Crafty Wonderland in summary

The Crafty Wonderland Super Colossal Spring Sale 2012 was today! It was a pretty good day. Somehow, hundreds (thousands?) of people managed to pull themselves away from the 85-degree sunny loveliness outside and come into the Oregon Convention Center for this event. Despite being rather tired and fuzzy-brained, I had a decent time selling and shopping and socializing.

My favorite part of the day was meeting and visiting so many of my "internet friends"– some whom I've interviewed on the We Make Portland Awesome section of this blog. Some of them were:
• Sofia of Buttonlandia
• Emily of Hedgehog Hiker (my neighbor at this show!)
• Sara of Kitty Baby Love
• Brooke of Little Canoe
• Cassie of Mag-Big
• Pepe and Ale of Muluk and The Blind Insect (You are some of my favorite people!)
• Emily of FunShine Creations (Thank you for the wonderful trade! I love my new earrings!)
• Amy of Ohlnu
• Alysia of Prost to the Host
• Anna of Roots Soap Co (I can't wait to try that laundry soap!)
• Monique of Where The Moon Goes

...And I know there were lots of others who are now escaping my very tired mind! With over 200 vendors, we had a pretty good group of wonderful makers and artists and friends, and it was really fun.

We make Portland awesome: KittyBBLove

"We make Portland awesome" is a weekly series. I’m interested building our community of artists by helping us all find out more about each other.

This week: Kitty Baby Love

Who are you?

Kitty Baby Love is a collaboration between Sara & Ben- me being Sara & Ben being our "production manager."
We are both stay at home parents and artists.

What do you make?
We make almost anything you can imagine. For our shop we developed our own natural crayon recipe & create our 'Kitty Egg' crayons & candles. We also have a coloring book & Kitty Egg bowling set. More items will hopefully come soon!
On the side, Ben regularly does custom furniture, graphic design, music recording/editing, though his real passion is in painting.
On the side i've been getting back into textile creations- toys & clothes, and sometimes dabble in miscellaneous crafty adventures- like knitting, refurbishing 2nd hand furniture, or most recently, baking cake pops!

Besides making things, what do you do?
We spend most of our time making things or being parents to our almost 3 year old toddler, Mikah. He's the center of our universe.
If we have an hour or 2 to spare, I enjoy sneaking off to a dance or yoga class, and Ben likes to have jam sessions or being able to study the Bhagavad Gita.

What inspires you?
Definitely Mikah and our kitties. Aesthetically, we are both into well made vintage equipment and furniture. A level of quality that can withstand the test of time inspires our approach to creating. We love the look of natural materials- from aged brass to wood & textiles.
Other than that, Ben's favorite artists include Francis Bacon (art) & Lee "Scratch" Perry from the 70s (music).
My favorite artists include Kiki Smith (art), Eiko Ishioka (RIP, fashion), & Bjork (music).

Where can your work be found?

Kitty Baby Love can be found in a few boutiques worldwide, but most easily in our online etsy shop. We have a few boutiques in Canada that regularly wholesale with us as much as our US vendors do- and have even done distribution in places as far off as Singapore!
We'll both be working on our personal art this year and hope to have that shown around soon too!

What do you love about Portland?
What do you love about Portland? (places, things to do, general character of the place, etc…)
We are all Portland transplants and love it here. The city is clean, the people are cool & friendly, and there are trees everywhere. We love having no sales tax & how easy it is to find other young & alternative parents.
We also love that most places we visit for business are locally owned. We look forward to being able to collaborate more with local artisans as we settle in.