(Props to Steven Shattuck. The phone-photo doesn’t do it justice, though.)

When preparations for Homespun’s opening hit high gear, an acquaintance reached out to remind me that her husband is a decorative painter, in case, you know, we needed any of that done. I’m glad she did, because Carl Leck’s rendering of our logo above the cash wrap is one of the most commented-on features in the store.

Leck is a graduate of Southport High School (’98) and earned his BFA in Graphic Design/Fine art from Ball State University after starting his undergrad at Herron School of Art. He now lives on the east side with his wife, Jessica, her son Ezra, and their daughter Avery.

You can see more of Carl’s work here.

How did you get into decorative painting? Was it your plan or did you fall into it?

I planned on being a Graphic Designer after school. But then I realized how difficult it is to find a design job in this city. Graphic Design firms want experience, I had very little. Then I had some mural opportunities fall on my lap at Southport High School. Soon after finishing, the music department called and wanted some murals in their classrooms and hallways. It was nice, I’d finish a wall and they’d say “How about that wall?” They kept me busy for close to a year. Word of mouth spread from there, where I went on to Decatur Intermediate, Center Grove Schools, and other Perry Township schools. Schools treated me very well, they were my bread and butter. But right around the time Ol’ Mitch tightened the belt on school budgets, my phone stopped ringing. So, I worked for a parade float company called Expo Design for a year. Then worked briefly as a carpenter. During a brief layoff between jobs, another mural gig fell on my lap. When Lucas Oil Stadium was still under construction I was commissioned to paint a 16 ft. x 31 ft. mural for Baker & Daniels. After I finished that gig I realized, art is what I need to do, I wouldn’t be happy doing anything else. I’ve been a free-lance artist ever sense.

I was surprised when I found out how much of your work is done by airbrush. I generally associate airbrush art with mall kiosks – what drew you to it?

The airbrush is just another tool in my toolbox. When I say I use an airbrush, people generally think I ONLY use an airbrush. Normally, airbrushing is one of the last steps, so it’s obvious where I use it. But most of the painting I do is with a 1″ or 3″ Purdy house painting brush. I cut in base colors first and then lay down shadows and highlights on top. The main reason I started using an airbrush on murals is because the majority of the walls I painted were textured cinder block walls. It’s very tough to get a smooth gradient across a large area with a wet on wet brushing technique. The airbrush works great on textured walls, and over time I’ve picked up a few tricks. And no, I won’t airbrush a t-shirt. I prefer large scale.

You make 3D art and large installations, as well, right? Where can those pieces be seen?

Lately, I have been doing some sub-contract work with Expo Design carving Styrofoam parade props. I built a handful of props for the 500 festival parade and recently carved some Boy Scouts for the 100-year anniversary parade in Washington, D.C.. I’ve also started making brushed aluminum wall sculptures. I have one in Decatur Central High School’s library, and I’m in the middle of making one for Sun King Brewing company. I hope to have it finished in the next couple weeks. When mural work is slow, its nice to have other skills to fall back on. Adaptability is the only reason I’m able to keep doing freelance work. Folks have less money to spend, so unfortunately custom artwork is much less of a priority.

After Amanda and I decided we were going to open a store and settled on a name, the first call we made was to Karli Kujawa-Smith. At the time, the 28-year-old designer (BFA in Visual Communications, Truman State University, MA Metals, Ball State) lived in Irvington and had already handled print and web design for the INDIEana Handicraft Exchange for a year leading up to that fateful day. Kujawa-Smith recently relocated to Chicago with her husband but she continues to work on design jobs from clients in Indianapolis and all points beyond.

You’re a jewelry maker as well as a designer. What led you to choose design as a career path?

I chose to be a designer (whether print, web or jewelry) because it was the best way to meld my creativity with my type A, perfectionist tendencies. I get to play with color, pattern and type everyday for a living – I can’t think of anything better than that.

