2012 - A Fresh Start

Every year at this time we re-focus and re-strategize with new goals and designs we'd like to do but never seem to have time for in our day to day busy schedules. It's our goal to get some new designs launched off the drawing board, into the prototyping stage where we tweak and play till we're in LOVE with the new style. This year we'll do our share of this, but along with our eco-handbags we hope that Echoes in the Attic will soon morph into what we've always envisioned and what some of you have been asking us to do...a line of upcycled products that's wider and broader. The evolution of Echoes has kept us very busy and very happy with steadily growing numbers of eco-peeps that love carrying our 'salvage-savvy' bags. Since it's inception in '05 when we started Echoes, we always hoped we would have the time and space to commit to accessories for home as well. Our addiction to antique wool and chenille blankets has us thinking of squishy, feather pillows again, upcycled lamps painted with fabric covered shades, old b&w photographs and uniquities that have Echoes one of a kind style and that takes upcycling to the next level. We'll keep you posted on our vision...stay tuned.

Pre-Christmas Sale Events Round-Up

November and early December are the busiest months on our calendar. Echoes gets out there and interacts with customers to find out what you really want. Hands-free, cross-body, pockets, more pockets, longer straps, wider straps...you name it and we hear it. All this customer interaction helps us streamline and make our upcycled, vegan, Canadian, handmade ecobags even better.

You can follow us on facebook to find out all the specifics but in the meantime, here's the overall lowdown:

Nov 5 - Holland Landing Community Ctr 10am - 3pm

Nov 12 - Port Perry High School Craft Sale 10am - 5pm

Nov 12 - Bradford Arts Guild at the New Bradford Library 10am - 5pm

Nov 18 - St. John's Presbyterian Church Bradford fundraiser 7 - 9pm

Nov24 - York County fundraiser, York County Bldg Newmarket 10am - 4pm

Nov 25/26 - Warehouse Sale, 22 Gres Court Bradford, Fri 2 - 8 pm

Nov 30 - CBC Craft Sale, Front St. Toronto 9am - 5pm

Dec 2/3 - Warehouse Sale, 22 Gres Court Bradford, Fri 4 - 8pm, Sat 11am - 3pm

Hope to see you out for some great deals on Echoes 'upcycled ecohandbags for planet-lovers'.

Ah, Summer...

Seasons come and seasons go. Echoes loves the bright greens of spring in all it's newness turning into the fullness of summer. Autumn colours inspire and winter's grey only benefits by a splash of colour wherever you can. At Echoes we love each season for the backdrop of lovely eco-designs we reinvent from XS textiles.

There's an ease to summer's wardrobe and the fun is adding just the right bag to the simplest outfit to make it pop. Echoes soft pinks and apple or celadon greens will fade slowly to the autumn golds and browns...keep your eye out for the subtle changes and remember, nab the bag you love before it's gone, they're one of a kind.

Nab your new spring Echoes Eco-Handbag

April 15th - 23 - Book an appointment to Nab Your Echoes Spring Eco-Handbag! Just in time for Easter, Mother's Day you can come and shop our huge selection of spring bags before we ship out to our stores! At Echoes HQ/Laura's home office we're knee-deep in bags and we'd love you to be sporting new, fresh colours, patterns and styles in time for capri and open-toed-sandals-season.

Email for your private shopping appointment echoesintheattic@gmail.com

Our favorite colour in spring is GREEN!

Basics Office Products EARTH DAY contest

Stop in to any one of 35 Basics Office Products and fill out a ballot to win an Echoes in the Attic Ecobag to celebrate Earth Day. See for yourself what beautiful diverted landfill from forward-thinking companies can be re-imagined into when they choose to eco-donate instead of trashing it.

Basics Office Products is giving away 35, one of a kind, Zipster Flatbags. The most popular Echoes bag just slings across your body so you can go...with a clear environmental conscience that you're helping us save the planet one handbag at a time!

YOU be the DESIGNER

Echoes strives to honor your individual style by designing one of a kind, or one of a few, upcycled eco-handbags. Inherent in our eco-donations of small, but gorgeous fabric sizes is the necessity to keep our 'runs' very exclusive. That being said, Vicky and I have often wondered if those of you who carry one or many of Echoes bags would ever want to have a go at being your own designer.
This is your chance. 'YOU be the DESIGNER' is a one-time chance to choose from our stash of gorgeous fabrics, bring your own or mix the two and make your own statement in a current Echoes bag style.
For a limited time, January 17th - 31st we're inviting you into our studio, otherwise known as Vicky's house, to choose your own fabric combination. We'll have the bags professionally sewn and you'll be carrying your own design within 3 weeks! What are the chances that someone else is going to choose exactly as you do?
For an appt. call Vicky at 905-775-0529 and prepare to unleash your creativity on your own Echoes eco-bag.

Back to School

It's that time of the year again...back to school commercials are in full swing. Our fave...."It's the most wonderful time of the year!" Alas, it would be but my daughter is leaving the nest. Going off to University and I'm going to be going through some post-partum no doubt. We'll get used to it (I suppose) but the first two weeks are going to be a little rough for mom. I'm sure she'll be having a blast, so that'll ease my pain a bit. Not looking forward to walking past her room and wondering the name of cyclone that hit it.
She's leaving in fine shape for the daughter of a 'bag lady'. She's got a new Hipster Zipper, a couple of handy wristlets for ipod, camera, chargers, cords, wallet, cell, student card and 2 new laptops carriers for her precious MAC.
For all you mom's like me that have the bittersweet moment coming up pretty quickly (my daughter's been counting down since about 171)check out our eco laptop bags for organizing notes and keeping the pricey laptop in it's padded, ultrasuede compartment.
www.echoesintheattic.com

ZIP IT!

