Valerie Williams - Try Handmade

Herban Lifestyle

August 9, 2017 by Valerie Williams 5 Comments

Mary Kearns grew up in a very environmentally conscious household. Her mother was into organic cooking and being “green” long before it was the latest and the coolest. “I was so embarrassed,” Mary says, recalling her school lunches wrapped in waxed paper, instead of plastic bags like the other kids had. “But now I’m thankful that I was made aware of these issues so early.”

Her mother’s awareness and activism has paid off. Mary Kearns is now the owner and founder of Herban Lifestyle, an all-natural bath and body product line made in Falls Church, Virginia. Herban Lifestyle is certified member of Green America, a signer of the Compact for Safe Cosmetics, and an Environmental Protection Agency Green Power Partner. Herban Lifestyle products are all handcrafted by Mary, using only organic, fair trade and/or ethically wildcrafted herbs and essential oils. Additionally, Herban Lifestyle labels are all printed on recycled paper with vegetable inks, and Mary only uses packing and shipping materials that are recycled, recyclable or biodegradable.

When I met with Mary to talk with her about her business and her inspirations for creating green and sustainable body products, I was thrilled when she offered to show me how one of her most popular products was made. I even got to choose the scent! My love for all things citrus led me to pick the tangerine dreamsicle lip balm.

Using one of her own recipes, Mary led me through the process of making her lip balms. The process was surprisingly simple, but definitely an exercise in patience and precision. After I decided on tangerine, Mary showed me her (extremely well organized) storage room, where we gathered all the necessary ingredients. The first step was melting the beeswax, which comes from Mary’s all-natural supplier in a big, honeycomb-shaped slab.

After the beeswax is melted, the other ingredients are added, including jojoba oil, organic shea butter and organic olive oil, which all play the role of moisturizer. To achieve the delicious tangerine dreamsicle scent, organic tangerine essential oil and organic vanilla extract are added to the mix. Mary uses a ceramic double boiler to melt her ingredients, because certain types of metal react poorly with certain oils. When everything is completely blended, the mixture is ready to be poured into the lip balm containers, which have been cleaned, sterilized and dried.

The jojoba oil and shea butter give the mixture it’s soft golden color, not the tangerine essential oil. While the lip balms cooled, a dreamy and sweet citrus-y scent filled the entire room. It was easy for me to understand why Mary finds making her delightful goodies so relaxing!

An interest in aromatherapy is what first prompted Mary to make her own body products. Back in the late ’90s, she subscribed to a body product of-the-month club, and soon became interested in experimenting beyond the simple recipes that were sent to her. She also became intrigued by the therapeutic and healing properties of essential oils and herbs, and how to combine them to achieve the greatest result.

Life eventually led her away from her initial endeavor to make and sell natural body products, but her interest in herbalism and making skin care products had not diminished. When she found herself living in the DC area and beginning formal herbalism studies, she knew the time was right.

Mary opened her Herban Lifestyle Etsy shop in May of 2008, and now has nearly thirty different products, all made from the highest quality natural and organic ingredients. Her favorite items to make are the body balms, and her favorite scent to use is lavender, although her line includes a variety of mild essential oils.

One of her most popular items is her Fuzzy Soap, which is handmade, organic soap wrapped up in vegetable-dyed, hand-carded wool. The wool is wet-felted to cling to the bar of soap, creating a built-in holder that is exfoliating as well as naturally anti-bacterial. The day I visited Mary, she had several that were nearly ready for packaging, after laying out to dry for several days.

Mary’s product line also includes natural and organic products for men. The Herban Lifestyle MAN grooming kit was featured in Etsy’s Valentine’s Day gift guide for LXTV in New York, and continues to be a popular item with new and returning customers.

Although green business practices and using all-natural and organic ingredients are major priorities for Mary, she has found that not all her customers are drawn to Herban Lifestyle for those reasons. “Some people just like quality body products that smell nice.” She certainly has that market cornered.

You can find Herban Lifestyle products at a handful of DC area stores and at several online locations, including the Herban Lifestyle web site, the Etsy shop, and the World of Good web site.

