Sweater Drive at City of Craft: donate a sweater, help the homeless!

Today's the day citizens! City of Craft opens this evening at 6:00 pm!  

Whether you come Friday (6:00 - 10:00 pm) or Saturday (11:00 am - 6:00 pm) or Sunday (11:00 am to 5:00 pm), please plan to bring an old sweater (or 3) to donate to a great cause!

Local eco-accessories designer Nathalie-Roze Fischer is running a Sweater-Drive during City of Craft.

Please bring in your cozy old sweaters, and she'll morph them into Toques, Neck-warmers & Mitts to be donated to local shelters & homeless programs. And, if you like, you can help cut & sew these items during the show. Nathalie-Roze will be doing some production on-site, and you can get hands-on (if you like) or maybe sign up to volunteer at upcoming sewing parties.

 

NOTE: Warm winter-weight sweaters (ideally, wool) are best, please. Also, since most donations are given to men, partnering agencies have requested mainly low-key colours/patterns.

This Make & Donate Upcycling initiative is part of The Lennie Project, a series of deliberate acts of kindness aimed at helping Toronto's most vulnerable ~ inspired by the big-heartedness of Nathalie-Roze's uncle (Lennie) who died of cancer last year.

Please give to this amazing project!

Questions? Contact N-R at: info@nathalie-roze.com

Twitter: @NRandCo  Facebook: http://on.fb.me/oJ7VEg

See you at City of Craft!

Workshops at City of Craft!

Citizens! City of Craft is mere days away and along with the dozens of wonderful vendors with handmade goodies you'll love, we will once again be hosting some great workshops in the Craft Lab. 

This year, the workshops will be 'pay what you can' to help cover the cost of supplies, but for a few dollars and a bit of time, you'll learn a new craft and be able to take home what you make. Amazing!

Be sure to leave time during your City of Craft experience for one of these fantastic workshops.

Here is this year's line up:

Paper Marbling – Saturday 12:00 pm to 1:00pm

Participants of this workshop will be able to experience the joy of paper marbling in all it’s swirly glory.

Instructors: The OCAD U Student Press exists to foster critical engagement through publishing in the OCAD U community. It has grown into a body that publishes stellar work across all disciplines, organizes talks and events, facilitates workshops, and continues to evolve. 

 
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Collage Pinback Button Making - Saturday 1:30 pm to 2:00 pm

Make a pinback button using various collage material such as magazines, vintage textbooks and postcards from City of Craft's past.

Instructor: Marta Ryczko is the Craft Lab Coordinator at City of Craft. She is also also a designer, illustrator and zine maker.  She recently completed a creative challenge where she designed something every day for 1000 days!

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Book Binding – Saturday 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm

In this workshop participants will learn how to bind a button hole book using up-cycled City of Craft postcards from previous years.

Instructor: Shannon Gerard writes and draws books, crochets (a lot), make prints, and produces large-scale installations incorporating stop-motion animation and wheat paste.

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Brush Lettering Workshop – Sunday 12:00 pm to 1:00pm

This City of Craft workshop will focus on brush calligraphy. We'll cover how to control the brush, and learn all the basic strokes of the alphabet. If time permits we will play some word games with your new found skill.

Instructor: KyleGallant is a letterer, designer, and co-founder of Ligatures, a typographic interest group in Toronto. From lettering workshops to movie screenings, Ligatures was built on creating a sense of community amongst YYZ creatives through sharing of information and resources. 

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Handmade Paper Button Making Sunday 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm

Participants will be able to press 1 inch pinback buttons using a wide variety of handmade papers created by Paperhouse Studio.

Intructors: With some cast iron and a whole lot of love, Emily Cook and Flora Shum opened Paperhouse Studio in 2013. Paperhouse is a hand papermaking facility in Toronto with dreams to share and explore this versatile medium with innovative research and teaching.

See you there citizens!

Volunteers needed for City of Craft!

