Crown Town's Nikki of Not Made In China

Charlotte is a great city and one of my favorite things about having moved here the past few months is the quality of artists and lack of politics. There's a huge range from casual dabbler/consumer of the craft all the way up to established artists making a cool six figures a year.
One of the gifts this has given me is the ability to view artists who work in different medium besides fabric and jewelry. Once a month, on the last Thursday of the month, we all get together and swap ideas and projects. This is past month it was Japanese book binding by Nikki Mueller and it was a blast.
I've met Nikki a couple of months ago at the NoDa artist market where she had these hilarious cards and printed sayings on various mediums. The kind of quirky smart saying that leave you laughing a little which is always good in a big crowd. I hope to see her back in September at the next show.
Nikki put together wonderful book zines with instructions. Basically, if you can do a running stitch, have thread, hammer, and nail...you can make your own one of a kind book. I'll be using this for my own personal childhood cookbooks for Christmas. It's always hard to create one of a kind family gifts that can stretch to 60-70 people (Catholic people, Catholic) without losing weeks of your life and a great deal of your sanity.
Anyways, the instructions are fairly simple and you can check out everything at her facebook page: Not Made in China or blog. Mine is the orange birds in the upper left. Now, if I can just figure out how to take pictures on that level.

All pictures have been reprinted with permission of the artist. If you would like to come to the next monthly artist meeting, please check out the Charlotte Crown Town blog or add yourself to the facebook page.

Lookville: West Coast Style

This past month, I was invited to a new fashion website called Lookville. The basic premise is that people post pictures of themselves or celebs and invite other people to comment on the trends. I must say that overall, after using this site for a month I like it. Also, I think it's a great place to post new looks for collections to have people judge if it's hot or not. It's a good mix of hot model chics and real life women. It's fun, easy to use, and fairly good quick feedback. It's almost like being able to go shopping with a room full of girl friends and have them give you feedback for "hot or not." A definite win in my book. And something that's perfect for reviewing your date night outfit with the cute boy you've been obsessing over or screen a collection for wins and misses. I plan to start using it for collection ideas in the fall.

A Real Collection: 10 Looks, 30-40 pieces.

So buyers and companies are all about production. Successful etsy sellers talk about posting 5 new items a day, and fashion designers talk about designing 12 collections a year. But a collection, a beginner collection is on average 10 looks. That's 30-40 pieces total. I signed up to host my first fashion show September 25th at Lightbulb Co-working. I'm trapped between the idea of showing a stable collection of 10 purses with wallets and designing an entire line of 10 looks. Realistically, I think that the 10 purse styles is probably the safer bet. I will have to think it over this week. Back to school starts in a few weeks.