Tell me a bit about the work you’ve done for Homespun – what inspired it and what ideas/themes were you trying to communicate with it?

As the designer tasked with creating homespun’s visual identity, brand and promotional materials I wanted to emphasize two main characteristics of homespun: high quality handmade and contemporary style. When you first approached me to create a logo for the store, I was inspired by the name homespun and how it immediately conjured an image of a handspun ball of yarn. The yarn ball image was the launching point for all the items to follow.

With the promotional materials I wanted to incorporate other handmade items that would be sold at the store, as well as, potential classes that may be taught. Amanda enlisted the help of local illustrator, Candice Hartsough McDonald, to create a number of custom images that I was able to incorporate into the promotional materials to continue the idea of “handmade”.

Now that you’ve moved to Chicago, what does the future hold for The Hot Cookie?

I am in charge of The Hot Cookie’s branding, marketing efforts and online sales. Since I recently moved to Chicago for my husband’s work, The Hot Cookie is looking to expand to the Chicagoland area. I am doing research on local independent grocers and coffee shops that would be a good fit for our product. I continue to meet up with my partner, Sarah, twice a month to pick up cookies for shipment across the country from our online sales. We are looking into getting an intern or part-time baker to assist Sarah with the cookie production. My move to Chicago is just a chance for us to branch into a larger market and we are extremely excited by this opportunity!

There is a troubling pattern on the east side, one that might be repeating itself elsewhere, but my neighborhood is where I see it. The pattern goes like this; have an idea for a business, move on it before it’s fully developed, execute it half-heartedly, wait for dollars to flow through the door, close up shop and bitterly blame the neighborhood for not supporting you. Now businesses fail for all sorts of reasons but the one consistent, recurring factor in those failures is a lack of advertising, marketing and promotion.

I understand that print and broadcast advertising is expensive – our ad budget was the first thing to go when Homespun’s loan application was denied. But just because you can’t afford to execute big ad campaigns doesn’t mean you can’t promote your business. Rather than shell out big bucks for ad buys we decided to take a more punk rock approach, or as some call it, “street-level marketing.”

It’s pretty simple – step one, design a flyer. Step two, print said flyer. Step three, place said flyer in places where you think your customers will see it. Repeat as needed. A couple hundred bucks and a couple of days of driving around the city or neighborhood, depending on your reach and you’ve just significantly increased awareness of your business. We went crazy and had posters printed so we could put them up in public places and catch the attention of passersby. Another couple hundred bucks got us 2,500 door hangers which are being placed on nearly every front door in Irvington proper as well as parts of surrounding neighborhoods.

The door hanger includes a coupon good for the first month of business because we know that retail lives and dies with the neighborhood. It’s not expensive and it’s not sophisticated but almost no one in our neighborhood will be able to say they didn’t know that we were here. No matter how good the idea, how well you execute it, or how well known you are, you still have to get to the shopper.

Maybe it was the long-term sleep deprivation, maybe it was the opening weekend delirium, but I forgot a couple of people in my ‘thank you’ post

Thank you Frank and Jon of Umlaut for tackling the task of turning 12′ concrete forming tubes into shelves. Your creativity, flexibility and diligence should instill confidence in future clients.

Thank you to our new neighbors Ryan and Jessica Thomas for bring water and soft drinks to our grand opening party. Who knew that we’d need more than beer?

Has anyone ever taken the stage at a political rally, stepped up to the microphone and announced to the crowd, “I…am what’s wrong with America!” Have any failed business owners ever looked at their liquidation sale signs and said to themselves, “You know, if I had just taken marketing more seriously, or worried more about my customers than I did about my handicap, I might not being going under.” Does anyone look at the annual Indiana Black Expo police blotter and tell their friends, “The inner city might not be so fraught with problems if we didn’t devote all of our time and resources to the townships and suburbs.” Of course not, because that would require us to examine the effects our decisions have on the world around us.

