Craft Fairs!!

Do you want to support local merchants with your wedding planning? If you are online small merchants can be found at the Etsy stores. However in real life there are networks of all sorts of people offering goods, and if you look carefully you have a good chance of encountering goods made by people that have similar values as yourself.

I don't claim that Miami is the "greenest" or "craftiest" place I have lived but after three years I am finding some niches that I like.

Yesterday was Kraftworks in the Design District. It was hosted by rag*trade and offered spaces for crafty vendors to sell their goods, and was a good time in general. I couldn't stay long but we saw Heather from Ragamufyn there. We met her last year at the Bang music festival and my fiance loves his organic cotton shirt he bought from her.

One of the cool vendors I met there was Barbara, she was vending for her Bebecito line that she also sells on etsy.com. It is "comfy baby clothes with the planet in mind." Barbara was kind enough to talk to me about water-based inks instead of the more synthetic ones because I am considering doing something with inks for our invites and wedding design. She learned her skill from a project on Lincoln Road in South Beach and seems to be open for offering advice. If Terry and I had kids we definitely would want some of her gear, it is ADORABLE.


We also went to rag*trade which is an environmental-friendly business that I learned about very recently. It is basically a clothing exchange with an emphasis on re-use for the purpose for sustainability. We entered the space where this business is run and this is one of the first signs we saw...


This business concept is cool. We ended up buying two guayaberas for our dads while we were there. It ended up being a wedding-related productive day because those guayaberas are our gifts to them. And Barbara's advice about water-based inks may be useful if we do screen our invites.

And the best part... there is another south Florida fair next weekend... Stitch Rock 2007!!!