Friday Feature Number Two!!

Watcha,

Well it's that time of week again when I feature a shop with 0 sales!

As I searched through the lonely, cold and forgotten shops of Etsy, it didn't take me long to find this hidden treasure. The shop is called Zando. They make gift cards and button badge sets. They are fun and quirky with cleverly thought out designs.

Here are my favourites!

Lets hear from Zando herself! -

Who are you? Zando is myself, Zoe, and my partner Dan, although at the moment it is only my work appearing on Etsy.

Where are you from? I'm from Hobart, Tasmania (Australia) originally, and have returned here via a 13 year detour in Melbourne! Dan is from Ballarat, in country Victoria (an hour or so from Melbourne) but is now in the clutches of Tasmania as well!

What do you do? For the moment, I am mostly a full-time parent to our 1yr son, though I come from a mongrel background of illustration and graphic art, linguistics and Spanish and odd-jobbing. Dan is a librarian-turned-furniture designer, and is studying full-time to that end. If by what do you do, you mean, what do I make for Etsy, well for the moment it is just a range of original handmade button badges and some handmade cards of my own photos. The photos are rather close to my heart. The character, Stella, is a bit of a pint-sized alter ego for me, who asks the questions from the existential to the utterly vacuous that I ask myself on a regular basis! However, there are handmade bibs coming up soon, inspired by my son's copious reflux as a younger tot! We have loads of ideas, it is mostly a matter of negotiating child-free time to make and fine-tune things.

What else do you do? Outside of parenting and making, I am a life model, a pram-walker, a reader, and can be seen regularly haunting my local library!

What/who influences you? I really like the work of Sloane Tanen (http://sloanetanen.com/), who I first came across way after I had developed Stella, but who I feel is definitely a kindred spirit. I also love the work of Melbourne artist Lara Cameron (http://kirinote.blogspot.com/), who designs gorgeous prints for fabric.

What is your favourite colour? Blue. A very specific shade of blue. The blue of the shallows of the sea on a hot summer day. I guess a kind of turquoise colour. It's just a colour I love to both wear and look at.

What music are you currently listening to? The last thing I listened to was a compilation CD this afternoon in the car called Manteca World Music...something, something. Can't remember the exact name, but it had lots of bluegrass and folk/country on it.

Who is your favourite Etsy shop? An acquaintance of mine, fellow Tasmanian Pippilangstrumpf, has a shop called Under the Shade of a Bonsai Tree, where she sells beautiful products using Japanese chiyogami paper. I don't tend to browse around Etsy too often because I don't have the means to go shopping at the moment, and there is so much fantastic stuff it's kind of torture to look and not touch!

Check out Zando's shop, go on, treat yourself......

xxxx