Renegade Chicago 2013!

Hi friends! I know I'm a few days behind with my animal posts, and I'm going to have to postpone the next few days too. I've been a busybusybusy bee prepping for Renegade Chicago and finishing up some other deadlines before I head out onto the road. Yep, I'm driving. By myself. I drove last year by myself too, and I'm pretty sure I said something like "I'm never doing THAT again," but yeah, here I am again driving by myself (12ish hour drive + lots of breaks.)  I have lots of snacks and a few audiobooks and lots of music, so I'm hoping I'll be okay. I'm staying with one of my BFFs in Chicago, so I'll have someone to help me at the show and whatnot. Woo!

I'm psyched for this year's show! This will be my third year at the Chicago fair, and I'm hoping for sunshine and no wind. :)

If you are in the Chicago area, I will be at booth #82, near N. Honore St.  Come say hi!!!

I'll be back on Tuesday and will play major catchup with the daily animal posts. Thanks!

xoxo,
Michelle

Chicago Road Trip, Part 2

Annnnd here are the rest of the (phone) photos I took on my road trip to Chicago last week. Turns out, it's hard to take photos driving, but the scenery on the drive wasn't anything spectacular anyways. The prettiest part is from western NY-->NYC, near Naples NY. It's super-pretty there, especially in Autumn. The leaves were just hinting at starting to change color when I drove through. 

In Chicago, my friend and I went to the Swedish-American Museum in his neighborhood. There was a special exhibit on the first floor, paintings by Jennifer Saxell. They were nice, and reminded me of quilts. Upstairs in the museum were lots of cool relics from the passage of people from Sweden to America. 

Left poster shows all the food each person was given at the beginning of their voyage to America, Right shows the clothing/utilities they could pack.

This blew my mind! It's a terrible photo, but it's called a "Spit Cake."  They dripped cake batter over the spit, shown on the left, over an open fire, and it made the cake on the right. 

West Side Market in Cleveland, OH. My friend took me here for the best ever falafel and hummus. 

Lake Erie

Took my Mom and sister out to lunch to a favorite place from college. Veg platter from Aladdins, in Pittsford NY. 

Aladdins is right alongside the Erie Canal. Pretty!

I love this time of year when summer is kinda lingering, but with a hint of Autumn in the air.

My mom's pretty flowers

Bam and my sister, Jenna.

Renegade Chicago 2012

Hello! I'm back from a whirlwind trip to Chicago for this year's Renegade Craft Fair! It was crazy-successful and I packed a lot into my week-long trip. I drove to Chicago solo this year, and let me tell you, that was a LONG drive. I stopped in Cleveland, OH for an hour to have lunch with a friend, and then continued on my journey last thursday. After 3 hours of sleep the night before, leaving at 4:30am, and drinking a crap-ton of coffee, I finally made it to another friend's home in Chicago around 8pm that night. Phew. I had a free day on Friday, in which we stayed local to my friend's neighborhood in Andersonville, checking out the local Swedish-American Museum, and then heading to the Chicago Diner later on. I had a heart-attack-scare that night when we went to go to my rental car, and found an empty spot and a paper sign suddenly saying that it was now a tow-away zone (wasn't there in the morning when I moved my car there!) We freaked out, I called 311 and gave them the license plate number, to which they told me it wasn't in the system. They transferred me to the towing place and the same thing, no record of it in the system. I was beginning to think the worst, that it had been stolen, until the lady on the phone asked me if I had looked around the area for the car. Um, no? Apparently it is common for them to just MOVE the car instead of towing it away. I thanked her and my friend and ran around the blocks looking for the car. Found it a few blocks away! No ticket or boot or anything. Crazy. And weird! I've never ever heard of that happening before!

Renegade was awesome! I was so happy to have my full display this year (I flew last year, so basically only brought inventory and not much in terms of display items.) I was matched up with the same awesome ladies that I shared a booth with in Brooklyn this year, Mr. Sogs Handmade Creatures. Our stuff goes well together and the sisters are super-fun booth-mates. The weather was absolutely amazing and the crowds really came out. I sold so much stuff and all my new stuff went over really well. You can peek at my new Dogs and Cats calendars here, as well as the 24 new illustrations in it, and they will all be up in the shop in a week or so. Turns out, Chicago loves cats more than dogs! I'm pretty curious to see what is more popular in Brooklyn during upcoming holiday shows...

