Viva la Vida Crafty

Last weekend I went to the Twist crafts fair (twistfair.com) in Northampton, Massachusetts, which Storey cosponsored. The fair is organized by Lexie Barnes, bag designer extraordinaire and the author of our new book Sew What Bags. Lexie is a hipster with a great eye, and she's put together a fresh-looking fair for the cool kids that are into crafts these days, which seems to be just about everybody.

There was an interesting artist at the show who creates sculptures by making a single, simple fold on each page of a book. I was chatting with Kari Chapin (author of our upcoming book The Handmade Marketplace), and she said she saw an Anthropologie window display that used the same idea. I went home and grabbed a vintage copy of Wuthering Heights off my shelf and tried my hand at it. Here is the result!

The artist whose work inspired this is Joyce Rosenfeld. She doesn't have a

web site, but her email is joycerosenfeld@gmail.com.

In addition to getting inspiration for making my own stuff, these are the things I bought at the fair:

A print from Jen Skelley (jenskelley.com), definitely my favorite artist at the show. I already have a few of her bird silkscreens hanging in my house. This one is going up in my dining room. Her husband, also a really great artist, sells at the fair too. I love cute art couples!

A plush bird from Miaow (catsmiaow.com). These birds are awesome — the sharply tailored designs and tweedy-looking wool fabrics make them look very buttoned up and crisply proper while being ridiculously cute.


A tee from Red Prairie (redprairiepress.com) — one of the many beautiful T-shirt designs this artist had. There were actually a lot of vendors selling nice T-shirt designs at the fair.

Definitely check out Twist next time around! There is another planned for the end of the year.

Alethea Morrison, Storey Creative Director