Sponsor Profile: TheVinylDen

Who are you? Pierre Bois - Vinyl Lover and Principal of TheVinylDen.

Where are you located? Toronto, Ontario - corner of Young and Funky.

What do you/your business/your product do? TheVinylDen is a dj project celebrating the vinyl format from the 50s to the 2000s. We specialize in not-for-profit and grass-roots organizations, craft and art shows, as well as house and block parties.

What gets you pumped about doing what you do? Seeing the smiles on peoples' faces when they hear those songs from times past, and then realizing that the sound is actually coming from vinyl. Listening to my record collection for a few hours is always a bonus.

What does your sponsorship for the show entail? 13 hours of spinning the wheels of steel at the Thrush Holmes Empire location of City of Craft.

What are you crafting this holiday season (festive beverages & baked goods count)? Sweet beats and funky treats with a cup of hot dicso.

When City of Craft (and other awesome indie shows) is not on, where do you go for your crafty fix? TheVinylDen is always open and always crafting some great sets. My craft Mecca though, Queen street row of record shoppes - Kopps Records, Neurotica Records and Rotate This.

Totes.

Some shots of out tote bag printing lock-in this past Sunday. Big thanks to Shannon for heading up the print crew, Sandi for doing the design and helping out and Roisin for lending the use of her prodigious biceps.

The first 100 people through the door Saturday get one of these for free and stuffed full of goodies. If you don't want to line up, more will be available at the Merch/Reception table for $15 each. Trust me, this is the best tote bag you will ever own - heavy-duty recycled cotton canvas and big enough to fit a whole grocery shopping trip. Plus they have Sandi's brilliant artwork on them. What more could you as for?

Sponsor Profile: rcboisjoli

Who are you? rcboisjoli is a small design factory in Toronto run by Alexx Boisjoli with various other hands to help stir up the pot.

Where are you located? We work within a co-operative ceramics studio within a greater unit full of great designers/artists/crafty people in the Junction area. Our building is a terribly ugly retro concrete castle, that was originally built to house the Toronto Food Terminal.

What do you/your business/your product do? rcboisjoli focuses on domestic ceramics, as in we make ceramics for the home. We work mostly with mold making and porcelain with silk screened graphics. We love collaborative work, we often work with other illustrators/designer to fabricate work, like our collabro-illustrative initiative The Bottled Project. Recently we've explored more lighting installations and larger scale commissions.

What gets you pumped about doing what you do? We love working with process, we love making things by hand, we love fabricating. We do every stage of production in studio, from the plaster lathe for our models, to our own molds and glazes right down to our hand silk screened decals. We are inspired by old fashion mass production, where people lived what they produced.

What does your sponsorship for the show entail? We've sponsored the show with many ceramic goodies. They may end up as raffle prizes, or door crashers or prizes for that fun carnival game.

What are you crafting this holiday season (festive beverages & baked goods count)? rcboisjoli has no problems getting busy this time of year. It's always super busy with craft shows, design week just around the corner and studio mates producing for One Of A Kind too. The studio has been a flurry of production and creativity, and it rubs off when everyone is busy. There are also less distractions, like gardening, as it's getting pretty cold out.

When City of Craft (and other awesome indie shows) is not on, where do you go for your crafty fix? We're surrounded by so many crafty-happenings in Toronto that there’s never a shortage of things to explore year round. We've heard good things about the Art Crawl in Hamilton too, but only have made it out once now, definitely need to explore that more.

Sponsor Profile: blogTO

Who are you? blogTO

Where are you located? We're everywhere in Toronto. But if you want to pin us down we just moved into an office space near Queen and Bathurst.

What do you/your business/your product do? We cover Toronto. If you haven't discovered us, just click here or download our free iPhone or iPad app.

What gets you pumped about doing what you do? We love writing about things in Toronto that will surprise and delight people. And readers send us awesome tips like these Toronto etiquette cards that a local designer just created.

Now, we're really excited about out mobile apps. We've been getting great feedback about our just released iPad app and new iPhone app and will be coming out with an Android app very soon.

What does your sponsorship for the show entail? We're helping promote the show. We want all our readers to know about it so they can show up and take a look at the amazing crafts being created by local designers.

What are you crafting this holiday season (festive beverages & baked goods count)? We're waiting for readers to send us their favourite spiked egg not recipes (hint hint) so we can taste test them in our new office.

