HUGE thanks to Andrea at Owly Shadow Puppets and everyone who joined us for a night of spooky/fun crafting! We had a great time making beautiful lanterns from bamboo, rice paper, and ink. Functional crafts just might be our favorite thing.

Step 2: Begin assembly. (Crafting is best done with a friend.)

Step 3: Consume Goose Island Honker’s Ale.

Step 4: Finish assembly, consume more beer, if you can.

The finished result? An AWESOME lamp, much like the one in the top photo. Perfect for cozy autumnal nights.

Man, the weather here is not doing us any favors. Perhaps we all have a little touch of Seasonal Affective Disorder, or maybe all the grey clouds outside are making us think of grey (or similarly soothing) tones.

Flock Mobile | Twig Necklace |  Porcelain Feather |  Faceted Jar

We just got in a shipment of awesome journals from Field Notes, and their great use of the Futura typeface has long reminded us of Wes Anderson and his affinity for it. Such a great, simple font. Now if you’ll excuse us, we’ll be using our new notebooks to take dictation for plans for our kite-flying society.

P.S.: More Wes Anderson goodness!

(Via the Exergian Tumblr.)

We’ve made it to another Friday, friends, so here’s a little round-up of what’s trippin’ the Renegade Gang’s trigger this week…

+ We’re still talking about the Mad Men season finale, are you? (SPOILER ALERT!) Seriously, Don? Meghan? You’ve known her for what, three seconds?

+ New this week in the shop: Creepy/awesome felted skulls from iamhome, super-cool prints from Hero Design Studio, and badass guitar straps from Souldier. (Plus a whole lot more!)

+ Wanna make a spooky/scary bamboo lantern? Of course you do! Join us for the Owly Shadow Puppet lantern-making workshop THIS SATURDAY!

+ Don’t forget, get FREE SHIPPING on online orders through Sunday with the code “ShipsAhoy”.

+ Here’s to the best weekend ever!!!

It’s a crisp, cool, and slightly windy day here in Chicago, aka, a great day for a sail. If, you know, we had a sailboat. Since we don’t, we thought we’d round up some of our favorite ship-themed items in the shop right now.

1. Stripey tea towels from Jessalin Beutler.
2. Ship in a Bottle print from Memo.
3. Surly Sailors pouch from Coral & Tusk.
4. Nautical Knot necklace from Nous Savons.
5. Sailing Into the Wind paper machine kit from Walter Ruffler.
6. Pirate Ship pillow from Coral & Tusk.

This week’s Craft Crush is Brooklyn-based printmaker extraordinaire Florence Gidez. Florence has long been a Renegade favorite, as we’re suckers for the fanciful, weird, and beautiful worlds she creates in her prints.

I have always been crafting. My first serious obsession was polymer clay, starting when I was 6. There was a woman who sold fimo jewelery at the farmer’s market where I grew up, and I would just hover around her table in awe. I think the first things I made were a hedgehog and a mushroom. So I made a lot of figurines, and then stuffed animals and stuffed animal clothes and school books for stuffed animals and classrooms and houses for them in cardboard boxes and on shelves. I made my first prints in 4th grade, they were lino cuts of things like hippos with clothes on. In high school I got more into sewing and knitting. I’ve always needed to have projects and be making something.

What is your creative process?

My silkscreens all start with line drawings, ink on clear acetate or paper. I usually use a nib pen. I like silkscreen because unlike other types of printmaking, or even drawing or painting, you can really make up an image as you go along. A lot of times I start with a single object, or a few separate ones, and I have the drawings which I can move around and play with before i start printing. Even after I start a print I’ll usually keep adding colors or objects that I wasn’t thinking of originally. It can be like collaging in that way. And then you get to print it, and make a mess!

I really appreciate the word craft because that is what I admire in any piece of “art” – a sense of craftmanship. I love looking at things that really show their maker’s paws on them, whether that’s a painting or a piece of furniture or a hand-knit sweater. And that doesn’t mean it has to be perfect, I think beautiful things show that someone toiled and cared over it. I studied illustration and I was accused of having a “kitschy” “primitive” style. It wasn’t meant to be complimentary at the time, but I think it helped me realize what I love and where I fit in. I love folk art and find it a lot more exciting and fun to look at than most “fine art”, and a lot of that stems from craft traditions. I get bored if I have to read a page long description of a piece of artwork to get anything from it, I want to see immediately the care and attention that went into it. So whether what I make qualifies to someone as art or as craft doesn’t make much difference to me. It depends a lot on the context.

Your pieces have such a specific feeling of place to them. Are they tied to an actual place for you, or are they totally invented?

I grew up in Vermont, so the pictures I like to make echo the environment I grew up in and certainly miss being in the city. Vermont is funny because as much as there is the beautiful flora and fauna and rural architecture, there is also a lot of automotive and machinery rotting away in fields and backyards. I’m not sure how tourists feel about it, but I’ve started seeing it like everything else, so the plants are growing on it, the cows are milling around it, the toads are hopping on it, it has become as natural and lovely as everything else (well…not always!) Moving to Brooklyn I felt right at home around all the decaying industrial buildings. I got hooked on buildings partly because they are characters that anyone can relate to. Someone looks at a print and says: “It’s Baba Yaga’s house!” or “There was a place just like this down the road from where I grew up” I like that they tell more than one story, and mean different things to different people. So the places in my pictures are kind of an every place, they could be anywhere. I use photo sources from all over, my own photos, books, google, and mishmash them together into something that doesn’t really exist.

Can you tell us something silly about yourself?

Only one silly thing?? The only non-silly thing I even do is when I make this horrible grimace (it’s involuntary) – but otherwise I pretty much only make silly faces. I’m really easily amused, and have been known to be extremely thrilled by those 25 cent machines with rubber monkeys and piglets one finds outside the supermarket. I’ve also been known to eat butter with a spoon.

Happy Near-Halloween! Found your costume yet?

Hey Ya’ll! As it turns out Renegade Handmade isn’t just a destination for spooky Halloween Decorations, we have costume ideas too! Here’s a few we have in the shop now! Dream big, blog friends. Dream big.

1. Caseybot Hats and Friends> Fawn, Bunny, Yeti, and Unicorn (Available in Kids and Adult Sizes!)

2. Hamlet: Felted Mustard Skull by Iamhome, Log Lady: Plush Log Pillow by My Imaginary Boyfriend, Ice cream Lover: Cone by Janie XY, Fish Food: Bottom Feeder by Cotton Monster

3. Tiger Masks by Handmade Store On A Bike

4. Fake Beards by I Made You A Beard

(Stop by the shop to see all these lovely costume ideas in person!)

Alright. So thanks to the  Magnolia Photo Booth, I’ve obviously had my fun for the day…What are your costume plans?