Small Business Saturday

With Small Business Saturday being tomorrow I thought it would be great to highlight a couple of my favorite makers.

Check out their amazing unique American made products and support small businesses!

Forestbound

Forestbound is a bag company that creates their unique line of totes and carryalls out of salvages textiles. Many hours are spent scouring the Northeast for storied textiles to create their original bags with a piece of history. Time is dedicated to thoughtfully and carefully reworking these materials to create beautiful timeless pieces.

Shop Forestbound's bags on their site and follow founder Alice Saunder on Instagram.

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Justine Anne

Justine is a fiber artist from Long Island, NY who creates a lot of her beautiful and unique pieces by nuno felting. The technique takes a loose fiber like wool and bonds it to a sheer fabric such a silk gauze. Often the process incorporates several layers of fibers to build up on texture and color to create unique designs.

You can find Justine's gorgeous wall hangings and scarves on her Etsy and visit her site to follow her processes and creations.

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Honest Alchemy Co.

Honest Alchemy is a sustainable textile and accessory design company that uses natural fibers and plant based pigments. Natural dyers are few and far between but their work protrudes passion and dedication. Shop founder Elizabeth McTear's designs are inspired by Japanese Edo-era textiles, Dogon African textiles, vintage printed bandannas, American workwear and American heritage fabrics. You can often find Elizabeth in her studio in Philadelphia, PA meticulously feeding the live bacteria that ferments her dye bath, drawing, researching or running dye tests.

Find Elizabeth's creations on Etsy and follow her process on Instagram.

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Barnaby Black

Barnaby Black Field Accountrements & Supplies creates all purpose skin care and cleaning products made from all natural materials. Their products evoke a sense of rugged wilderness and nostalgia for summers spent outside. The passion behind these products is undeniable. Barnaby Black's creator Mathew Sabatino forages in the wild for the plant materials to be distilled down to an essential oil to make fragrances added into the products.

You can find their products on their site and follow the wild crafted journey on Instagram.

Out West

Back in the end of March this year, we flew out to California where we began our week long roadtrip through the west. It was the first time either of us had taken a trip like this so it was a lot of fun and very inspiring.

On our last leg of our trip in the Mariposa Grove, Mark proposed to me underneath a giant sequoia!

Knitwear Shoot

Our little knitwear shoot back from November, shot by our friend Mat Sabatino from Barnaby Black.

Lake George

Mark and I usually like to take sporadic weekend trips places to allow ourselves to breathe and reset. We haven't taken one in awhile due to the amount of work and projects we've been working on but finally stole some time to go away.

We traveled to Lake George which is about 4-5 hours away with no exact plans to guide us.

Saturday was filled with driving, taking a short hike in the Tongue Mountain Range, having a very tasty dinner and brews at the Adirondack Brewery, an unexpected fireworks show on the lake, and nestling into our final destination The Juliana where we had a small fire by the beach.

Sunday we took a tandem kayak out onto the lake which was absolutely beautiful and peaceful. The Juliana was perfect and we'll definitely be back! For breakfast we hit up The Silo. A gorgeous old barn with three floors of gifts. It smells of fresh cider doughnuts and the food was amazing. We got our favorite biscuits, sausage, gravy, and eggs. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it...
The day ended at the sculpture park Storm King; 500 acres of beautiful landscape dotted with sculptures.

A refreshing and inspiring adventure.

-April