Pages

Opening letter

Back cover of catalog

Recycled Paper Necklace (from Kenya) layout

African Print Dress (from Kenya) layout

Beach Bag (from Kenya) layout

Bottle Openers from Kenya

Freshwater Pearl Necklaces from Thailand

Large Raffia Hat from Kenya

Front cover of catalog

Here are some examples of the pages from the catalog! I was responsible for designing the catalog cover and the overall design layout. Molly Longest was responsible for editing all of the photos. Anne and Emily supervised and edited the catalog. If you look close to the fabric swatches, you can see the color names that Kelsie and I came up with---they're cute! I created all the pages in Photoshop, then saved them as a JPG and placed them into InDesign. The entire catalog is 26 pages from front to back. The catalogs will be ready to be picked up on Monday the 9th. I can hardly wait. Being held responsible for such a huge project at TVE has truly been an amazing experience.

TVE's First Photo Shoot

Here are some of the pictures of the photo shoot yesterday! Tell me what you think!

Photo Scenes

The past two days at work Molly and I have been working on the scenes/pictures for the catalog. On Wednesday, we drove all around Indianapolis looking for places to shoot some pictures. We have actually scheduled our photo shoot next week with Julia. We want to make sure everything runs smoothly, therefore we are scoping out the places beforehand where we think will be the best shots. Molly took several practice shots of the all the places so we could see what they would like. She wanted me in a lot of the pictures--just to see what it would be like with a person (of course they did not turn out so well---I'm not a photogenic person by any means lol).

We found some beautiful places in downtown Indy such as the James Witcomb Riley House and Lockerbie Street. Lockerbie Street is amazing---you don't really feel like your in downtown Indianapolis. It has cobblestone on the street and the trees curve inward, similar to what you would see in Savannah, GA. Many of the houses are very old with beautiful architecture. There are several old run down buildings, which is will be great for our catalog. Our concept is a beautiful dressed up model with an old vintage look in the background. The rough/pretty contrast I guess. Yesterday, we actually went back to downtown to take some pictures of just the products. We are trying to get this catalog finished by the first week in August. We do not want to waste time when we will be with Julia, therefore we decided to just go ahead and take somes pictures to get the ball rolling. I'm going to run to Cosco today to get some of the pictures printed---I'll post some of them later today!

Along with the pictures, Anne and I are still working on the pricing. I brought in my scale today to weight the products. We are trying to come up with an average at how much something will cost per pound. Once Anne comes in, we will continue to work on the pricing.

Oouiiii...CUSTOMS

Never have I dealt with customs or had any inkling as to what chaos they can provoke, however today I had that privilege. Anne, Co-Founder of The Village Experience, had recently been working with an organization called The Bombolulu Workshop (www.bombolulu.org).

The Bombolulu Workshop for the Handicapped, located in Mombasa, Kenya, works with some 150 disabled men and women artisans to help them overcome their physical limitations and empower them economically and socially to become fully integrated members of their communities. Bombolulu started in 1969 as a rehabilitation project sponsored by the Association for the Physically Disabled of Kenya.

In working with Bombolulu, Anne had helped them design and produce summer dresses, beach totes, summer hats, and bowls. The products were scheduled to arrive to the store before the party on Saturday. Fortunately, Anne had received a call from Tom who said the products had arrived to the US, but were being held by customs. Tom is basically a liaison between TVE and customs. FYI, it's just better to hire someone to deal with the customs then to try and do it yourself. The products are being held by customs because The Bombolulu Workshop failed to sew in the care label in each of the summer hats and beach totes. Apparently, all textile products that are imported into the US need to have a care label. Therefore, in order for TVE to receive the products we had to figure out a way to get a care label that could be sewn into the products.

So, we researched and contacted numerous companies that may correlate or relate to care labels, apparel tags, screen printing, pad printing, alternations, or fabric. After all our research and contacts we ended up with no possible way to buy a care label. Ending up with nothing, we decided we needed to be more creative. It appeared as if we were actually going to have to make our own label since there are no companies in greater Indianapolis that had the resources to do so (FYI--business opportunity in apparel care labels!).

Our idea: buy heat transfer paper and white fabric. In Microsoft Word, Molly created a set of care labels that we printed onto the heat transfer paper, which were then ironed onto the fabric. We then cut the labels out, which will be sewn into the products tomorrow morning at 8am. In order to gain access to the products that are being held by customs, Anne had to photocopy and send all of our passports to them. Before our arrival, customs will have inspected our passports and have run a background check on each of us. Who knew working with customs would be so difficult?



To sum it up, we had to actually create our own care label that will be sewn into the products tomorrow morning in front of the customs officials. If all goes well we should be able to bring the products back to TVE to be set up and merchandised. All I can say is..... ouiiiii vayyyyy customs!!!