It’s too uncomfortable to think that the financial meltdown was due in large part to people’s desire to buy a bunch of crap they didn’t need and couldn’t afford who then skipped out on their obligations. It’s too uncomfortable to think that BP’s gusher in the Gulf might not have happened if we all weren’t trying so desperately to avoid the reality that our energy consumption is unsustainable. It’s too uncomfortable to think that your business failed because you did nothing to help it succeed. It’s too uncomfortable to admit that for all the talk of Jesus that goes on in the suburbs, most of his followers are unwilling and unable to walk among the meek. (And to be fair, the meek need to stop pointing fingers at the police, city government, and whoever else, and start examining how they help alcohol and tobacco companies, check cashing stores, and convenience store owners keep them poor and unhealthy.)

Imagine the transformative impact we could have if we woke up every morning and said, “I’m the problem,” and then set out to find solutions. What if, instead of worrying about what we want right this second, we made decisions with the knowledge that our choices determine the quality of our collective future? It’s a nice thought but it’ll never happen. Because we all know that everything is always someone else’s fault.

(Pictures jacked from Eric Nolan’s blog and Kristin Hubick’s Facebook page.)

After months of planning and coordination, dozens of meetings, nights and weekends spent flyering and gathering inventory and supplies, a week of 16-hour days and one final non-stop 36-hour marathon push, Homespun is open. The Wife and I are sleep deprived, humbled, and proud, which is how I imagine we’ll feel in about seven weeks when Amanda brings our son, Zeke, into the world.

It’s been a wild ride since the first Handicraft Exchange in 2007. The fair has metastasized from 38 vendors in the Irving Theater to 100+ vendors sprawled throughout the Harrison Center for the Arts and the surrounding property, from a single annual event to as many as four a year. In 2009 we started talking, only half seriously, about opening a craft boutique but the response we got at Pecha Kucha 7 made us believe it was a real possibility. We entered the Pepsi Refresh challenge on a lark and thanks to voters, we won a grant which put money in our pockets and landed our mugs on national television. Family, friends, neighbors, and strangers pitched in through Kickstarter, and a number of people donated time and energy to helping us build the store out. The support we’ve received has put us in a position to succeed. We can never fully articulate how we feel about all of you but here’s my feeble attempt.

Thank you mom and dad Mauer – without you this store doesn’t exist, period. You helped us up every time we stumbled and took care of us when we were too busy to take care of ourselves. You offered constructive criticism without discouraging us and believed in Homespun even when we weren’t convinced we could make it happen.

Thank you mom Rader for pitching in the last few weeks, when the white box really turned into a store.

Thank you Karli Kujawa-Smith for creating Homespun’s visual identity and producing our beautiful marketing materials, stationary, etc. Thank you Travis Smith for the IT consults. We’re not mad you two are leaving but we are a little sad.

Thank you Nikki Sutton for making Homespun pop, for figuring out a way to seamlessly integrate retail, gallery, and teaching space and made it inviting for people of all kinds. The space is gorgeous and unpretentious, just like the objects that we sell there.

Thank you Larry White at the Small Business Development Center of Indiana. You saved us months of stress and took the guesswork out of opening a business.

Thank you Ryan Page for giving us a clean canvas to work on and for solving so many problems on the fly.

Thank you Eric Nolan for making a sign that grabs the attention of passersby and tells them in an instant that something different is happening at 5624 E. Washington St.

Thank you Chris Foster for the workshop tables.

Thank you Carl Leck for painting our logo above the cash register. It’s one of the things in the store that people are commenting on consistently.

Thank you Steve Koers for helping us do the things we didn’t want to hassle with and for not killing us with billable hours.

Thank you Dan Huffman for making Homespun safe and secure and for helping me reconstruct our front door.

Thank you Frank and Jon of Umlaut for tackling the task of turning 12′ concrete forming tubes into shelves. Your creativity, flexibility and diligence should instill confidence in future clients.

