Fabric Storage

My fabric collection continues to grow while my storage space remains the same size - so I decided to get creative. I rigged up an easy way to hang fabric on the wall so it would remain wrinkle free and easy to find. I bought a multi pack of Large Command Hooks that hold up to five pounds and some nice, but lightweight wooden hangers. We rent our house, but even if we owned it I'd choose these removable hooks over nails any day! They are extremely easy to attach to the wall and they'll be easy to remove once it's time to move or rearrange the room. Setting up the hooks and hangers only took about five minutes- it was the ironing of all the fabric that took a lot of time. I love how it turned out. It brightens up my office and I always adore something that's both pretty and functional!

In addition to the hanging fabric I also store my fat quarters in my tall bookshelf:The rest my fabric is folded and stacked in my office closet in a closet organizer made for sweaters: There's a studio tour and interview over on Moorea's Blog if you'd like to see more of my work space. She's also hosting a giveaway here where you can enter to win any Vivi Dot necklace of your choice!

Instagram Love

Instagram is just too much fun! I especially love that people that can't be convinced to join twitter have fallen in love with sharing pics via this ap. Here are some of the favorites I've taken over the last few weeks.

Bastille is one of my favorite restaurants in our neighborhood. The food is delish and I adore the decor. We sat at the fire pit table and had brunch before picking up some pretty fleurs at the farmer's market that's right outside their front door. I was a featured artist at the Seattle Public Library Gift Shop. The building is incredible and the shop is just the cutest! I did some shopping during the event as well and this mousepad was one of my finds. Duncan spotted this amazing kitty card at the Friendshop too. Doesn't it look just like Olive? You can see more awesomely dressed up animals by Takkoda here.I sent off a big wholesale order to Ruche and also picked up a few dresses from them in preparation for my summer of weddings, showers and bachelorette parties. I finally really cleaned up my workspace after months of missing the clean table top. There have been glimpses of spring trying creep through the gray days.This guy has been handsome as always. And this little lady likes to watch for us to return from Indy's walks. We explored Freemont, our neighboring neighborhood.I got my Vivi Dot spring items live in the shop! This Beauty Bar Doors Polaroid Necklace is constantly adorning my neck these days. So if you haven't hopped on the Instagram train yet, get on it! Oh and follow me so I can follow ya back and watch your adventures too (search for vividot). Hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Merry Stressmas!

I always have such great expectations about what I want to get done and blog about in December. Well, truthfully it's a year round struggle, but December just seems especially difficult when it comes to time management. There's the usual: full time job, teaching dance classes, and Vivi Dot orders to take care of with the added holiday craft shows, festive parties to attend, shopping to be completed and, and, and. I need to face that fact that my visions of multiple, fabulous, holiday DIY tutorials and new handmade decorations likely ain't gonna be executed. As of today I'm allowing myself to feel okay with that. Heck, I haven't even bought a tree yet! So with literally no time to deck the halls I've decided to the deck my workspace in the meantime. I strung up these adorably festive stickers by Michelle of Bubbly Shnooks above my desk. I do spend a good 10 hours a day in this very spot so it makes sense to start here. Plus once I do finally get to some holiday gift wrap blog posts (I WILL do at least one of those) they'll be nice and handy!
Do you find time management extra tough during the holidays too?

Falling for Fall

One huge advantage of moving back to Seattle was the return to seasons. Sure, the temperatures change a bit month over month in San Francisco, but I missed ushering in new seasons in a more obvious manner. Seattle is amazing in the fall with lots of clear, cold, crisp days with pretty blue skies. There are also plenty of rainy days that are perfect for keeping cozy indoors. This weekend was pretty wet so Duncan and I stayed close to home for the most part.
Waking up to no alarm is such a rare treat and I was able to do just that both Saturday and Sunday. Indy didn't want to get out of bed either. I sipped coffee in our own little diner and read for a while. Olive did some reading as well. I got word from Cyroline that they received their big order of Vivi Dot Watch Necklaces and Hair Pins. If you're in Germany make sure to check them out at a Cyroline store near you! We did get out on Sunday to head to the huge Goodwill in our neighborhood. I found the perfect skirt for my Halloween costume, Olive's new cat book (featured above), a cute cow creamer, and an owl for our yard. I found this awesome sign the weekend before that will be up in our diner soon. We finished out the lovely weekend with a yummy meal of stuffed peppers. Gotta love the dramatic oven lighting on this one:Other activities not documented with my iPhone camera included watching The Fantastic Mr. Fox on our new bluray player, going to see It's Kind of a Funny Story (highly recommended/awesome soundtrack), going to a staff meeting for the dance studio, a little wedding planning/research, and picking up some pumpkins. What did you do this weekend?

