Summit of Awesome Day 1. Totally Awesome.
Friday, May 1, 2009 23:59The first day of the Summit of Awesome was a blast! It was great to be surrounded by so many amazing, inspiring crafters. Here’s just small glimpse of the day.
All 3-Day and Friday pass holders started off at Miss Pixie’s for breakfast, and then it was off to the morning sessions, which included Crafting a Green Craft at Solly’s Tavern, hosted by Urban Fauna Studio, Cosa Verde and Becky Streipe.
During lunch, Summit-goers were treated to an informative and humorous talk from our featured craftnote speaker, Maria Thomas, CEO of Etsy.com. The lunch was hosted live in Etsy’s Virtual Labs, via Etsy’s Education Coordinator, Danielle Maveal.
As part of our effort to go green as much as possible at our Summit, we enlisted the help of National Pedicabs, who biked our crafters to and from their classes!
The afternoon workshops at Miss Pixie’s were all hands-on! Adam Maron hosted Simple Mold Making, and showed off the many techniques to making rubber and plaster molds. He shared a totally brilliant way to make objects using plaster and hot glue — as soon as I hibernate after the Summit, I’m going to try this!
Jamie Chan and Blas Herrera from Urban Fauna Studio hosted a Fiber Workshop, and brought the cutest felting projects for everyone to try out. As a bonus, Blas showed a few lucky folks how to use a drop spindle to make yarn. Their mini felting kits included wool, felting needles and instructions so we could all create little birds.
I was excited to finally learn the art of felting….
Unfortunately, my felted bird came out uniquely deformed, but others had awesome success with their felting adventures!
At the Make Something Area at Miss Pixie’s, crafters could hook up their cell phones to the rad orange phone receiver to record an on-site story for our Hello Craft podcast (stop by all weekend to try this out!) … as demonstrated by awesome Directors, Kelly and Sara.
The first day of the Summit ended with two Handmade Nation screenings at the Washington DCJCC, and then late-nite Chinese take-out that wrapped up a totally awesome day.
Can’t wait for tomorrow…
Happy Crafting!
About Kim Dorn
A Baltimore dweller with DC roots, Kim is the Executive Director of Hello Craft, as well as one of the Festival Creators/Organizers behind the behemoth indie craft fair, Crafty Bastards. With experience in creating, planning, producing, and pulling her hair out for a variety of festivals and crafty endeavors, she's excited to be part of Hello Craft.
