Jeffrey has good advice!

Stair runners were the hot topic in yesterday’s “Ask Jeffrey” column in the National Post. Fisher gave a homeowner some great ideas to jazz up their hardwood staircase, including one of our floral stair runners we designed in collaboration with the talented Shelley Kirsch. Read the article here.

Cover Magazine Ad Campaign Photo Shoot

#13 Platinum - Art Day Collection

Earlier this week, we held a photo shoot at the Klaus by Nienkamper showroom in downtown Toronto. The space was bright, open and displayed pieces from Klaus' modern furniture collection as props on the set. The photos were taken by commercial photographer, Chris Harrison, and will be developed into a full-page ad in the next issue of Cover, a magazine for modern carpet & textile for interiors. The ad will feature one of the carpets from our Art Day Collection and will promote Fiorza Tappeti, a one of a kind rug exhibit during Milan's Design Week, April 17-22. We have been invited as part of a select group to showcase two of our carpets at the show, which is promising to revolutionize the contemporary carpet design world. The showroom exhibit is taking place in the Brera Design District, an area brimming with avant-garde galleries and fresh new designers. If you are planning on attending Milan Design Week this Spring, be sure to stop by the Galleria Giacomo Manounkian Noseda to see our beautiful designs on display!

Klaus by Nienkamper

300 King St. E.

Toronto, On, Canada

M5A 1K4

Monday - Friday 10 am - 6 pm

Saturday 11 am - 5 pm

Forza Tappeti

Piazza San Simpliciano, 2

Angolo Piazza Paolo VI

20121 Milan

10 am- 8 pm

tx: style design challenge 2012

The CMI team has been busy creating new designs and corresponding inspiration boards for the tx: style design challenge 2012. Mannington Commercial, sponsors of the contest, are looking for new inspirational patterns and are developing the winning design into a full carpet collection! They are also sending the lucky finalists on a trip to New York, Chicago or Milan. Help the team by voting for your favourite designs at tx:style. The finalists are chosen based on online comments and your votes, so vote often! There will also be a panel of judges so feel free to give us some positive feedback. New designs are being added daily!

You have until February 19th to get your votes in!

Ange

Illumbra

Lofty

Inscribed

Undulate

Diffuse

Carol

Tossed Salad

Kaleidoscope Ripples

Blackboard

Whimsical Movement

Effervescence

Tiffany

Lacy

Sheer

Flutter

Blaze

Intertwined

Leah

Gold Leaf

Sparkle

Elizabeth

Spanish Tile

Confetti

Damask Graffiti

Donna

Golden Stamp

Retro Landscape

DOMOTEX 2012: Custom Design in, Mass Production out! Hanover Jan 14-17

DOMOTEX was a great success for Creative Matters Inc., with approximately 45,000 visitors at the 4-day trade show; we had a large amount of exposure. We were one of 1,371 exhibitors showcasing designs from around the world and because more than half the guests were from abroad, we had an opportunity to present our products to a global audience. The main theme of the event for 2012 was customized living so we had no problem fitting in! It was fabulous to see flooring and textile play such a significant role in interior decorating: carpets have become works of art and are making statements on their own! We’re back in the office and have recovered from jet lag – fresh ideas inspired by the international trends seen at DOMOTEX should be expected in our next collection!

Souk Deluxe - Selected Carpet Design

Souk Deluxe is a juried exhibition showcasing high-quality hand-made carpets from companies presenting modern designs. Selected carpets are displayed at Domotex Germany for buyers and industry members to view so they are able to experience the latest innovative products and techniques that designers are experimenting with. This is a great way to get an overview of the carpet industry and see the latest trends. If you are heading to Domotex Germany 2012 this year, be sure to check out the Souk Deluxe show.

Creative Matters was accepted and is exhibiting Art Day Carpets Hand-Knotted #74 and Kilim #111.