Far East Style, Home Town Goods

July 13, 2017 by Valerie Williams 1 Comment

Normally my shopping instincts are sharply honed onto pretty things to wear: clothes, shoes, jewelry, anything I can sew a flower on to, that sort of thing. But every now and then my eye is caught by beautiful home accessories, and I get the itch to beautify my living space, not just my closet!

Sue Henry is a sculptor and ceramic artist whose work moved over to textiles when her children came along. A dusty studio filled with fragile, breakable things was no longer practical with little ones running about. She decided to take up carving linoleum blocks – the tactile experience reminded her of her first love, working in clay.

Sue has been an artist all her life, and remembers her first creative instinct being about creating comfortable places to live. As a little girl, she wanted to be an architect and an interior designer. It just seemed like a natural next step to print her designs on textiles to create beautiful, functional home goods.

Seeing the lovely things that Sue makes really got me thinking about how I’ve been neglecting my living spaces lately. Her designs are full of movement and energy, and I love the bold colors she uses, which really make the designs stand out.

Every item at Tulusa Home Goods begins with a linoleum block hand carved by Sue. She is inspired by her travels to India and South East Asia, and her love of cooking, architecture, and design. The designs are printed on cotton or linen canvas with solvent-free block printing ink. The pillows are stuffed with organic kapok, a fluffy, soft, and environmentally friendly alternative to polyfill. The textiles are designed to be functional and durable, and are machine washable.

Included in the collection at Tulusa are pillows of all sizes, including large meditation pillows, and table linens of all types. Sue’s favorite part of the creative process is carving the linoleum block, so there’s really no limit to what she can print on, once she completes a design.

Right now, the most popular item at Tulusa Home Goods is the Ganesha pillow. Ganesha is a Hindu deity who is the remover of obstacles, and the bringer of good fortune and new beginnings. A good friend to have around as we approach the busy holiday season and the new year, wouldn’t you say?

You can find Tulusa Home Goods at Sue’s online shop, and you can also contact her for custom orders or to be invited to her December pop-up shop in Alexandria, Virginia.

Derringer Friday

June 20, 2017 by Valerie Williams 2 Comments

Derringer Friday is a duo of transplanted southern gentlemen who like to wear nice things. Like so many independent designers I know, Scott Permar and Lukas Smith got started because they couldn’t find anything in stores that satisfied both their style and quality requirements.

Derringer Friday is about neckties, because that’s what Scott and Lukas like to wear. Although neither of them come from a design background, they know what they like, and they know what looks good. “At the end of the day, it comes down to taste rather than any specific skill,” says Scott, and he’s right. After all, many of the most successful menswear designers never set foot in fashion school.

I first noticed Derringer Friday ties at the Temporium, where their unusual colors and interesting shape caught my eye. As always, I noticed the fabric first: high quality wool, linen and seersucker in bold plaids and florals. The combination of texture, color, and pattern was really interesting, and a far cry from the boring “power ties” on the collars of most men in DC.

The most interesting feature, however, is the guillotine tip, a design detail that really sets Derringer Friday ties apart. They are constructed using an unlined, four-fold technique that Scott and Lukas devised themselves, after some research and trial and error. Their goal was to create a tie that would drape nicely and hold up well over time, all while looking stylish, and of course, not like everybody else.

The company came about as sort of a happy accident. Scott and Lukas have been friends for years, and have always been interested in clothes and style. After talking about starting something together for a while, they took the plunge by experimenting with necktie designs, and Derringer Friday was born. Their first collection debuted in April 2010.

All the ties are handcrafted in Washington, DC by Derringer Friday’s talented local production team. The most popular ties, not surprisingly, have been the brighter, more colorful designs, which also happen to be the ones that Scott and Lukas enjoy designing the most.

There are plans to add cufflinks and tiebars to the collection in 2011, but for now you can find handmade Derringer Friday neckties at their online shop, and at Alter Brooklyn in New York City.

Photography by Alan Todd

June 1, 2017 by Valerie Williams 1 Comment

Alan Todd is a Washington, DC based architect whose creative life and professional life are one in the same. His “day job” and hobby-turned-business are both about creating, and both about his interest in the built environment. Although his photographs cover a variety of subjects, his favorite and most successful works are about abstract architecture.

