Think Outside the Chocolate Box- Handmade Valentine's Day Gifts

Meet The Love Family from The Amore Sign Co. 

We are The Love Family. Adam is an engineer, Karrie is a nurse practitioner, and Tellar is a baby. We are a family of 3 and moved to Ohio about a year ago from Chicago to be near family. We are on the waiting list to adopt from Africa. We live a happy life in Thornville. Our company is our last name in Italian where we went on our honeymoon.

We are brand new to the world of craft shows. We just started this year in efforts to raise money for our adoption from Africa. This will be our first Avant-Garde show!

It is a privilege to create and experiment with pieces that families can personalize for their own living spaces by decorating our signs. Adam constructs the signs and then we paint them at our kitchen island which is both fun and relaxing with conversation in the evenings. We also strive to create nice things that do not have to cost a fortune.

Our abundance of free time was not the reason for inspiration. It is an outlet of art, away from our day jobs and also a blessing to supplement this adoption journey and give back to orphanages in need.

Adam was just tinkering around in the garage with one of my endless requests for something I saw in a store but didn’t want to pay that price for… and when he got done making I discovered that he was awesome! Then it kind of blossomed from there…

We have pre-made sign pieces available for clients to construct their own personalized sign on the spot.  We also make growth charts designed to look like a ruler.  These are designed to record children’s height in such a way that is movable with the family should the situation call for it. 

In five years, hopefully we’ll be on a similar scale to where we are now… with all of us sitting in the kitchen painting as a family. At that point the adoption will be complete, we can be donating the proceeds to some charitable cause in efforts to teach our children the role of giving.

Personalization can be whatever you want it to be as each person is their own unique soul for a good reason. Be happy with who you are and enjoy the moment.

Meet Helena Demacopoulos from Helena Marie Couture

My name is Helena Demacopoulos and I’m originally from Warren, Ohio. I am 22 years old and a senior at The Ohio State University studying marketing and entrepreneurship. I currently live in Columbus with my shih tzu Addie, and I will be graduating from Ohio State with honors this May. After college I hope to pursue a marketing or merchandising career in the fashion industry, and of course continue making jewelry on the side. Helena Marie Couture is my first jewelry line and I am very excited to for this opportunity!

 I was in middle school when I first became attracted to fashion. Growing up I attended private schools that required uniforms, so I learned how to make my own jewelry to set myself apart from the sea of girls in matching blue jumpers. I continued to pursue my hobby throughout high school, and when I got to college I joined a student organization that was known for putting on extravagant, professional runway shows to showcase student talent. I have designed collections for this show during all four of my years here at Ohio State, and it was this experience that made me realize I was interested in fashion as more than just a hobby. Success selling my clothes and accessories from the shows on Etsy inspired me to take my jewelry-making craft to the next level and expand into a business. This is my first Avant-Garde Art & Craft Show, and also my first craft show ever!

My favorite thing about fashion is the fact that something as simple as a dazzling necklace or a fabulous shoe has the ability to affect people’s emotions and inspire confidence. I love being able to create things that not only look beautiful, but make the wearer feel beautiful, too. I find my inspiration in the world of haute couture, pop culture, and nature, and also the trendy streets of Ohio State’s enormous campus. Betsy Johnson, Vera Wang, and Christian Dior are three designers who have a major influence on my own unique style. I have always had a creative personality, and I loved making crafts growing up. My mother is very artistic too, and often accompanied me to classes at local art museums. I have pursued many different craft hobbies over the years including origami, painting, scrapbooking, and sewing. I started making jewelry in middle school and have continued to improve and expand my craft ever since then.

During my freshman year at Ohio State, I joined a student organization called the Fashion Production Association (FPA) which produces large, student designed runway shows to showcase student talent each spring. After the show each year I would sell the accessories and some of the designs I had made on Etsy. Being a part of this organization and designing for the show each year made me realize that I was interested in fashion as more than just a hobby, and successfully selling my accessories online proved to me that consumers were genuinely interested in my style and designs. I thus was inspired to start my own handmade jewelry line, Helena Marie Couture.

