Giveaway!

I'm kicking off December with a giveaway! And I'll be doing one every week until Christmas, ya! This first one is happening over on Instagram. So come join us over there - search @grace_design and re-gram this photo to win. The winner will be announced this Friday.

Sale Starts Tomorrow!

Now you have another option to add to your smorgasbord of sale choices this Black Friday. Everything in the Etsy shop will be marked down for tomorrow only. The fun starts at 9am. 15-50% off. :)

Introducing: Folklore

And we're live! New collection, updated website, new shop - phew!

I wanted to send a shoutout to my awesome team who helped me work on this shoot: Ana Alic on coordination and styling, Scarlett O'Neill on photography, Murphy MacDonald-Rea on modelling and Alison Sharp on makeup. This shoot never would have come into being without these talented women. It's been a busy week.

Head on over to the site and check out the new lookbook then score 15% off in the online shop until Monday with code FOLKLORE15.

Have a great weekend! XO

Sneak Peek

My new collection goes live tomorrow! I am so very excited to share this with you all as it has been percolating in my head for too long. All of the fabrics I collected on my travels to Morocco this year and a concept that occurred to me for a lookbook while traveling. I am so grateful to have had an amazing team of people who came together very serendipitously to work on this project with me and we have put together a collection of (I think) swoon worthy imagery to help you conjure in your mind the smoky mysteriousness of that magical country and the adventure I had there. The whole shebang goes live tomorrow at 9am.

A Country Drive, Moroccan Style

                         

Since it's 'Throwback Thursday' I thought I would post a few photos from my trip this past summer since I didn't post many when it was actually happening. On my second day in Morocco I hired a driver to take me to a few places outside of Fez. The first stop was Volubilis - a city of Roman ruins that had been excavated in the past fifty years, circa 100 AD. I was lucky as it was a very moody day weather wise and hardly anyone was there. It allowed me to really soak in the landscape that would have not occured with busloads of tourists.  The landscape itself was amazingly gorgeous too - as you can see -lot's of rolling grassy hills and a wide expanse of sky with the Middle Atlas mountains in the distance. I hired a guide to explain all of the ruins to me. He was very cute, he kept advising me precisely where  I should stand so as to get the perfect composition with my photos. Also on this outing was a visit to the small city of Méknes, it's souk of which was dedicated a Unesco Wold Heritage Site and Moulay Idriss - a beautiful white washed city. My driver did not speak a word of English but we shared dates and almonds and at one point he pulled over the car, jumped out and and returned with a branch of raw chickpeas that he had picked. It was a lovely day.

Not Your Grandmother's Macrame

Out of nowhere I suddenly became obsessed with tufty things, weaving, macrame and any sort of odd textural wall hanging. I think it started with Moroccan wedding blankets. A friend asked me to bring one back from Morocco and I didn't care much for them a year ago but they really grew on me with their mixture of metallics, soft cotton and fringe. When I got back I noticed Etsy was featuring quite a few different wall hangings in their promo emails and then bam! suddenly they are appearing all over the net and I want one, bad!  I've featured a few examples above of some of my favourites, I think the weirder and bigger the better. I also love when other elements from nature are incorporated, pieces of driftwood or metal. I'm imagining one above my bed that takes up half the wall with lot's of long cream threads with bits of metallic woven in and bits of driftwood. I am even considering making one myself. I found this tutorial if you want to try your own hand at it:

If you'd like to find the source of any of these images I made this Pinterest board where you can find all of these images and more that link back to their original sources. What do you think about this trend? 

Grace Design x Etsy x NY Now

Phew what a week! I just returned from NYC where I exhibited at NY NOW with Etsy Wholesale. To those not familiar, NY NOW is a tradeshow where many of the world's boutiques go to buy goods for their stores. Etsy just officially launched a new facet of their company - Etsy Wholesale - which is a private juried marketplace within Etsy that connects shop owners with designers. Since Etsy Wholesale just had their official public launch at the beginning of August, they decided to make a big splash at NY NOW this year. I was invited by Etsy to come and take part in this massive, beautiful pavilion they created and act as an ambassador for Etsy.

I have to say - what an amazing experience! To exhibit at a tradeshow like this is such an enormous and costly undertaking and I was so fortunate to have everything taken care of - from my booth design to my marketing materials. We had an incredible 90' long space that ran the entire length of the lobby leading into the handmade wing of the show.  There were 24 of us exhibiting and everyone's work was simply fantastic - so creative and polished.  I've included several photos from my booth above, as well as the Etsy lounge - all designed by my insanely talented friends at Workshop. (the same folks that designed the beautiful Etsy Pop-Up Shop that that occurred in NYC two years ago that I took part in.) I am particularly enamoured by the system of boards with wooden pegs they used to hold all of the shelves. Such a smart arrangement and I wish I had thought of it myself!

Beyond all of the fun of meeting so many Etsy sellers whose work I was already familiar with and everyone at Etsy, I was also blessed to meet many shop owners and you will be finding my goods at a whole slew of new shops across the USA in the coming weeks. I will make some announcements as orders go out - that way you can check things out locally if there is a shop in your area.

Now on to the task of actually making these orders!

All of the above photos were taken by Laura Pardo.