Art Day VI

The year is off to a great start for the CMI team with our first Art Day of 2012! It was all about creating designs with light and shadow. With transparent found objects we experimented with lighting to cast interesting shadows onto waiting blank pages. We then traced the shadows with different mediums: thick & thin markers, acrylic paint, crayons, india ink, oil pastels, chalk...etc. The resulting patterns have already been scanned into our computers and are ready for our designers to develop them into new and original carpet designs.

(Art Day VI instructions by Tiffany)

We had our first art day in January 2011 and after this first session we set a goal for ourselves to design 500 new carpet concepts by the end of the year. We are proud to announce that on December 23, 2011 we designed "Concept 500" which means we reached our goal! We are very proud of our 500 concepts and are excited to have fresh designs to add to our archive. Some of these ideas became our new line that we will be launching in Germany at Domotex next week.

(The CMI team hard at work creating)

(Maddy creating some interesting shapes & shadows)

We have decided this year to set a goal to create another 500 new concepts by the end of the year. We did it last year and are more than confident we will make it again this year!

To view more photos please visit our Facebook Gallery for Art Day VI!
To view our "art day" line see our website www.creativemattersinc.com

Happy Holidays!

Wishing everyone a happy holiday, and a prosperous and peaceful 2012. From The Creative Matters Team - Carol, Donna, Abbey, Ange, Ana, Elizabeth, Erin, Jane, Julie, Leah, Maddy, Tiffany.

(photos from the children at Hamro Ghar - Goodweave Home for rescued children, after "Art Day")

Art Day Excitement!

As the year closes we are getting ready for the holidays and preparing for the Domotex exhibition in Germany in January 2012. The new "Art Day" collection is well under way in Kathmandu.

(103 - Graffiti on the loom)

(123 - Platinum on the loom and almost completed)

(13 - Platinum on the loom)

We are excited about the new line, a preview was seen in New York in September to great enthusiasm. We look forward to seeing some of the rugs in larger format.

We wish everyone a healthy and prosperous 2012.

Cover Modern Carpets & Textiles For Interiors Winter 2011

We were delighted to be featured in COVER Magazine "Creative thinking" (Winter 2011). Katie Loux really caught the spirit of Creative Matters in the article - the excitement of our team, our passion for textiles and specifically rug design.

Donna and I have been building Creative Matters for almost 25 years now, and it's wonderful to get this recognition in one of our very favourite magazines.

Creative Matters is happy to donate a rug for a silent auction on behalf of Vitanova

The Vitanova Foundation is a Woodbridge-based, non-profit corporation chartered by the Province of Ontario and a registered Canadian charity that provides a range of addiction-related services to individuals, families, and the community at large, all at no charge---services that include education, prevention, assessment, treatment, rehabilitation, shelter and aftercare.

For the past 23 years "Friends of Vitanova" have organized a special event and silent auction to help raise money for their Foundation. The 24th Annual Event is being held on Sunday November 27, 2011 at Da Vinci Banquet Hall (5732 Hwy. #7 Woodbridge, Ontario, Canada). Reception & Antipasto Bar 4:00pm and Dinner 5:00pm (Cash Bar). This celebration requires a reservation to attend, to purchase tickets please visit the Vitanova Foundation (Tickets: Adults $100.00, Children (12 & under) $40.00).

(photo of our donated carpet)

We chose this charity as we like to support our local community as well as our international ones (as we do through our partnerships with GoodWeave and Label Step in Nepal and India). In all cases we understand the need to help families through difficult times.

The rug we have donated is 4' x 6' handknotted custom one-of-a- kind carpet. For this we specified wool and viscose, and had it made in India. The viscose pattern shimmers like silk and was inspired by curvilinear metal railings with a playful chain link border. The sheen of the viscose offers a sparkling element next to the richness of the wool.

Don't miss this opportunity to support a great cause, enjoy the "Friends of Vitanova" event on November 27th and bid on some wonderful donations.

