Green Wagon

Yesterday I got an all-natural makeover at The Green Wagon. A store that sells all-natural, organic and locally produced household cleaning products, cosmetics, and apparel. Its just so much fun. The owner Jen comes to the potluck and we've gotten to talk about her purpose in owning a store like this and that is really to educate people in Nashville about the products and the importance of using natural products such as these. Just something that Is really neat.

Time Flys

Hello friends! I know I haven't posted in a bit, but a lot has been going on in the past 2 weeks- kind of a crazy transition time, but its been great! I've gotten to do some traveling and visiting friends, hanging around and preparing to end my internship in two weeks (crazy! I feel like I just got here!) I'm feeling tired- and not very wordy so here are some pictures from my past two weeks!This is what I've been working on recently- a color swatch booklet that is an example of all of the colors that the company can dye.

Gatlinburg, TN July 4th. 12:00 AM
Edgar Evins State Park- cliff jumping with my lovely roommie!

Indigo dying and starting a new vat. Here is my shout out to Nat, the other intern with me... she got in an awful biking accident 2 weeks ago and has been out of commission with a broken collar bone, rib, and stitches in the head. :(. She is recovering well though, and will hopefully be back to work soon, but its been a bummer to be without her!

Go Bees!

Yesterday we went to the community farm with Sarah, one of my boss's, who is also a bee keeper. We got to see her tend to her bees, and she also brought back some of the combs for us to harvest honey! It was so much fun.. we ate tons of raw honey right off the comb as we were scraping it into jars. I was trying to tell my roommates last night, as we were eating raw honey, green apples and cheese and drinking wine (how classy! haha!), that I'm just so excited about all that I'm doing this summer mostly because I feel so connected to the things that I'm eating, and the things that I'm doing. Like, I actually saw the bees that produced the honey that we ate.. or I actually am growing the flowers and plants that we will harvest and then dye with. A guy that is asociated with the farm that I work at brought a baked chicken to the potluck last week that he raised, slaughtered, and then baked himself... its so much more connected and invested than buying an already baked chicken from Kroger (not that thats a bad thing). I'm just loving this!!

Artisan Natural Dyeworks

Here is the link to the Artisan Natural Dye works website. The company that I'm interning at: previously known as Ask Apparel is shifting into this new company who dyes fabric for other companies like Prophetik and Alabama Chanin. Here are some more photos of what we have been doing!

p.s I made this

check out this: and other great projects at p.s. I made this!

More from Nashville!

Hey friends! Here are some pictures from the shop. I have examples of our dying with natural dyes: shown here is cochineal and madder and indigo. Our hands/fingernails turn blue every time we dye with the indigo.. so thats funny. We've learned to screen print and paint on fabric using natural dyes.

Recycled shopping bags repurposed!

Here is a easy project that I've been working on! I wanted to share:

Envelopes made from recycled paper grocery bags!



Here are the materials you need:
-A grocery bag
-An envelope
-Scissors
-Some type of glue/tape
-ruler/straight edge
-pencil

First you take apart the existing envelope for a model for what you will cut out of the paper bag. Unfold the envelope, unfold the paper bag, and outline the shape and then cut out the envelope. Fold in the same places that the existing envelope is folded. Its really easy! I usually use glue dots to attach the flaps to make the pocket, but you can use anything you want, double sided tape would work well.

To make a place for the address I used a piece of the paper bag and used the other side that didn't have printing on it. I used a flower stamp that I have to outline the label and then pasted it onto the front of the envelope.This is a really easy project, and a good way to use old cool looking paper grocery bags!