25 October 2011

KADO KADO

Last Friday evening KADO KADO opened it's doors. It is a temporary shop in an old train station, which is now in use as a cultural station named TracĂ©, which means rail or track. It's an art gallery, it's a place were art courses and workshops take place and it's meeting place.

We named our shop KADO KADO, cause it has the rhythm of a running train to it, staying in theme with the location. Kado means present and which presents are better than hand made presents?


 







What to do if you want to open a shop like this? In short:
  • find a location
  • find other artists
  • make written agreements on costs, insurance and participation fees
  • get everyone to label their items with a unique code and list these in a table, so you know what's in stock. Easy to do the calculations of what is sold afterwards too
  • agree when who is looking after the shop. You need someone at the till, the wrap up presents and to help people in the shop

You can still shop at KADO KADO untill November the 2nd, find our opening hours here.

The first weekend already was a huge success, so there's bound to be another KADO KADO in 2012 :-) Want to stay up to date; become a fan of KADO KADO on facebook.


14 October 2011

Friday Find - Knit Stools



Claire-Anne O'Brian creates these knitted stools; I think they are fab. Comfy sculptures for ones house :-)


 Ireland, where's she is from, has a great tradition in knitting, but she takes it to a next level. She uses traditional natural fibres: sheep and lambs wool and still knits a lot by hand too. But her design, 3D inspiration and use of a knitting machine, make you forget about wooly sweaters.


No surprise she won the Future Maker Overall Award. This is an award from the Irish Craft Council. Ireland has a great crafting tradition and is not shy to promote their crafts. 
They announced 2011 to be the year of crafts.


 The Future Maker Award  has enabled her to purchase an industrial knitting machine, without which it would be fairly impossible to reproduce this collection of stools and any future collections of poufs, cushions and chairs. Now all I have to do is find out where we can buy her wonderful creations.