Alan fell in love with both the artistry and practicality of photography while he was still in school, studying to be an architect. On a trip to Europe, he and his classmates were charged with recording individual design elements they felt were successful, while studying structures in Italy, Switzerland, Germany and France.

While studying the Roman Forum, Alan found himself relying more on his digital point-and-shoot camera than his sketch pad and pencil, and the photographer in him was born. He knew he could use his camera for more than just logging details for a class assignment. “For me,” he says, “the camera turned into a tool for creating, not just capturing.”

Although Alan continued his education in architecture, he remains mostly self-taught in photography. However, looking at the images he captures, it is easy to see how his education, training, and experience in architecture has influenced his eye as a photographer.

Alan had been taking photographs for fun for a while, without any intention to share them with the world, or sell them to anybody. At the suggestion of his brother-in-law, he began to consider the possibilities of online marketplaces like Etsy. Alan’s brother-in-law is an accomplished painter with a thriving online business, and with his encouragement, Alan opened his Etsy shop in December 2009.

Images from Alan’s Abstract Architecture collection are definitely his customers’ favorites. Likewise, Alan’s favorite approach to his photography is primarily isolating elements from successful structures, and defining them with light and texture.

Despite his professional interest in architecture and built structures, Alan finds his approach to photography evolving to include natural elements. Rather than focusing solely on chronicling existing conditions, Alan creates his own “spatial composition through the specific qualities of each scene.”

Specifically, he has recently become inspired to focus on trees and their root systems, and his portfolio also includes other scenes of natural beauty. This shift was not at all intentional, which only means that Alan’s photography will continue to evolve and change. Who knows what’s next?

Alan’s work is available in his Etsy shop, where he regularly adds new images from his travels and from his favorite neighborhoods of Washington, DC.

A Show of Hands

May 25, 2017 by Valerie Williams Leave a Comment

The neighborhood of Del Ray in Alexandria, Virginia has a great little motto: “Where Main Street Still Exists.” And it is absolutely true. Del Ray’s main street, Mount Vernon Avenue, is lined with adorable shops and independent restaurants. It is the kind of place that encourages residents to hang around close to home, rather than wander into the city, and also lures in people from neighboring towns who are looking for something different.

One of those adorable shops is called A Show of Hands, and it is my favorite kind of place: a store completely devoted to selling the works of local artists and crafters.

Currently more than 300 artists have their work on display there, and more are added all the time. Nearly every artist featured is from Maryland, Virginia, Washington DC or West Virginia, with just a few sprinkled in from other areas.

A Show of Hands will celebrate its fifth anniversary this November, and over the years has served as the launching pad for several northern-Virginia area artists and crafters.

Store owner Pat Miller, who is also chairman of the Alexandria Commission for the Arts, says that was her intention all along. While the store accepts work in all mediums from artists of all levels of expertise and experience, the focus tends to be on emerging artists. Those who maybe still have their day jobs, and can’t yet focus completely on their artwork.

Having their goods for sale at a store like A Show of Hands is often the first step to working on their art full time.

The inventory at A Show of Hands is purposefully diverse. Paintings, photography, pottery, fiber work, soaps, jewelry, wooden toys, and homemade jam all have a place there, in addition to nearly anything else a local artist could dream up. The store even sells work from local musicians and poets, and occasionally sells tickets to events starring resident recording artists.

Pat and co-owner Maria Wasowski plan trunk shows and demonstrations at the store that feature resident artists, and are also planning to host performances at the shop sometime in the future.

The most popular items in the store are jewelry and baby goods, as the shop is a very popular destination for locals looking for that unique and special gift. After all, nobody wants to show up at a baby shower with the fifth Baby Gap sweater.

The store’s unique and ever-changing stock has made it a favorite destination for locals as well as tourists visiting Alexandria. Many of the handcrafted goods in the store cannot be found anywhere else!

A Show of Hands is located at 2301 Mount Vernon Avenue in Alexandria, VA. Drop by Tuesday through Fridays 11:00 am to 6:00 pm, Saturdays 10:00 am to 6:00 pm, and Sundays noon to 5:00 pm.