Thank you to our new neighbors Ryan and Jessica Thomas for bring water and soft drinks to our grand opening party. Who knew that we’d need more than beer?

Thank you Clay & Staraya for being cheerleaders.

Thank you Indy Star, Metromix, Nuvo, Indy Monthly, the Broad Ripple Gazette, Clear Channel Indy, and WFYI for sharing our story.

Thank you Aubrey & James, Sherri, Amy, Mandy, Megan, Lori, Nich, Brooke, Megan & Tim, Lynne, Melissa, Becca, Chris Vannoy, and Damon for pushing, pulling, lifting, moving, taping, painting, washing, wiping, chopping, and screwing Homespun together. If we forgot someone who pitched in, we’ll make it up to you. Thanks.

(Hundred-year-old barnwood from Whitestown – it’ll make sense after July 10.)

I’ve always leaned towards participatory journalism but sometimes you get so deeply embedded in what you’re doing that it’s impossible to document it in real time. As The Wife and I hurtle towards Homespun’s grand opening I’m letting an increasing number of phone calls go to voice mail and on a couple of occasions I’ve even told my mom that I’m too busy to talk. Things aren’t slowing down but I have a few minutes to spare so here’s a quick recap of our progress.

Our contractor, Ryan Page, and our landlord’s contractors have gotten us 95% of the way to white box, which means that the space is a clean, straight, white platform for us to build our store on top of. It’s been an incredible transformation – we’ll post pictures this weekend before we start painting on Sunday. We’ve gathered up a large and still growing pile of fixtures acquired from friends, Joe’s Cycles, Craigslist, Rakks, IKEA, a local concrete supply company and Midland Antique Mall. There are a couple of other pieces we’re eyeing in places like Audrey’s, but we’re almost finished. This weekend we’ll start applying accent colors to certain walls, installing the barnwood planks, modifying some of the fixtures we’ve purchase, and assembling the fixtures that arrived in boxes. By the middle of next week it will start to look like what you’ll see on and after July 10.

In the midst of all of this we’ve dropped off postcards and hung posters promoting the store at approximately 100 locations around Marion Co. Thanks to Emily Vance’s efforts in Fishers-ish Northnobleshamiltontown and Sally Harless‘ help in Bloomington we’ve put information in front of just about everyone we could without buying print/radio/tv ads. Starting next week I’ll be putting door hangers on every home in Irvington proper plus whatever neighborhoods I can cover with what’s left over. We sent press releases about the store’s opening to roughly 60 members of central Indiana’s news media and are almost done planning our grand opening festivities. Amanda already has product in hand from about 35 different makers and we’re expecting an avalanche of handmade goods to come crashing down on our porch in the next two weeks.

I’ll be working double duty this weekend, coordinating coverage of an event for my day job and getting my hands dirty at Homespun. If you’d like to help we’d love to have you. There might even be some beer and pizza in it for you. If you’re interested, drop us a line at info@homespunindy.com.

(Again…it’ll make sense after the 10th.)

(Props to Sarah Richcreek.)

The Wife and I took a rare day off after yesterday’s hugely successful INDIEana Handicraft Exchange Summer Show and headed up to Broad Ripple for a late afternoon lunch. After mealing on Boogie Burger we walked up the Monon Trail a piece and into BRICS, the new ice cream shop located in a former train depot. I grew up less than a mile from the building BRICS occupies and always thought it was one of the coolest spots in Broad Ripple. When the Trail opened, the north end of the neighborhood popped – great restaurants and retail now line several blocks – but that building didn’t. BRICS pops. It looks good, it feels good, it works. The product is good but not mind blowing – the ice cream isn’t gourmet or made on site but what they sell, Sherman’s, is pretty damn good. What makes BRICS pop is the story.