Let there be light!

Product photography is tough! For the last few shop updates I've done I've used natural light for my photos. I was generally happy with them, but some products were especially hard to get just right. I could get them to look okay with some photo editing, but that's tricky because it can end up distorting the colors into something they aren't. Duncan purchased some shop lights for about $100 for a project he worked on last week. Since those are now sitting in our garage he suggested I buy a photo light tent. At only $30 I figured it was worth a shot.We set up lights on the right, left, and one from behind. It took some maneuvering to get the light even and get rid of the shadows, but we eventually got them just right. Next we messed with the settings on our camera (Nikon D40x) until the white balance looked good. After that work was done the rest was a breeze. We powered through a ton of photos in very short amount of time, lining them up the same way each time. Editing them is really easy too because once you crop one just right the rest can all be done the exact same way.
Here's a before and after example with the first being in natural light (with those pesky shadows) and the second in the new light tent.
I'll be editing photos and writing descriptions tonight and hope to have a big earrings update later this week. I think I'll even have my first online sale to celebrate!

Glorious Laborious

I've been sweatshopping myself like crazy in preparation for the Treasure Island Music Festival. I've hand cut thousands and thousands (no exaggeration) of fabric circles, had a bunch of help pressing them all, and have sorted each 'dot' according to which Vivi Dot product they'll become. It was truly a LABOR day weekend!

Lucky for me I was able to get some sun while I pumped out tons of dots. Check out my warm weekend set up below as well as our spread of summery refreshments.


Up next- My first trip to Montana for my sister's wedding this week! I'll be sure to post the many ways the lovely bride incorporated Vivi Dot into her wedding.

Now I'm off to work on my wedding toast!

Organization

I cleaned up and organized my fabric a while back and I just had to take a picture. This is a rarity and I’ll be the first to admit that my workspace is usually in various stages of disarray. Here’s the nice extreme -how I (and especially Duncan) would like it to look more often.



I refolded and organized my fabrics so they were perfectly stacked. This lasted about two days.

The office Duncan and I share has a lovely view of our garden (also known as Olive’s Garden). Here she is posing for this shot right next to the hot tub.


If you look straight down from the window you can see the area where the extra flowerpots are kept. This is also where Duncan goes to feel like a real man and chop the wood with his big manly axe. This area is hidden from the rest of the garden by a big wall of greenery so this is the best vantage point for the wood chopping action if you’re into that sort of thing.

Oxymoronic

Today's oxymoron is: sweatshop party**

Thanks to Allie and Summer for all of their hard work this past Sunday! They came over and helped me pump out a bunch of buttons for the upcoming Capsule show. We've coined the term 'sweatshop party' for these get togethers, but lucky for us the conditions are actually quite comfy. I had strawberries, veggies, crackers, horseradish dip, and bloody mary's waiting for them when they arrived. We also finished the long day off with a nice dinner at my new favorite sushi place, Shimo in the Richmond.

Now I've got a ton of gluing ahead of me and I'm hoping to completely redesign my booth set up before the big event. Speaking of the big event...
If you're in San Francisco on Memorial Day weekend make sure to come by the Capsule Street Fair on Sunday. I'm in booth number 1 on the corner of Hayes and Octavia. Duncan, Allie, Summer, Ryan and I will be hanging out, drinking sake from True Sake down the street, and slangin' Vivi Dot from 11-6.

Just to be overly, overly cautious and clear:
** Please note that Vivi Dot is wholeheartedly against sweatshops and would never force anyone to work in difficult or dangerous conditions. Everything from Vivi Dot is handmade with love, voluntary sweat, in the company of friends and sometimes fueled by an alcoholic beverage or two (though never enough to compromise our quality control).

And to hopefully offset my 'humorous' misuse of a very serious subject, please check out Sweatshopwatch.org. It's an organization aimed to empower workers and educate consumers about how to be a conscious shopper!

Save the Date!

My sister is getting married! Being the awesome, supportive sister that she is she wants to incorporate Vivi Dot as much as possible. This started out with the save the date cards. I've always thought that magnets that can act a reminder for the details of the wedding are a great thing to include with save the date cards. I thought I'd put a Vivi Dot twist to what's normally a flat business card sized magnet. My sister went to Paper Source (one of my favorites) and designed the note card with the '3 dots' in mind. She let me know what she wanted each magnet to say and then let me run with the rest of it. Here are some photos of the process and the finished product too:

UPDATE: related post located here.

Vivi Dot workspace:

We chose the round paper source labels for the addresses to keep the 'dot' theme consistent.

The finished product:


Save the date magnets- close up: