Monday, March 17, 2008

SXSW Wrap up - Pretty Purses, Crazy T-Shirts & WILD Dancing!

Uwi - what a weekend. It's been awhile since I have set up a booth for a marathon show - from Thursday to Sunday we had a group booth, courtesy of the Austin Craft Mafia, set up at Jo's Coffee on South Congress.

The reason, of course, was the city's number one tourist draw - SXSW. Jo's Coffee and the San Jose Hotel teamed up to provide a parking lot showcase of bands all day each day, and a little row of tents with local vendors.

First off, I have to say I was VERY impressed with the staff of Jo's and San Jose - I saw these guys and gals out there busting their butts all day each day - and they were really, genuinely friendly. They cleaned the bathrooms all day, they had our booths set up for us, they were just freakin' amazing.

Mostly I have a few pictures for you to peep...

The booth:

The Austin Craft Mafia Booth

Shoppers in my corner:

Shopping the *annemarie* display

Amy's corner of the booth - that's Amy Barber of Sweettooth Bags!

Amy's Flowers

Close up of some of Hope's Badass Dresses - that's Hope Perkins of Hot Pink Pistol

Hope's Dresses

Meanwhile - as the weekend wore on and our delirium mounted - we planned our free t-shirts a day in advance. You see, Free YR Radio had a freebie booth set up where you could get a t-shirt custom pressed with vinyl lettering of your choice. Since Amy was "fluffing" our booth merchandise just about every minute of the day - I crowned her the "Number One Fluffer" - he he he.

Amy is number one!

Me, being me, decided that "Bow down b*tches" would be rather raunchy. However, when I got to the t-shirt booth I chickened out, and got one with "AMBIE" on it - my nickname. Amy, keeping up her end of the bargain, ducked out of the booth for a long long time. When she returned, she proudly showed me the t-shirt she made! She had to find scraps on the ground to piece together the phrase, as the free t-shirt booth was packing up!

Say What?

As the two of us tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to take some "hot" pictures - me, very sweaty, tired, covered in sunscreen, and Amy, super cute but still tired - Travis decided to surround his glasses with clothespins!

Travis the Clothespin Monster

Yeah, that's Travis Nichols of I Like Apple Juice. I didn't manage to get any shots of his stuff in the booth, or that of Sublime Stitching, but it was a blast working with him & the Sublime Stitching Gals!

The big finale - one of the crazy flailing ladies strutted her stuff on the "dance floor" Saturday afternoon - she's got moves!!!

Thursday, March 13, 2008

*annemarie* featured in the Austin paper

The fabulous store where I sell on Austin's South Congress shopping strip, Parts & Labour, was featured in the Austin American-Statesman today.

Spring Preview!

There is a write up about the store, and pictures of my bags in the print version! Looks like my pic didn't make it on the web, but my good friend Wendy Irwin's bags did! She is the uber crafty owner of Ballistic Sweater Girl.

Off to South Congress today to set up in my booth at Jo's Coffee shop... I am expecting to see all kinds of cool outfits and SXSW brings thousands into Austin for the weekend!

xo
Anne Marie

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Photoblog: From Luggage to Art to New Spring Bags!

I am off to San Diego tomorrow! I have been so uber busy sewing and cleaning and making hangtags etc.... that I kept forgetting to blog. So to make things easy on myself tonight, I emptied my camera of images and chose a few to share with you!

First off, I finally finished my display luggage. That's right folks, I made this sweet puppy all on my own - it's really just an envelope style bag with lots of velcro and fancy webbing and buckles to hold everything in... 2 pieces of gridwall, shelving, etc...

Display Luggage!

Display Luggage Detail

Next, a sneak peek at my pattern development. I am working on a line of patterns to publish for other crafty people - and a big part of the process is started. Soon enough I will be teaching classes, so to prepare I took pictures of my pattern pieces on fabric for a cutting layout and to determine the amount of yardage to use.

The beginnings of a Pattern Layout!

I also snapped lots of photos of my new Spring Bags!!! I have been working on them for a few weeks, and they are all finally finished. I took a huge batch to Parts & Labour today, and packed the rest for San Diego. I will post some for sale on Etsy next week, but you can see a sneak peek preview below!

The Rosie Bag...
Spring Preview

The Paige Bag...
Spring Preview!

Finally, after a lot of hard work, I relaxed and made some art. I wanted to show you how messy making a tiny piece of art can be - paint, fabric scraps, glue, glitter.... how do I fit all of those crafting supplies in my tiny apartment?

Anne Marie's Art MESS

Then - the finished piece of art - just a fun little canvas square to let my creative juices flow.

Anne Marie's Art

Wish me luck at Appel & Frank!
Anne Marie