Feature: The One Of A Kind Christmas Show & Sale

Feature Story

Will Alcopra

1 – 1 – 1

     It's difficult to find the perfect gift for someone especially during the holiday season. There are so many choices from iPad's to jewellery to clothes. Or, consumers can 'cop out' and give a gift card.

     The One Of A Kind Christmas Show & Sale (OOAKS) provides shoppers an all-in-one destination to find gifts that are unique – in most cases the only product that looks exactly like it.

     OOAKS is the largest consumer craft show in North America. It features over 800 artisans, makers, designers, craftspeople and makers with their unique and handmade creations. They create in many mediums: glass, wood, plastic, textiles, ceramics, steel and of course, food.

     Over 100,000 attend the show each year, with 95 per cent of attendees making at least one purchase, OOAKS brings a large amount of revenue and exposure to the exhibitors.

     Catherine Winter is one of those exhibitors.“I do about 15-20 craft shows a year...OOAKS is currently between a quarter and a third of my annual income and with the online shopping it is becoming more and more important,” Winter said. “I'm getting a lot of exposure here. Even people who come just to look will continue to buy online after. So yes, this is incredibly important to my annual income.”

     Winter is the creative mind behind Sailor Girl Jewelry. She has two collections, the Sailorgirl collection and the Baubles collection which uses handmade glass beads and commercial beads respectively. “I make glass beads using a technique called lampworking or flameworking. I use a gas/oxygen torch to melt rods of glass. My raw glass is Moretti glass from Italy,” Winter said. “The melted glass is wound around a thin steel rod (called a mandrel), then shaped and decorated with thin rods of glass (called stringers). Some of the beads have silver leaf added inside. There is no paint on any of my beads, they are all layers and layers of glass,” Winter added.

     Winter anneals (bakes) all of her handmade beads in kiln at roughly 950F. “This removes stress from the glass and prevents the bead from cracking. Because my beads are annealed, they are durable. Try not to drop them on cement or marble. They will hold up well under normal, everyday wear,” she said.

     Winter guarantees her craftsmanship with free lifetime repairs for her jewellery.

     Almost all of the items offered at OOAKS are handmade. They represent the passion and creativity behind the artisans who make them.  Many of the techniques used to make the items are labour and time-intensive.

     Silk screen printing is one of these techniques. A sheer fabric (originally silk, usually polyester) is stretched over a wooden-frame the size of the object you are printing on; this is "the screen." Then the designer puts a thin piece of plastic with holes cut out of it (for the ink to transfer to the shirt) on the shirt.  

     The next step for the designer is to coat the screen with a thick ink to apply the colour they want. If the design is multi-coloured, the designer has to apply each colour one-at-a-time from the lightest colour to the darkest.

     Yasmine Louis, a Toronto-based silk-screen printer, also exhibits at OOAKS.

She graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design in the Textile Printing Program and at the same time discovered her passion for silk-screen printing. "I love it. I - Well, I wanted to make something that I could produce in quantities, so silk screening is great for that. You can do limited edition, of you know, prints on paper or like clothing." Louis said. "There's a lot you can do with silkscreening. You can do white lines on rice. You can do a $5 thing or you can do a $2000. There's just a lot of possibilities."

     Like many designers Louis doesn't really have a set routine for creating her work. "Well I go, I photograph. I spend days photographing and then out of hundreds of pictures, there may be one picture," she said. "So it's hard to say how long it takes because from beginning to end because you know, I do things at different times. So yeah, sometimes I have a bunch of ideas at once, sometimes it's just once in a while."

     Her design inspirations comes from her photography. "Some years I prefer to do nature stuff, sometimes it's architecture, sometimes it's different – when I go on my walks and during those weeks of designing that's when the concept comes up." Louis said. "And then it's usually, after I take all these photos that's when I realize 'oh actually, I've taken a lot of photos to make it easier this year' something subconsciously, I wanted to do that. So then it becomes necessary. But I don't go thinking 'Okay, today I'm going to take trees' – I just kinda walk and take photos."

     Louis then uses applies her passion to turn her photographs into one-of-a-kind creations. "I take a photo and then I scan it and I open it with Photoshop and I do some really high contrast with Photoshop to get it really black and white in the photo. And from there I print it on paper and on the paper I take a brush with white and black and I change the photo again and scan it, and I rechange it again in Photoshop and then put it on a screen and once the screen is ready, I print it with the screen on a shirt, on a pillow." she said. "And for the writing I just write tons of stuff. I have books and books of writing and then I select some of those sentences."

     OOAKS is an important event for exhibitors and consumers alike. It gives gift-givers a place to get rare and unique items infused with passion and love.