In the words of Dr. Evil "When a problem comes along, you must ZIP IT!" Echoes first Zipster Eco Bag. Cross-body ease and secure zip closure for luggin' and totin' all your stuff for day or evening. Check out the webstore www.echoesintheattic.com or find a store near you on Echoes 'stores' page of the website. One of a kind, upcycled, vegan, cruelty-free, factory-free ecobags. Now available in nearly 90 cool, boutiques across Canada! Salvage-Savvy Handbags for Planet-Lovers!

Echoes now on Etsy

Echoes in the Attic's salvage-savvy line of handbags, totes, laptop and diaper bags is now available on Etsy. Etsy is the place to go for one of a kind, hand-made products you won't find anywhere else. Check us out there at: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=6802112

Echoes Caribbean Photo Shoot

Disguised as a Christmas vacation in the sunny south, I have to tell you I had a hidden agenda & my luggage was much heavier than anyone elses. Can you guess what with???? Yes, my weakness...BAGS. I took this great opportunity while celebrating Christmas with my own and extended family in the Caribbean to shoot some amazing photo's of Echoes bags with backdrops of sand, surf & palm trees. We'll be updating our site which is long over-due with some beautiful shots from our first tropical locale photo shoot.
Hope everyone had a great Christmas and that 2009 is full of abundance, health & happiness.

Welcome to our new friends at Casa Luna

This is a fabulous store with a real commitment to our planet. Casa Luna in Ottawa (Orleans to be exact) is our newest store carrying our eco-line of Echoes bags and we couldn't be happier. Casa Luna is all about high quality, handcrafted furniture and accessories that have been produced in a way that respects both nature & people. The reclaimed woods reinvented into pieces by craftsmen in Mexico, Brazil and South America are absolute treasures to be passed down for centuries. Their skilled craftsmen only use sustainable woods like pine or reclaimed woods like mesquite that has been discarded or salvaged from structures such as old hacienda doors. What a perfect fit for us to have our 'rescued remnant', vegan handbags displayed on such gorgeous pieces of furniture. We highly recommend a visit to Casa Luna if you're in the Ottawa area. The husband and wife team of Diane Dumas and Alex Grooscors are so warm and friendly and truly personify Latin hospitality.

The Toronto Film Festival

This year's T.O. Film Fest. is especially exciting for us at Echoes as we were asked to design special eco goody bags in combo with The Global Group (known for their eco-kindness through their fabric donations to us) and Grand & Toy who is filling each bag with environmentally conscious products.
The lucky recipients will be the V.I.P.'s visiting the cyber-cafe/press area...do you think Brad & Angelina might want a skookum, new, rescued remnant tote for all those diapers?

Fab new store in Richmond B.C.

In the quaint little fishing village of Steveston B.C. there's a store that's suits us to a tee and we've wanted to be a part of for quite some time. Here's a shot of our bags hanging in "Pieces". It's new owners and I do their order completely over the net with rounds of pictures till they get just what they want. They have very good taste in my opinion. We're happy to say they're selling well and we're looking forward to our next shipment to them. I wouldn't mind flying their selections to them each month to hang out with my sister who lives there but, alas that carbon footprint would be nasty. If you're anywhere near this sweet little town, check out "Pieces" especially Canadian, accessories.

Echoes & Global

Here's a shot after many hours of 'mining' for remnants at The Global Group in north T.O. http://www.globaltotaloffice.com/ We've been given access to some discontinued bolts of fabric and had a blast designing new combinations for our Tote Bag.
Recently Global & Echoes co-produced a whack-load of tote bags for the World Wildlife Foundation of Canada's Volunteer Service Awards. Now their animal-lovin' volunteers are carrying around an Echoes tote with Global's sentiments on the label...Think Global - Think Recycled. Our successful teaming with Global nets us about 200 - 500 lbs of fabric every 2 - 3 weeks of rescued remnants diverted from the landfill. Thank you Global for being such a behemoth company with a planet conscience to eco-donate to the little guy like us!

Echoes on BT on Citytv at Dandelion Mud Pie

Hey how cool is this...here's a shot of how we spent our morning. The gang at BT on Citytv may be used to getting up this early (4am)...we're not, but no problem. We made it to T.O. in record time (of course no cars on the road at 5am) with my car full of models, my daughter, her friend and my niece...teens on no sleep equal a giggle-fest. Landing at Dandelion Mud Pie at Yonge & Fairlawn by 5:50 we rolled 'live' at about 7ish on a myriad of great eco-savvy wares including our own line of 'rescued remnant' handbags.
Jennifer Valentyne was great to hang out with. What a pleasure meeting her... interested in all things eco and wholly man, is she ever good at remembering names.
Hope you'll all check out this store as earth day approaches on the 22 and help stretch the meaning of the day out as long as we all can.

Echoes in the Attic gets "Global" attention

Ok, how great is this...an international company, Global Upholstery who makes most of the office furniture we buy worldwide is off-loading their large remnants to our little cottage industry company. We're always looking for eco-conscious donors to join our current roster Robert Allen Fabrics, Ethan Allen Furniture & Taylor Robyn Originals who all believe in passing on great sample fabric and off-cuts to us to divert the landfill. Once again we've hit the jackpot when we got a call from the manager of Global's Toronto plant back in December '07. We met this January and are astounded by the amount of fabric we now have at our disposal to turn into our handbags & totes. Cool vinyls, industrial strength upholstery weights that lend themselves to durable, long lasting products. The blend of all these company's fabrics are beautiful and our retail prices are obscenely affordable because the savings are passed on to the customer. It's win/win/win down the line.... the environment, our eco-donors, our Canadian business and finally YOU! Enjoy our cool new offerings as they launch in our almost 50 stores across Canada 4 e-tailers and our own webstore this spring.