It's my bag, baby!

I'm one of those lucky people who was raised by a very eco-conscious Mommy before Eco became cool. Now that "green is the new black" everyone and their brother is into carrying around tote bags instead of getting plastic ones at the shops. This is great news for people like me who found it hard to find lots of canvas bags in the past, plus it means that new styles and colours of tote bags are available. My favourite kind of tote bags are the ones that fold up into a little pouch. They just make so much sense! I always keep at least one in my purse in case I stop into the fruiterie or something whilst I'm milling about town. However, I've found that these super convenient little bags are either really expensive or ugly as sin. I'd rather own something that's both pretty and affordable. And like most things that I make for myself or others, once I realized how easy and fun it was to make these bags, I made a crapload of them to sell. I've got bags for sale at Arterie and Psychonaut in Montreal, and in my Etsy shop. There are only 2 styles right now, but I'll probably make more next time I go fabric shopping.

Kendall Made's Fold-in-a-pouch Tote Bags now available on Etsy
http://www.etsy.com/shop/KendallMade

Kendall Made will spring into stores

It's Spring! Time for rebirth, time for regrowth, time for freak snow storms at the end of April. Wait, what? Montreal, that lovely lady full of surprises, has gone from T-Shirt weather to snowstorm and back again all in the last week. Despite the bi-polar weather, I have plunged myself whole-heartily into the production of a new line of baby onesies. My gay boyfriend Sean has a themed birthday party every April, and this year the theme was onesies. I found thrilling comic-book style Lichenstein-esque prints and used one of them to make my onesie.
After using about one meter for my outfit, I was left sitting on a huge amount of fabric that I didn't know what to do with. I thought it would be adorable (and not at all lame or creepy) to make a onesie for my niece, Olivia, in the same fabric as my onesie. After using the fabric to make a baby onesie for the first time I realised that a)it's not too hard to make baby onesies, and b)baby onesies in comic prints are freaking amazing! I cranked out a few more onesies in the following weeks and brought them and some recycled comic wallets that I'd made to 2 local stores. Luckily for me, both the stores liked my work and agreed to stock the wallets and onesies on consignment. Yay!
Now my wallets and onesies are available at Psychonaut and Arterie in Montreal, and once I make a few more I'll add my onesies and some new wallets to my etsy shop:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/KendallMade
Aside from my exciting clothing news, I'm still feeling incredible frustration on the job front and am once again unemployed and looking for work. Why won't you hire me Montreal? WHY?
On the acting front too, things have been hard. I've been to exactly 2 auditions since I was in Mental Floss, and so far nothing has come to fruition. Sigh.
On the other arts end I've had a very strange source of inspiration and have been penning picture after picture of different animal heads with squid bodies. After a few of these I started drawing celebrity heads with squid bodies. I have no idea where these came from in my subconscious, but damn are they ever hilarious!Sorry the picture is terrible quality, but I took it with my phone. Still need that camera. Anyway, that's about it for my artistic updates.

Oh my god PICTURES!!!

Some day, some day, some day I'll buy a camera. I mean, Ihave an Etsy shop, I have a creations blog, I really should have a camera. Unfortunately, I have no money. Fail.
In the meantime I will have to continue to beg random friends to take photos for me. For example, when my sister Carlye came to visit she brought her spectacular camera with her, so I got her to take photos of the stuff that I've been writing about in previous posts.

these are the sexy corset throw-pillows that I was so tempted to keep






















This is the skirt that I made out of the amazing playboy material

That's it for now, really, I just wanted to add these photos.

win, lose, win, lose

Well, I have been horrendously neglectful of my blog, but I have also been incredibly busy and living some very extreme ups and downs. I've had some victories and some defeats and I've come out a little battered, but still here. Firstly, in terms of my design-life, I have a win with my playboy skirt and I've grown very attached to the finished product. I'll hopefully get it up on Etsy soon, but I have no camera (frig) so I have to wait for a friend to come over to my house with a camera and take photos for me. Sigh. Also in design news, I have started making corset pillow-cases for a stack of throw pillows that are sitting in my living room. My plan is to make a variety of pillows all with some kind of corseting on them. I've made 2 so far and they are HOT. The problem with making really cool interior decorations is that I desperately want to keep them. I have enough pillows already, though.In acting news, "Mental Floss" was performed February 10th to the 14th and I had a FREAKING BLAST!!! Oh my god I love acting, I love theatre, and I really love that play. It's dark and creepy, but with comedy and silliness too. I got very close with the cast, the directors, the techies, and the script. You could see a major growth in the performances from night to night and after every show I was bouncing off of the ceiling from all the energy it gave me. Now I am desperately trying to find another theatre project to be a part of, because I need to get my next performance fix.