When City of Craft (and other awesome indie shows) is not on, where do you go for your crafty fix? We go wherever our readers tell us. We get lots of craft events, pop-up shops and other design events submitted to our events section and we're always scouring local shops including these notable ones for awesome finds.

Sponsor Profile: Soak Wash

City of Craft is super lucky to have an amazing crop of sponsors again this year generously providing incredible loot, services & fun at the show. We'll be introducing them to you as the show approaches so you can meet the folks that turn the show up to 11 and learn more about their contributions. Sponsors, we salute you!

First up, Soak Wash, first choice of discerning textile launderers:

Who are you? Jacqueline Sava, Visionary Leader at Soak Wash Inc.

Where are you located? Our office is in a very sexy industrial strip mall, just outside the big city (Mississauga).

What do you/your business/your product do? We make Soak. Modern care for the laundry you love. Soak is a rinse-free wash formulated for your laciest lingerie, softest sweaters, swimwear, quilts, even baby and vintage clothes. My job is to spread the Soak love, identify designers and products that are Soakworthy and ensure everyone has the chance to try Soak on the delicate items they love most.

What gets you pumped about doing what you do? Breaking new ground, bringing ideas to life, and changing the perception of a product or industry. We revolutionized hand-washing creating a delicate detergent people love and brag about using.

What does your sponsorship for the show entail? We’ve included a mini-soak single use sample in every goodie bag and volunteer bag. We’ve also sent our new temporary tattoo sheets and some gift sets for prizes!

What are you crafting this holiday season (festive beverages & baked goods count)? I’m quilting up a storm, I have a few full-size quilts on the go. I look forward to days, alone, in a room with my sewing machine. I’m finishing off a few knit scarves, I’m baking cookies (biscotti is my go to favorite) and I’ll likely throw in a beading party with my sister.

When City of Craft (and other awesome indie shows) is not on, where do you go for your crafty fix? My favorite part about the Soak family is that it extends to crafty people in this and other cities. So, I tap into my social network to secure crafty delights straight from designers, makers and creative crafters whenever possible. Alternatively, I invite over some friends for a home-made crafting night.

Nutso!

Photo by Ian Phillips

Raffles are so 2010, right? That's why we are incredibly excited to have this 'NUTSO!' board on loan from the cuties at Chevaux de Bois (Ian and Alexx). Every ball is a winner! With prizes from Coldsnap Bindery, SOAK, Sublime Stitching, Sweetie Pie Press, Omiyage.ca, Bespoke Uprising, rc boisjoli & more!

Who is as excited as I am?

Guest Blogger Picks: Serena McCarroll.

This was a tough assignment. Tough but fun! Like when you enter a shopping spree contest and then spend days meticulously planning out exactly how you would go about it should you win (but you don't win. YOU NEVER EVER WIN). So, here we go, if I won the chance to pick out eight things at City of Craft I would end up with something like this:

1: Julie Moon makes me swoon! Isn't this beautiful? Seriously, stunning.

2: All or nothing! Go big or go home! This hard-carved brass pendant is all in, yo. It references Kierkegaard which is totally dope. Not dopey, D-O-P-E. From the "Protect Ya Neck" collection by Old Weston.

3. Wood is good! This wood belt buckle is made of recycled off-cut scraps. Eco-fantastic! By Broundoor.

4: Blinging it up is totally cool but it's also nice to have jewelry you can wear on casual Friday. Here we have a hand-tooled, hand-painted, hand-dyed and finished leather necklace in a primitive pyramids design. By Scouts Handmade.

5. Stamps! These ones are hand-carved out of rubber and mounted on a piece of salvaged wood that's been sanded and lacquered for a durable finish. I love the impossible cube and penrose triangle designs but I'm also generally a big fan of crystal configurations. By Stephanie Galea.

6. Learn To Multiply. Yes, please!

7. The Misanthrope Specialty Company never fails to amuse and astound.

http://misanthropespecialty.blogspot.com/

8. And finally, something practical! I really like this. I like it aesthetically but also it is a useful postal tool. And made from wood! By Sweetie Pie Press.

Serena McCarroll is a visual artist. She recently received her MFA in Documentary Media from Ryerson University. You can check out some of her work here. She maintains a blog called "What a Deal!" about, you guessed it, D-E-A-L-S.