EVA wins Etsy grant!!!

Hooray for EVA! Etsy announced the January team grant winners and the East Valley Artisans were awarded a grant for marketing materials, fees and items related to setting up a booth at the Downtown Phoenix Public Market! Goooooo team! AND a big THANK YOU to Etsy for making it possible. Now we are entering the planning phases and will be back with reports on our progress!

New EVA Logo!

As we gear up for an exciting new year, with new goals, hopes and dreams we are also starting the year off with a new group logo designed by me! If you have not yet checked out the East Valley Artisans on Facebook please take a look! We share sales, works in progress, new items for our individual shops, EVA group events and we can communicate personally with you. Please stop by and "like us".

Guest blogger Kristen Fagan of Creative Stash. Graphic Designer by day. Mother, wife, painter, jewelry artist, bookworm, cook and all around crafty gal by night. Contact her at krisfagan [at] cox [dot] com.

website | blog | facebook | twitter | etsy shop

EVA 2011

EVA is getting geared up for 2011. Bring on the New Year!!! One of our goals this year is to get a booth up and running at the Downtown Phoenix Public Market. We recently requested a grant from Etsy to help with funding this venture. I really hope we get it because we have to purchase tables, business cards, a banner and the space at the market. Our team is steadily growing and we have some really great and talented members to showcase. I am looking forward to this. It is one step in the direction of an EVA shop! I am so excited to see where we are at with this at this time next year. Here is to EVA's success in 2011!!!

October 2nd Friday

Last Friday I had a booth at Downtown Mesa's Monsters on Main event. It was my first booth in 4 years!I had a great time setup alongside my friends and fellow EVA group members, Kandes and Anne.

Kandes of Tricky Fox with her too cute for words sidekick, Eldon.

Anne demoing in her booth

My booth, Creative Stash

I brought with me my canvas earrings, pendant necklaces and recycled bottlecap magnets. Anne really had a way with customers,she drew them in with her chainmaille demos, colorful booth and product storytelling. Kandes got into Halloween spirit, all dressed in black with a witches hat and super rad back and white striped stockings!

It was so nice to be outdoors and there were a lot of people roaming about, enjoying the music, costumes and zombies. Yep, I said zombies! There was a zombie walk and lots of people really got into it. Check them out ...

I am looking forward to being there again for the November 2nd Fridays. The TGIF - Thank goodness it's fall! event is November 12th in Downtown Mesa featuring live bands, hay rides, holistic exhibits, country fair games for kids, pony rides, food, entertainment, art galleries, 60+ art booths, farmers market, charity events, and much more! Hope you will join us!

Guest blogger Kristen Fagan of Creative Stash. Graphic Designer by day. Mother, wife, painter, jewelry artist, bookworm, cook and all around crafty gal by night. Contact her at krisfagan [at] cox [dot] com.

website | blog | facebook | twitter | etsy shop

Announcing the Treasury Challenge Winners!!!!

Congratulations to our winners of the first ever EVA treasury challenge! We appreciate the effort of everyone that participated in our first challenge. All of the treasuries were wonderful, making it very difficult to select only three winners. But the decisions were made after a couple tie breakers and we ended up with three very beautiful treasuries to represent our winners! MudHandChan and ChealseaSea have both won gift certificates redeemable at participating EVA team members shops.

Our First place winner is:
ChelseaSea with her Cool East Meets Hot West treasury

In Second place is:
MudHandChan with her Treasury Contest treasury

And in Third place is:
ChelseaSea AGAIN with her Arizona's East Valley Artisans Treasury

Thanks for curating such wonderful collections. I hope everyone enjoyed the challenge and will participate in upcoming treasury challenges!

EVA Meeting tonight

Tonight is our EVA meeting and Meetup open house for interested applicants. EVA is definitely ready to grow. Our group will have a lot of new events and projects in the future and we need a bigger army to make these things happen. Tonight the current EVA members will be voting on the EVA treasury challenge. We ended up with 13 treasuries submitted and have to pick winners. That is always a difficult process. We had a lot of wonderful entries! I will be posting the winners on Friday and will also share with you photos from the Beach themed exchange. I love EVA exchanges! Fun stuff!

EVA Meetup is August 18th!

EVA is having an open house in less than a week!!! Next Wednesday August 18th we will be available from 7 - 8pm to meet with anyone interested in joining our group. The location will be disclosed at a later time. I know it will be in downtown Mesa at one of two places, depending on the size of the group.

The requirements for joining us are that you must be an artisan or crafter that has samples of recent work, fill out a simple application, and attend the monthly meetings.

We are excited about adding new people to our awesome group of artisans. If you are interested in knowing more, visit our Meetup page.