In work news, and here's the big "lose" part of this entry's title, I have been going on a job roller coaster. And not the good kind of roller coaster where you get an adrenaline rush and feel like punching the sun, but the old, rickety kind where you get jostled around until all your muscles are sore and you're at the brink of vomiting. My full time job working at Latina, an "Épicerie Fine" in the Mile-End, was paying me minimum wage and it didn't equal enough to keep me afloat, so I had been looking for other work. I found another job at a pub, so I finished my two weeks at Latina whilst also training for my new job and also, also rehearsing for Mental Floss. It was an insane two weeks. Then I did about a week of full time at the pub, after which they fired me for the oh-so vague reason of it "not being the right fit". Yeehaw. So now having thouroughly burned the Latina bridge I was without any kind of job at all, already in major debt and sinking fast. Since then, after an insanely depressive two weeks I've finally (FINALLY) found another job at a Sports bar this time. I'm not a sportsy type (yes I made up a word, live with it), but I'll do anything short of prostitution for money right now. Unfortunately this job is only part time and the bar has an unusual lack of customers, so it's not nearly enough to cover my expenses. Now when I'm not working there I'm busting my butt trying to find another other job so that I can hopefully buy a flashlight to shine on the map that shows the way to tunnel that leads to the well that connects to the rope where I might some day pull myself out of debt. Here's hoping.

On a less depressing note I like kittens. It's not relevant, but this post was bumming me out.

Playing around with playboy

In the summer my friend Tiana invited me to some with her to New York for a week and a half and help her run an extravagant performance and dinner party event called "Carnivale of Ascension". I'd been to New York state before, but never New York city, so I was eager not just to experience the city with a genuine New York socialite and all of her friends, but to go to the famous New York garment district and get my hands on some interesting new materials. In the summer my primary focus was on making my cocktail-dress style aprons, so I mostly bought materials for that reason. However, I'm such a bargain hunter and when I see some kind of strange, extravagant deal I seize it. In one of the fabric stores we saw this incredible screen-printed sheer playboy material. There were a couple different designs and I bought 5 yards of one and 10 yards of the other. Afterward I kind of put it in a box and forgot about it. The other day it dawned on me that I have 15 yards of playboy material and no idea what to do about it. So, I'm trying a few things to make use out of it. The first thing I've started working on is a red lined pencil skirt. It's coming along pretty well, although I find the thin, sheer material really hard to work with.

I've literally started making this skirt about 2 weeks ago, but have had almost no time for it. I've recently switched my day-job from working in a fancy grocery store (Epicerie Fine) to working in a pub and have been working both jobs at once in order to "transition over" aka "kill myself with work". I've also been getting in the down-to-the-wire crunch time rehearsals for Mental Floss. Mental Floss is an amazing play by a local playwright that I have the honour of performing in from February 10th to 14th. I`m so excited about this play, I can't even describe it. I haven't done any serious theatre since I went to Europe last year and it's been killing me. Now all my pent up theatre energy will be getting sweet, sweet release. Yay!

And so it begins

Hello readers, if you do already exist, and welcome to my style blog! This will be an art, life, fashion, style, creations blog where I take you through the fascinating world of my creative process and the terrifying caverns of my mysterious brain. I've blogged before, so I should know enough to keep it interesting and at least semi-coherent. However, I've decided to keep this blog 100% open and honest about my creative process, which means it might get a little messy. A lot of my ideas don't come to fruition, a lot of my projects become failures, a lot of my successful creations don't sell. This is my reality as a multimedia artist and independent designer.

A multimedia artist? You ask, your cute little brows furrowing in cartoonish confusion. Yes, a multimedia artist, that's what I've always considered myself. I began drawing at the age of very, very young, I began acting in grade 5, I began sewing by hand in grade 8, I began painting in grade 9, I began sewing by machine in grade 10, I studied theatre acting in college, I began writing in earnest after college on my backpacking trip through Europe, and I began selling my homemade creations on Etsy when I came back from Europe and moved to Montreal, and that is where I am now.

With all of this crazy art going on, my blog won't be centered around only the art that I sell, it will be centered around the (unbelievably loud, with no indoor register) voice of an artist in a little-big city already full of art. Of a mostly-bilingual anglophone in a francophone province. A post-grad 24 year old looking to make art and life happen for her in a big way.

And so it begins.