After a great weekend, I hit the road again Monday morning and headed to Cleveland again, to have a longer lunch-dinner with the same friend, and afterwards driving to Livonia, NY to hang with the family for a day or so. I finally made it back to Brooklyn Wednesday afternoon and it was utter relief to return that rental car and get back on public transportation. I'm still playing catch-up being home and trying to get back into the groove. I have lots of new things to show you! I'll have another post soon with some of the sights from my trip, other than my booth. 

xo,

Michelle

Chicago Fun-times

My display.  Experimental lightweight pocketed wall worked out pretty well.  Everything fit in a suitcase!

So I'm back from Chicago and Renegade was a complete success!  So much fun and I met so many nice people that came to my booth.  Plus, we had PERFECT weather (SO happy about that).  My boothmate, Paula Egan, was great and she makes absolutely beautiful jewelry made out of handmade paper and resin.  I didn't really get a chance to walk around the show at all, which I was a little sad about , but an A+ time overall!

New zippered pouches and 2012 calendars, which I will be putting in my shop super-soon.

I also got to wander around Chicago a bit and hang out with one of my very best friends that I don't get to see as often as I would like.  I walked around Chicago while he was at work on Friday and saw Lincoln Park, Millenium Park, the Tiffany dome at the Cultural Center, and went to the Museum of Surgical Science and of course, The Chicago Diner (yay!)  

I have more pics up on my Flickr stream, if you were so interested!

Tiffany glass dome at the Cultural Center

Taking a break in Lincoln park.

Orchestra playing in Millenium Park

Bean at Millenium Park

Duh!

Vegan PB Cookie Dough shake at the Chicago Diner

Vegan Radical Reuben at the Chicago Diner

Museum of Surgical Science

Museum of Surgical Science

Museum of Surgical Science

First Kotex ad. Museum of Surgical Science

Museum of Surgical Science

Renegade Chicago! This weekend!

So excited!  I leave for Chicago in a few hours for Renegade and to spend some time with a super-great friend of mine in his lovely city.  If you are in Chicago this weekend, I would love to meet you!  I will be at booth #184 on Division st. btwn. Wood and Hermitage. 

Have a great weekend and I'll be back next week with my new calendar and all sorts of new prints and fun stuff to show you!

Chicago!!

I went for a lovely little visit to Chicago last weekend. Although the air was quite frigid, I enjoyed all the sights and entertainment throughout the weekend. But duh, Nate was there, so of course it was great. :)

i love the bean. I could take a bajillion pictures of it. We went to see Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind on saturday night; had many laughs. It was interesting how similar the NYC one is to the Chicago chapter, but yet still little quirky differences. The Chicago one is waaaaaay more popular and exciting, while the NYC ones feels much more intimate and laid back. Both good and highly recommended. On sunday, we went to visit the Frank Lloyd Wright house and studio. So impressive! I didn't even think it looked all that big from the outside, plus it was in the middle of a total suburban sprawl neighborhood, but it was huuuuuuuge inside. And damn, I could LOVE to have his studio. Very interesting tour guide also, with good stories and tidbits. I love that feeling of going to a museum or going with a tour guide and feeling like, afterwards, you are looking at things in a whole new light. I couldn't help but examine the architecture of my surroundings for days afterward.

I had a reallly really crappy ride back home, but we won't talk about that. Nobody wants to hear about barf bags on airplanes and homeless men exposing themself to me. Blech.

FOREVER

...or at least, until next week.



watercolor, gouache on watercolor paper



I'm on a painting kick lately; Enjoying it a lot, and hope it continues. I've also been making prints of my work and putting them up in my Etsy store. I've been experimenting with different papers for prints and I decided today that I like the Epson Velvet Fine Art paper. It's has a nice weight to it, and I think it works really well with the subtleties of watercolor and the slight texture that I like to add.

This weekend will be so fun! I'm flying to Chicago tomorrow night, for fun-filled playtime with Nate. yay! I'm excited to see snow and I'm bringing my camera to capture it for posterity.

xoxo
michelle