas/Holiday cards. If not, don't worry, Good Catch is stocked with plenty of cards to get you through all the seasons. They also have Tofurkey products for sale, and ORIGINAL Kiss make-up from Kiss Meets The Phantom of the Park. It was really difficult for me not to buy some. If they had Star Child, I wouldn't have left the store without Paul Stanley's make up.

Thanks to Jola and her adorable son and head to Good Catch for handmade goods as well as organic groceries, vintage LPS and anything else you can imagine that is original, good and good for you.

Winter Fling. Wow!

This past Saturday, December 5, Toronto had it's first annual A Craft Thing event, Winter Fling...A Craft Thing. I have to say it was downright awesome. In a room with a capacity of approx 126, we had over 500 shoppers come through the door on what might have been the official kick off to winter (holy cold!!!!).

Saturday the 5th may have been the first coldest day of this year's winter in Toronto, but it didn't stop shoppers waiting in lines before our doors opened. This show was a heart & soul operation put on by myself and my crafty comrades Jordy, Jessica, Bianca, Mike and Shannon. (Or for crafty biz that's Comfortably Lovely, Jordynn Mackenzie, Krecklo Designs, Kid Icarus, and Moonlight for Violet.)Kid Icarus was an amazing talent and headquarters for many a meeting. Their visions, ideas and creativity, let alone their amazing screenprinting machine were a vital part to Winter Fling's amazing turn out. Meeting Jessica, Jordy and Kid Icarus in the first few weeks I moved to Toronto ended up being the very best and lucky thing to happen to me. With my old pal Shannon, and my talking with the local crafters, it was soon after September that we already decided we wanted to put on a show together. There's to show you how trusting and sincere Canadians are. Here I was, new to the Toronto craft scene, and like three weeks later, I'm putting on a holiday craft show. So thank you girls (and Mike) you are all amazing.

Thank you to my partners in A Craft Team and to all our vendors:
Avril Loreti, Beside Herself, Blue Calla, Comfortably Lovely, Daisy Chia, Doublenaut, Eric Cheung, Haikukies, Jenna Dee, Jordynn Mackenzie, Katie Muth, Kid Icarus, Knotted Nest, Krecklo Designs, laurajean, laurajean..., Moonlight for Violet, murano & tagua, Old Weston
PrettyRaccoon, Sew mo', Stitchface, Stuffed Silly, That Missing Piece, zukzuk.

Once again, I must say, when a craft show ends and you can get a hug from almost all 24 + vendors, I think it's an official success. Thanks to our piano player and our DJs who kept us with the best shoppping muzak ever.

A special shout out to some of our volunteers including Kenny, Craig, Lisa, Lee, Brandon, and Connie who did everything they could to make Winter Fling rule the school (or the church in this case). Thanks to Jim and co. at St. Stephen-in-the-Fields for everything. I'd have to say, it was a truly inspiring day for us all.

Thanks to our sponsors. Thanks for taking a chance on me/us.