Hello out there!
Well, long time, no blog, huh?
I've been meaning to write a recap of The Pop Up shop...but sad thing is-I took not one photo! So thankfully, Casey let me use the top four photos and West Elm sent me over the bottom two taken by Aimee Wenske. I do wish I had my own to share-but you can definitely get a "feel" for the event from these.
First of all, I'd like to give a huge thank you to all of you Austinites (and others) who came out to support the event on Saturday! For almost all of the five hours we had a pretty packed house. I could not believe the overwhelming, positive response. I feel so lucky to have moved to this new place that accepts artists with open arms. And thanks to you readers who showed up and introduced yourselves! It was so fun to meet and connect. Sometimes I feel as though I'm just sending these posts out to nowhere, so to meet real people who read feels so nice :)
Secondly-another huge thank you to all of the vendors who participated. I know first hand how much prep work these events take and I feel honored and pleased at the job you all did! The goods looked fantastic, thank you so much!
Lastly, a big huge-enormous thank you to the folks from West Elm. I am going to be completely honest, I got my first job at age 15 and since then I have mainly worked for small, independant businesses. I am fiercely supportive of local whenever I can be, so I was a bit apprenhensive about partnering with a national corporation. But I must tell you, the more I learned about West Elm, the more confident I became that this would be a good partnership. First off, unlike some other big name retailers-West Elm does not rip off work from artists-they support them. They often issue special editions in their stores from artists, have a vibrant relationship with Etsy and feature small makers in their catalogs. I completely admire them for this. Also, I was in no way pressuered into blogging about them, advertising for them, tweeting about them-nothing. Anything I've said here about them is completely from me, I admire that they didn't pressure me into linking to them or sending my readers their way. And the logisitics of the event were flawless! The day of the market staffers were there to help the artists set up and take down. I have never been a part of an event that was so professional and well planned. Thank you, West Elm!
If you are interested in learning more about the vendors, here they are in no particular order:
Salt & Time - http://www.saltandtime.com/
Leah Duncan - http://www.etsy.com/shop/leahduncan
MissNatalie - http://www.etsy.com/shop/MissNatalie
Paloma's Nest - http://www.etsy.com/shop/palomasnest
Vertallee Letterpress - http://www.etsy.com/shop/vertallee
Linda Ketelhut - http://www.etsy.com/shop/lindaketelhut
MAKEatx - http://www.etsy.com/shop/MAKEatx
Besem Natural Scents - http://www.etsy.com/shop/BesemNaturalScents
letterpress delicacies- http://www.etsy.com/shop/letterpress
Spruce Home - http://www.etsy.com/shop/sprucehome
Kimball Prints - http://www.etsy.com/shop/KimballPrints
paper and twine - http://www.etsy.com/shop/paperandtwine
Abby Try Again - http://www.etsy.com/shop/abbytrysagain
Thanks again to everyone who helped make this such a success!