"Princess" has got to be the cutest little spokesmodel EVER!

We meet "Princess" at the 2014 sdFringe Festival, while she was hanging out in the Visual Fringe & Visitor's Center, meeting and greeting all the new folks who stopped by! She was just such an adorable little lady, that we couldn't resist creating her a special hat, which she was kind enough to model for us! She also inspired us to create our "pet-friendly" Fringee Bean toys. What a lovebug!

We just had to share her with all of you, and to thank Kevin Patterson for sharing such a completely AWESOME Customer Appreciation Photo!

If anyone is interested in ordering their OWN custom mini-hat appropriate to fit small dogs, cats, and even American Girl Dolls, just let us know...send us a quick message and we'd love to work with you!

July 3 began a super-exciting NEW event for us, and something new to all of San Diego as well! THE SAN DIEGO INTERNATIONAL FRINGE FESTIVAL!!!

Thanks to the gentle nagging...oops...I mean nudging...of our friend Lilli Feingold, we opted to participate in the first VISUAL FRINGE in San Diego!

While Fringe Festivals have been happening all over the world for many, many years, last year's FRINGE in San Diego was a first, but at the time, it focused only on PERFORMING Arts. This year included VISUAL arts too, and we were part of the inaugural year for Visual Fringe. It's kind of hard to explain what FRINGE is, so we're directing you to their official website: sdfringe.org for more details. But in a nutshell, it's a festival all over Downtown San Diego and some outlying areas that serves as a mecca for all kinds of AMAZING and unusual art on a budget...the kinds of things that you might consider on the FRINGE of normal! So yeah, we fit right in!

Like any first attempt, things went through changes, had some hiccups, but everyone pretty much rolled with the punches. For us, "VISUAL FRINGE" was set-up in a defunct (but very nice!) hair salon on 1st Ave., which was also the VISITOR CENTER and Fringe Tag/ticket pick-up spot. Which for us, meant some great foot traffic about a half-hour before each play. We got the chance to meet and chat with 2/3 of the visitors of the event, and had a WONDERFUL TIME doing it!

Set-up was a little rocky as we had to navigate the issue that is parking downtown, but what event downtown DOESN'T have parking issues? But we figured it out, and made it through! Having never seen the space before we got there, we had no idea what to bring, and brought pretty much everything except the kitchen sink, which was fine, because it turned out that our booth space actually HAD a SINK...right in the middle! No really, a hair-washing sink, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of the booth! Which we filled immediately with monsters. And we were thrilled to find that we were surrounded by mirrored walls (note to self- we don't need to bring mirrors to a salon!), tiny built-in shelves previously used to display product by in our case used to display monsters. Lesson for next time: CURATE WISELY!

While the festival is 11 full days of eyeball busting shows, we were only able to commit to the first 4, sharing our space with a number of talented artists, some of whom were already our friends!

So some shout-outs to our faves:

Bjorkman Creations- Eric & Rhianna make the most AMAZING Leather cuffs and wearable pieces...you can find them at http://bjorkmancreations.com/

Alice Gerschler- Alice is amazing photographer who specializes in some fantastic and surreal ocean pieces! Many of her intertidal photographs have been seen on local morning TV! She was also kind enough to take shots of some of our goods for us, allowing us to share them with you! You can find her work at: http://www.alicegerschler.com/ and http://www.intertidalphotography.com/

Philip M Soucy- Philip makes the most incredibly detailed and surreal art that almost seems to MOVE as you look at it.! He was one of Taylor's FAVORITE artists at the event. We understand his bicycle was stolen while at the event (GASP!!! THAT'S HORRIBLE!), so we want to encourage everyone to go check out his stuff and maybe BUY SOMETHING! http://www.philipmsoucy.com/

Deron Cohen- His art is AMAZING! So gorgeous, so surreal, and so layered it took everything in me NOT to reach out and touch them! We love his work, and encouraged him to come up front at the venue and take our primo spot when we left, so that all the guests would get to see his work! ohttp://deroncohen.com/

HASTE Theatre Company- These ladies are AMAZING!!! Got to see their play "The Hideout", and they are GENIUS!!! Everyone needs to go see them...so creative, so talented, and so entertaining! http://hastetheatre.com/

We didn't get a chance to see our friend Sean Doughty in his play "Heartquakes", but hope that some of you get a chance to see him!

And last but certainly not least RON LOGAN ( http://www.ronlogandesign.com/)... long story, but Ron is a friend of my brother's who also went to High School with me (although we didn't know each other then!) and he DESIGNED THE AWESOME LOGO for the festival! Isn't he talented?

And based on Ron's Eyeball Busted FRINGE-GOER, we created some keepsakes for guests! More on that in a later blog!

And one more shout-out to Executive Producer & Director KEVIN PATTERSON and his sweet little dog PRINCESS! We love you both! (Princess was the inspiration and model for our new DOGGIE HAT and Pet-friendly Fringee Bean!)

So here are a few photos to give you a taste of what SDFF 2014 was like for us.............