Sometimes an idea for a design just comes to me – others times I have to hunt for it. Runway trends, fashion magazines, nature, campus style, and others artists’ work are all sources where I find inspiration, and once I have an idea, I search from thousands of bead options until I find the perfect components for each piece of jewelry. Once I have samples made, I ask family, friends, and real consumers for their opinions of the piece and if there is anything they would like to change about it. This feedback helps me tweak and improve my jewelry to create winning designs that are exactly what my stylish customers want. 

Helena Marie Couture is a new business and I have only been selling my jewelry for a couple of months now. The possibilities for expansion are endless and I am excited to learn and grow as a designer! In fact, the Columbus Avant-Garde Art & Crafts Show is my first step on the exciting journey to expanding my business, as this is my very first craft fair. Until now I have been selling exclusively online, and I am excited for the opportunity to meet my customers face-to-face and build real relationships with them. My plans for the upcoming months are to expand into new product lines, including headbands and other accessories, and to expand to new distribution channels by selling in boutiques and other stores.

My favorite thing about fashion is its ability to inspire confidence in women, and I love the fact that jewelry has the ability to make women feel feminine, stylish, and powerful. My goals for Helena Marie Couture are to create beautiful, handcrafted jewelry for individual women with unique style that will help them stand apart from the crowd and feel radiant and beautiful on the inside and the outside.

Meet Elizabeth Cramer from Lucky Purl

I'm an artist born with passion. I make things to reach goals, raising money or product to help others. I've been creating as long as I can remember - My gram taught me to knit when I was a little girl and my momma would let me sew on her machine all the time. Making things has always been my favorite pass time! This will be my very first Avant-Garde craft show!

I'm inspired by beauty - nothing gets me more amped up to create than a hank of beautiful soft yarn or unique antique fabric! I was lucky to be born into a fairly crafty and thrifty family. I'm positive that if making things wasn't a daily occurrence/encouraged early on in my life that I would be a totally different woman. My mom still tells stories about letting me cut up paper and fabric into teeny tiny pieces; oh gosh and glue... Lots and lots of glue

 I am not sure I would have ever described the arts I do as talent, crafting has never been viewed as a separate thing from my character, who I am, but it is like my craft is more of who I am rather than the things I do
 I'm a list maker and a planner so my process, as much as I jump head first into things, does follow a method to achieve my goal or end result
 In 5 years I hope to be creating still. I'm almost positive my goals will be different and my inspiration will come from new life experiences but I pray that I continue to live my passion for creating.
 Individually my pieces don't necessarily have their own message, but I do believe in a better life and with my work I have the opportunity to help others have a better life. Check out my Etsy shop, lucky purl, for the full story and how you can join me in my mission to make life beautiful

Meet Pat and Charlie from My Soaps

Charlie and I have been making soap for almost 4 years now.  Both of us are retired, and we absolutely love going to the different art shows and festivals, meeting the different vendors and the customers.  We hit a big milestone for us last year by attending 54 shows and festivals by years end, and we hope to break that record this year.  We were at all but one of the Avant-Garde shows last year and we only missed the one because of the weather and the distance to it.

We love the process of soap making, and we have started designing our own, new or seasonal scents.  We make our bars from the cold process method, with Charlie's original recipes.  Our biggest seller is our Poison Ivy soap and Problem Skin soap, although the pure Jojoba oil lotion is coming on fast.  This winter our customers are using our Jewelweed Salve for those cold weather problems with their skin and we are getting a lot of feedback with that.

We have fun with the different herbs or micas that we use for our colorings, but we make our bars very simple and easy for people to use.  Telling our customers about our soaps and how good all natural soap is for your skin, and then having them tell us about what they have done for them at another show or by e-mail is one of the perks of what we do.  

Watching the transformation of someone who had a problem with their skin and knowing that our soaps are helping them is probably the best part.  After taking January off, we are looking forward to getting 2014 started with the Columbus Avant-Garde show being our first of the year.  See you there!

2014 Columbus February Avant-Garde Art & Craft Show

Saturday, February 8, 2014, 10:00am-4:00pm

St. Agatha's Parish Hall

1860 Northam Rd

Columbus, OH 43221

For more information, contact Becki Cooper, Event Coordinator at info@avantgardeshows.com

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