City of Craft!

I'm in! I'm in!

Waited oh-so-patiently and it paid off! I was accepted into City of Craft's holiday show and I'm just so thrilled! I was neglecting my little Etsy shop over the summer. I shelved it to attend to more pressing matters like: patios and brunches and music festivals and mojitos and canoes and picnics and outdoor movies and hammocks, of course. Then I spent early fall recovering from those hardships.

I'm back, puppies.

Now I need to get motivated to cut and sew and design like crazy. Probably I should set aside some weekends, but they're filling up so fast. Yikes. It's only, err, 3 weeks away; that's closer than it seems. And it seems close.

I'm in trouble. Especially because I can't say no to anything! 

Luckily, I somehow secretly slipped a clause into my marriage contract that basically means hubby must (by law!) cut fabric shapes and iron seams until his hands bleed. Anytime I ask! JK, you guys! OK, it's not a law. It's just a reeeeealllly big debt accumulated over years of band-wifely support. JK?

Stop by and see me December 8th & 9th, won't you? It's one of the best holiday craft shows of the season and I'm so stoked to be a part of it! 

(Aside: can I get away with saying "stoked"? Like, am I too old?)

p.s. Eventually I will need an awesome graphic designer/web-wonderperson to help me revamp dudleyandbea.com and this blog. Barter, anyone? I have to stop pretending that I know what I'm doing. I have other talents. Sewing, I mean, SEWING. Geez. (That's enough out of you.)

Side Dish

I can't just do one thing. Maybe I've finally made peace with the fact that I'm not going to be the kind of girl with a "5-year plan" or a "career path". I've been pretty lucky to have jobs (like my current one) that let me do a million different things and appease all of my conflicting interests. It's not that I don't have dreams or goals, it's just that there are a lot of them and I might be shooting around wildly hoping to hit a few.

Imma just gonna do stuff I like.

I guess I'm afraid to not indulge my every whim for fear that my true calling will get missed. It's why I can't say no. It's why I have 5,674,936 hobbies. It's why I come off as flighty, directionless. Maybe, though, my true calling is "DOING AWESOME THINGS". I agonized forevs about choosing one career over another (Should I have pursued journalism? Is corporate retail where I belong?), about what I should have studied in school  (I had the math grades for Engineering but I wanted to design clothes), about how I saw my life in 5, 10, 20 years (panic!).

 { grade 8 // this is clearly not a new problem }

Can't I just dabble in everything? Why isn't that allowed? So, as it turns out: it is. It's a little frowned-upon, but in a city is rife with floaters and dreamers and slashies, I fit in. I romanticize living in the sticks, but I'm pretty at home here with aimless weirdos like me.

On top of being insanely busy at work (but I'm getting an intern! yay!), I've also signed myself up for some pretty big side gigs leading into the holidays. I have to sew my face off for a City of Craft – it's coming up in less than a month. But I haven't even started because of another project that just wrapped up on Sunday.

Thanks to some work I did on some videos for my day job, I made some friends in the movie biz. Heh. Dan was our DOP on a few GelaSkins vids (and he directed my directing, too!). When a personal project came his way – a music vid for his hip-hop artist friend, Muneshine – something possessed him to hire me. As a stylist! Oh boy. I was totally in over my head but I wanted to do an awesome job because getting paid to shop is pretty much my dream (OK, one of seven billion dreams).

I was excited but nervous about the role. My challenge: to outfit 5 girls in the style of 60s-esque stewardesses. On basically no budget. Hey: my look-expensive-while-being-broke superpower is paying off outside of my own closet!

I was also somehow smooth-talked into being "talent". Totally against my will. If you know of my not-so-secret and completely unattainable Broadway aspirations, you are rolling your eyes. But honest: I didn't want to be in the vid. Mostly because I hired 4 mega-babes who completely out-babe me. Seriously, you wanna juxtapose me against teeny dancer bodies and high cheekbones. Crap.

 { sneak peek! photos: shlomi amiga }

Once I have a chance to wade through the photo-aftermath, I'll post some behind-the-scenes eye-candy and my thoughts on make-believe career #5,674,937. Let's manage expectations here, though: it won't be anytime soon. I'm diving straight into sewing while attempting to dodge holiday-ish invites with minimal FOMO and working longer-than-normal hours at my uber-busy day job. Blog neglected again.

See? I have so many side dishes that I don't even have time for my very favourite among them! I would like you to know that I currently have NINE draft posts sitting in the wings. All becoming less relevant and timely the longer I wait. 

I am well-meaning. 

"The road to hell...", yeah?

a fairy tale.

Once upon a time (oh, about two weeks ago) one girl sewed and cut and bled her heart out to get ready for an Etsy holiday sale. Now, that sale has sailed. It wasn't quite the success she had hoped, but she shared good cheer with friends and fellow crafty folk. So, what of the oodles of crafted wonders leftover from the show, hauled lovingly by her Prince back to their shared castle in the kingdom of the Annex? Well, a good fairy swooped in and bought the whole lot for her little shop in wee Roncesvalles Village. Need I mention that they all lived happily ever after?

---

Yeah, that was my Etsy/West Elm sale experience. Maybe a little sour but mostly sweet. I am SUPER happy to have been included, and am overwhelmed by the love and support from friends, even if I didn't have a heap of sales.

 [ my little nook ]

[ dudley & bea - squeaky bones and jingle mice! ]

My fairy is Nadia, the lovely owner of Fetch, a cute little pet boutique in the west end. It's my first foray into the wholesale world (at least since I became Dudley & Bea) and it's just the right fit for a girl who's also holding down a full-time job. Who knows, maybe I'll branch out in the springtime. But for now, I'm pretty happy to have a little brick-n'-mortar action, especially in the 'hood which may soon become our new home. OK, that's premature, but my sights are set westward! It's all a part of my master plan: Project Babymaker. In good time, my pets.

[  367 Roncesvalles Ave in Toronto ]

 

In other craft news, I lament my tardiness in getting my City of Craft application done in time. 

It was darn good this year, at least traffic-wise. As a customer, elbowing my way through the shopping process was less than pleasant. But those crafty sellers had dolla-dolla-billz-y'all in place of pupils. Darn, I could have used some of that action. Ah, well. I did OK, though: I sold Lindsay two of my squishy pet bowls bootleg-style in the middle of the aisle. Illegal soliciting. One step away from a meth lab, right? Also, I snagged some stocking stuffables for Alex and some yummers cinnamon lip-balm. 

Other highlights were Bespoke Uprising (burlesque tea-towels!), Julie Moon (ceramic poppy earrings!) and homemade curries. 

I'm still a far cry from Christmas completeness, but mom passed down her superior shopping gene so I'll be allllright.

[ happily ever after image by type posters on Etsy ]