A business’ story isn’t a mission statement or a pamphlet or a claim made by the owner or a salesman working on commission. It’s the narrative that plays out in the design of the business and how it presents itself, in the quality and delivery of the product, and in the behavior and attitude of the owners and employees. You can tell me you value customer service but if I am treated shoddily every time I visit your store (see: Lowe’s), then your story is either inauthentic or dishonest.

BRICS’ clean, contemporary design tells me that they understand that presentation matters. The funky fanbelt-run ceiling fan and faux-kerosene lamps on the tables, and BRICS-branded cards in the napkin dispensers tell me that they sweat the details, or at least that they’re smart enough to hire a designer who does. The fact that they use metal spoons for samples tells me that they aren’t chintzy and they’re conscious of the amount of waste their business generates, a point underscored by the clearly marked recycling bin in the dining room. The water bowls beside the deck tell me that they value their customers’ furry friends. The friendly, competent, knowledgeable staff tells me that the quality of my experience matters.

In less than five minutes, the time it took to approach the building, enter, get our ice cream, and sit down, BRICS told me everything I needed to make a decision about whether or not to come back a second time or recommend it to friends. BRICS isn’t the only business that gets it, it’s just the one that got me thinking about the subject today. The increasing number of shops, restaurants, and service providers in Indianapolis who do understand the importance of storytelling is heartening. It’s an object lesson I wish more businesses took to heart, one that Amanda and I were conscious of when planning Homespun. Or hope – no, our plan – is to tell a consistent, compelling, honest story from the moment you encounter our store. If we don’t succeed, Homespun won’t pop, and it won’t work. Because the story isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.

If I haven’t convinced you to give BRICS a try, I’ll let Sarah Richcreek make her case.

The INDIEana Handicraft Exchange Summer Show is upon us. We put so much time and energy into planning and executing these shows that our gas gauges are pinned on E by the time we get to event day and this year is no different. Juggling jobs, a pregnancy, and Homespun has increased the level of complexity but it’s also added a little bit of excitement as well. We’ll be at the Harrison Center for the Arts today (June 12) between noon and 8 p.m., it’s free, and there will be more than 100 vendors plying their wares in the gymnasium, Gallery No. 2, the Underground, and down Delaware and 16th Streets as well. If you show up early, as in one-of-the-first-50-people early, you’ll get a swag bag that includes merchandise from our vendors, coupons, a copy of Venus ‘Zine and more.

The IHE Summer Show is being held in conjunction with the Independent Music + Art Festival, which will feature several great bands including Damien Jurado and Cabin as well as a handful of art vendors organized by the Harrison Center. With the Talbott Street Art Fair popping off just a block away, it should be a pretty busy day on the near northside. Stop by and say hello, we’d love to see you before we crawl back into isolation to get Homespun ready for opening day.

(To see more photos of the store in progress, friend us on Facebook!)

As we hurtle toward the INDIEana Handicraft Exchange Summer Show – noon to 8 p.m., Sat., June 12 – we’re hard at work keeping all of Homespun’s moving parts in synch. Nothing is happening exactly according to plan but the build-out is nearly complete and we are starting to acquire fixtures and accents as well as commitments from vendors whose work we will carry. It’s scarily abstract to pick a date in the foggy future as the day we’ll be open for business but that’s exactly what we’ve done. On July 10, Homespun will open to the public. In the weeks leading up to the opening I’ll be posting conversations with and videos about the people who helped midwife our idea into the world. People like Larry White, our counselor from the Indiana Small Business Development Center; Karli Kujawa-Smith, the designer who created Homespun’s branding; Nikki Sutton, the designer who created the store’s look and feel; Eric Nolan, the artist who is making our signage; Chris Foster, the steel fabricator who is making our workshop tables; Carl Leck, the decorative painter who will apply our logo above the cash wrap. We’ll also be posting updates on our new Twitter account, @homespunindy, so follow us if you want to get updates about the IHE, the store, and special deals and prizes once we’re open.

It’s going to be a wild ride between now and July 10 – buckle up, you’ll be in the passenger seat.