Photo by Becca Gilgan

It's that time of year! City of Craft is coming up and we're looking for volunteers to help make our favourite Toronto craft show a reality.


Volunteers are extremely important to making City of Craft happen. Helping out at  the show is a fun way to support Toronto's awesome craft community.
Some of the tasks volunteers take on include:
- setting up and taking down tables/chairs
- handing out swag bags at the door
- taking admission
- selling official CoC merchandise
- helping out vendors by watching over their tables when they need a washroom/food break
- being generally helpful, friendly and welcoming to City of Craft
 
So easy! In exchange, volunteers get the chance to be part of a fun creative event and meet great people in Toronto's craft community (and beyond).

To be a volunteer, you must:
- be able to commit to a minimum 3 hour shift during the event (though you are welcome to sign up for more!)
- be a human being :)

Interested? Of course you are! So send a quick e-mail to cocvolunteer[AT]gmail[DOT]com and be sure to mark CoC down in your calendar - December 12, 13 & 14, 2014 at The Theatre Centre (1115 Queen Street West).

Thanks and see you at City of Craft!

Stay crafty,
Michelle
CoC Volunteer Coordinator 

Hex Appeal.

A big thank you to everyone who came out to our decor party last night. Want to see what all these hexagons and trianges turn into? you will just have to come out to the big show Saturday.

Pulling Strings Hamilton Library - Tea, Talk, and Tell this Sunday.

City of Craft co-founder Jen Anisef and tune spinner Tara Bursey may have flown the coop to Hamilton, but their ties to Toronto makers remain strong in their new project, Pulling Strings. Along with co-conspirator Thea Haines, Tara and Jen are hosting a Tea, Talk and Tell this Sunday, 11am-12:30pm at Needlework, Hamilton's creative workspace and cute fabric mecca. The event celebrates the launch of the Pulling Strings Reference Library which features textile publications of all stripes including, zines, how to books, artist monographs, and crazy old patterns.

The ladies of Pulling Strings have invited Toronto and Hamilton based textile heroes Anna Zygowski, Jennifer Kaye, Grant Heaps, and Kate Jackson to do a show and tell from their personal textile libraries and talk a bit about their own practice for the event. Also, there will be tea, coffee and treats. Nurse your City of Craft Spring Show shopping hangover at this cozy and FREE event.

If a trek to Hamilton isn't in the cards, you can check out mini textile book reviews on the Pulling Strings blog over here.

 

Spring Frolic!

Now seems like as good a time as any to introduce Emily Taylor, our designer for the entire year of 2014. This poster is just a small sample of her incredible talent. Aside from being a generally fantastic illustrator and designer, Emily is also a big fan of botanicals (in which realm she is currently cooking up a pretty fantastic project of her own).

It's a great priviledge to have her on board to do our annual design. We are all very lucky to see her work unfold over the year - for us, for others and for herself.

But for now, nothing feels more like spring than witnessing the frolic of spring beasts.

City of Craft Spring
Saturday, April 26, 2014
11am-6pm
Trinity St. Paul's United Church
427 Bloor Street West
(one block West of Spadina)
Toronto, ON
$1
(Kids 12 & Under FREE)

Decoration Nation - Come Help us Make Decor on April 23.

Ever wonder how the amazing decorations get made for City of Craft events? Short answer: Kalpna Patel. For the long answer, you can come down to our decor party and have Kalpna boss you around. For this year's spring show, we are working on Kalpna's recent and continuing obsession with hexagonal beehive structures. What better metaphor for spring!
We are extremely happy to be holding this gathering in the new Artscape Youngplace building on Shaw. If anything, this event is a great excuse to check out their space. Their Flex Studios are particularily of interest for artists as they can be rented for super cheap hourly rates (like, a dollar sometimes!)

City of Craft Spring Decor Party
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
6pm-9pm
Artscape Youngplace
180 Shaw Street (room 109)
Bring your paper scissor! (But don't run with them).