Textile Museum of Canada Fundraising - ReDesign 2011

(The CMI team with the winning bidder of our chair)

What a great night! The Gladstone Hotel was packed with makers, designers, and supporters of the textile museum. We were delighted to be involved with our chair "From the Ground Up". When we got our chair from the textile museum, it's simplicity and unusual orange red/black combination had us start where we always do - from the ground up. We designed a custom carpet with gradation of black through to the orange/red tone and finished the rug with a single "button" a raised puff of wool. The chair has been painted so the legs blend into the carpet for one seamless entity.

(Our finished chair photo Credit: Jill Kitchener)

The silent auction had the room filled with people hovering near their favourite chairs (we were delighted that a number of people bid on ours!) and by 8:45 the bell rang and the chairs all found new homes. Here is the link to see some of the photos of other chairs that had been redesigned - from cutting up the chair into pieces and stringing it on the wall like a necklace to romantic writing embroidered on the seat ("I will always love you") and lovely crocheted fabric attached to the back of the chair.

(Abbey with the chair she won, "Sketch for Quilt Number Seven" by Grant Heaps)

(Maddy with the chair she won, "The Component Parts of a Lazy Chair" by Georgia Dickie)

It was a great triumph. We were delighted to be invited and wish the Textile Museum of Canada ongoing success.

Another tradeshow this month, this time it's Toronto's IIDEX

We took part in the 2011 IIDEX/NEOCON tradeshow in Toronto this year. Our focus was on the custom design aspect of our business and also taking the opportunity to educate our visitors on the hand making process of carpets. We are happy to announce the show was a success! We mingled with a lot of incredible people and are very proud of our lovely booth.

A little tour of our booth - We had two large flatscreen tvs displaying a lengthy slideshow of the many custom rugs we've produced over the years. In front of our booth you can see our lovely ottoman covered in CMI samples.

The inside walls tell the story of how our rugs are made, from the dying of the yarns to the hand-weaving or hand-tufting process. We created large "unfinished" samples to hang on our walls, they were a big hit! Some of our visitors liked them so much they wanted to buy them.

We also had some tools on display used by the weavers in India and Nepal, Carol and Donna brought them back from their last trip in August.

And of course we had many drawers filled with beautiful samples to show off to our visitors.

September has been a busy but very rewarding month with the participation in the New York International Carpet Show and IIDEX. We were delighted by the feedback we received from both shows and are looking forward to DOMOTEX 2012 in a couple of months.

Our first time at the New York International Carpet Show!

This september we participated at the New York International Carpet Show for the first time and it was a great success. Our new "Art Day" line was received very enthusiastically from our established retailers as well as new retailers. Our customers loved the description of the design process we took with the art day line and the carpets that have been produced are exceptional (Every 6 weeks at CMI we close the office for a few hours and we all create art, the design team, the book keeper and the receptionist too! The art day line is a culmination of all the efforts, reinterpreted by the design team into our newest collection).

We have exhibited two types of carpet - the hand knotted cut pile wool and silk, and the flat woven kilim's in wool and metallic yarn.

Art Day with the Kids in Kathmandu, Nepal!

Every year Creative Matters hosts an art day with the children at Hamro Ghar in Nepal. These children have been rescued from the weaving looms in Nepal, a part of GoodWeave's initiative to end child labour and offer education. CMI has supported GoodWeave for a number of years but we also like to give directly to those children who have been taken advantage of. We do what we know well, support through creativity.

Once again, as every year, the children are enthusiastic hard workers who show tremendous creativity and artistry.

We began with life drawing, children painting each other in active poses including Krishna!

Then we moved on to a lesson on colour mixing as many had never used paint before. Then they painted large paintings of their favourite animals and their favourite holiday.

An obvious favoured holiday is the upcoming one "Dashain", where huge bamboo swings are built for the children to play on... the paintings caught the excitement of that holiday. As for animals...giraffes, tigers, elephants, peacocks, cats and birds.

We love to support GoodWeave, they are doing good work in Nepal by saving children from labour, giving them an education and generally improving the lives of the weavers. Donna and I were delighted to have the opportunity once again to spend time with these wonderful children. We thank the staff at Hamro Ghar who were so supportive.

- Carol Sebert