key word: Luxurious

This is what happens when you're given the direction, "make it luxurious"... add the fantastic talents of Nina from Tweedle Press (notice the lovely debossed scroll pattern on the cover), gold wax seals, and red brocade decorative sashes and viola! You've got yourself one luxurious party invitation.
If I got this in the mail, I'd definitely go. I may even put it on my fridge.

Oh, what I could do with $250 worth of Green Diva Jewelry

Green Diva, the wedding market's first eco bridal jewelry boutique, is letting its brides call the shots with a "Customer's Always Right" contest in which one lucky bride will walk away with $250 in luxury eco bridal jewelry.

From now until March 31st, brides can enter the contest by visiting the contest page and answering 5 quick and easy questions about what it is they want from their eco wedding accessories. The top two suggestions or ideas shared by the brides will determine the winner and the runner up. The winner of the contest will receive a $250 credit toward the purchase of Green Diva eco-conscious bridal jewelry.

Green Diva jewelry creates handmade jewelry by designer Katherine DalPra using recycled metals, Fair Trade gems and pearls and vintage materials. Green Diva's designs have been worn by Actress Emily Deschanel and admired by The Knot Green Weddings, Eco Stiletto and Style Unveiled. Each piece of Green Diva bridal jewelry comes safely packed in a special jewelry pouch crafted locally by hand from reclaimed, secondhand wedding gowns. Green Diva plants a tree for every piece of jewelry sold and donates more than 1% of sales to environmental projects through One Percent for the Planet.

It's been one of those weeks

A picture says a thousand words...
This one starts with three letters: "WTF?"

Compliments of Tony- sending me smiles from the other room. Thanks babe.

Mr. Green Jeans

This article in the Seed and Sew blog makes me happy I stuck to my guns when at Vogue Fabric store in Evanston this weekend and purchased only organic fabrics. It was hard. There was some beautiful non-organic embroidered cotton that I literally had in my hand, but no, I walked away and dug deeper and found a bolt of lovely oatmeal colored organic cotton and a bolt of white bamboo blend (it's insanely soft).

According to Nathan Joynt in his article, Organic Cotton, the Rundown:

It’s estimated that 90% of the world’s cotton is genetically modified and most of this is laced with toxic chemicals – fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, insecticides and defoliants. According to the Center for Disease Control, just one drop of Aldicarb absorbed through the skin is enough to kill an adult. Yet this pesticide is commonly used in cotton production, to the tune of 1 million kilos in the U.S.

Yikes! Well, I can tell you that at least in Chicago there are a few bolts of organic materials at the Vogue Fabric store. Ok, so they are neutral colors and there are only about 3 of them... but it's something. If we all start looking for, and asking about organic materials- supply will grow to meet demand. Education is the first step.

I'll post pictures when I have my skirts... oh, please, it's not I that will be making them! Oh no, my awesome mother in law is a sewing genius and I gave her my one precious wrap around hemp skirt to clone into more skirts. She's like a wizard, she could sew me a dress out of a shower curtain if I asked her to.

Hm... just imagine if you were getting married and demanded that your dress be made from organic help, bamboo, or non-so toxic it'll kill you- cotton? Now THAT would be a statement!

FOCUS. focus... focus...

Big to-do list, lots of designs to get done, emails to return, updates to circle back to...
When the agenda looks a little something like that, then it's time for the magical frog ring. It's powers are not to be taken lightly- once worn, it renders the wearer (only me, since I'm the only one who thinks plastic frog rings are magical) a stationery designing efficiency MACHINE.
Look out! I've got the frog ring on folks!

Happy Birthday to Spilled Ink!

We are so bad about remembering what should be important dates... like for instance it took me probably 2 years to remember that Tony's birthday is the 15th and not the 17th (no, that's Jackie's birthday). And if you ask Tony what my birthday is, after 15 years he would probably tell you it's the 15th (no, it's the 5th). And we randomly decided to change our wedding anniversary to an entirely different date than what it was, so that doesn't help things...
Well guess what we realized? Spilled Ink Press turned 4 two days ago. Yep. Our baby is ready for preschool! So in honor of her birthday, here is a sneak peak at the "new" designs for our daily grind line of cards (goodbye blue saturation and "cutout" filter, hello clean and crisp photographs with a long shadow).
You'd buy this if you saw it in the store, wouldn't you? At the very least, you'd pick it up- and then you'd snort a little bit when you read it. I bet you. Don't make a four year old cry now, just say yes.
Happy birthday baby.

Chicago Green Wedding Vendors UNITE!

It's official:Step one has been engaged- Pingg invitation sent, facebook event posted, tweet floating out there into the interwebs... Now all we need is to see all the happy green wedding vendors at Logan Square Kitchen on Wednesday the 10th at 6pm.

It's a casual affair, we're hoping everyone is comfortable bringing a dish to share, a bottle (or perhaps 6 little bottles!) of beverage to pass around so we can get to know each other and get to talking about how we can get ourselves organized.

On top of the agenda are the following:

• Establishing a Chicago-area green wedding vendor alliance (I am the daughter of a Union man afterall, this kind of thing comes like second nature to me)

• Name for said Alliance... I'm still pulling for the Green SuperFriends, but I keep getting told that may just be me being a dork.

• Creating a concentrated vendor list and website- to be used both as a tool for other vendors (aka forum pages, etc.) and as a tool for the public to see who's who in the green wedding world

• Discussion about putting on a green wedding show
  

Lynn from Pollen, Zina from LSK, and Tony and I can't wait to get this show on the road!!
See you next week!

Introducing the new "crew"

Keep this in mind: 1/3 of what you throw in your trash is organic material that can be saved from the landfill and turned into lovely dirt-gold.

The worms have arrived.

I'm very happy to announce the addition of 1000 new team members to Spilled Ink Press headquarters. They previously were employed at Urban Worm Girl, where they came highly recommended and have since had a very smooth transition from temporary employment to their full time jobs eating the garbage in our kitchen. As of yesterday they were very happily eating mango rinds, strawberries gone bad and the tops of green peppers and winter squash.


We at Spilled Ink Press have big plans for the Red Wigglers, and their overall introduction of the composting concept. These little guys are stationed in the kitchen and doing a bang up job keeping our personal organic waste from the landfills. As the warmer months, as promised by mother nature, come upon us, we are actively looking into the addition of a larger scale composter to take care of our full-time stationery paper waste- either on or off site, and possibly shared with a few other home-based green businesses (like Lynn from Pollen!)

If you have any questions about placement of your own composting worms, please contact the lovely ladies at Urban Worm Girl: Stephanie, Amber & Angie 773.355.4804 info@urbanwormgirl.com. And most definitely go to their website: www.urbanwormgirl.com and start to feel warm and fuzzy about slimy, wiggly worms. They'll grow on you, I promise.

On another note, keep an eye out for the implementation of Heather Stearns' bill just passed in the Illinois Senate this past August, Senate Bill 99. The new bill creates smarter regulations for commercial composting, making it economically attractive for investors to begin commercial operations. Let the democratic and capitalist games begin!