Time out Shwoppers

I am taking my hands off this dashboard and having a break. Hope you all have super festive seasons and joyful New Years’ surrounded my your nearest and dearest. See you in 2012 Shwopaholics!

Photo Booth Fun at The Big Shwop 2011

Thanks heaps to the fabulous people at Photo Booth Fun for bringing along their side order of good times to The Big Shwop last Sunday. So many great pictures of shwoppers enjoying themselves – what a divine bunch they all are too! All the photo strips are available to view at Photo Booth Fun’s gallery.

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The Big Shwop Wellington 2011 in pictures

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We’ve a bunch of images from The Big Shwop last Sunday in our photo gallery on the website. Man it was a GREAT event! Inga’s going to give us a full report in the next few days. Until then pop over to our gallery and have a squizz.

Giveaway: ecostore bodycare pack

I am getting toooooo  excited about The Big Shwop this Sunday. This Sunday. Oh me, oh my! Wellington ladies pop over here and get you and your pals some tickets pronto!

The Big Shwop is obviously full of incredible clothes. FULL. Its a beautiful thing.  But its also so, so much more than ‘just’ the clothes. What makes shwopping so much fun is its an afternoon complete with MOMO wine to savour, music and sustainability talks,  Trilogy skincare, Peoples Coffee, Kowtow clothing, Photo Booth Fun and ecostore.

Now ecostore have been alongside us, supporting the shwop concept, right from the beginning back in 2008. And they are back with us again, thanking each of our shwopkeeper volunteers with a Healthy Home Starter Kit and gifting every shwopper on the day with some ecostore laundry powder and lovely soap.  So fresh, so clean.

And, to celebrate The Big Shwop and ecostore even more, we have an ecostore body care pack to giveaway, right here on the blog!

It contains everything you need for beautifully healthy skin:

-          Orange & Patchouli Body Wash
-          Orange & Patchouli Hand Wash
-          Light Moisturising Body Lotion
-          Light Moisturising Hand Cream
-          Body Butter

Brilliant. Just leave a comment below stating that you would like to enter, and make sure you like our facebook page. Easy! Entries close Thursday 15 December.

We have stacks of competitions on this week, so make sure you are in to win them all: here, here, and here.

 

Peoples Coffee at The Big Shwop

Peoples Coffee, the fantastic fairtrade roastery in Newtown are right behind The Big Shwop too. And to show it, they are gifting a 200 gram bag of plunger coffee to each of the first 100 people through the door at The Big Shwop this Sunday.

Dont worry if you miss out, because each and every other shwopper, will get a Peoples Coffee free coffee card so they can enjoy a fabulous fairtrade coffee at one of their great cafes, on the house.

Peoples Coffee are ridiculously awesome. I am near enough a groupie. If you haven’t been to their Garrett St or Newtown cafes, here is your chance. You can taste the fairtrade happiness in every sip I swear you can.

So yes, its true – The Big Shwop this Sunday gets even more awesome. Its hard to believe I know. There are goodies coming out the ears of this event, and I’m not even talking about the racks of incredibly awesome clothing up for grabs! Stay tuned, for even more eco-goodies to be announced. Yeeeeow! And if you still haven’t got a ticket -then get over here now and get yourself one!

Giveaway: Kowtow Clothing

Kowtow Clothing is amaaaaaazing.  Fair-trade organic fashion with a difference – kowtow’s collection is understated, clean and unashamedly contemporary in its approach.

But don’t be fooled into thinking that this is a label that just rocks out classic staples. Hell no.   A kowtow piece might seem deceptively simple, but its often multi-functional, and certainly distinctive.  Take for example their rail piece.

One minute a skirt, wrapped around and tied, nek minnit its a top – with the ties turning into sleeves. Oh-so-clever. I have a rail piece in black, and I wear it equally in both iterations and loooove it.

Its imaginative and that’s what makes their stuff so gosh-darn awesome. That and the fact that its incredibly soft organic cotton and everyone in its production has been paid fairly.  Yeah – thats fashion that feels good on the outside and the inside.

Be at The Big Shwop this Sunday 11 December and keep your eyes peeled for Shwop Surprises – brand-new Kowtow clothing pieces peppered throughout The Big Shwop. What a score. Haven’t bought you and your friends some tickets yet? Heck, go do that now!

Gosia has also kindly offered Big Shwop blog readers the chance to win one kowtow rail piece, valued at $145. All you need to do is write a comment below to say you would like to enter and like our facebook page. Easy. Winner will be drawn on Tuesday 13 December.

Giveaway announced: Double pass to The Big Shwop 2011!

Thanks so much to all those who entered the competition to win a double pass to The Big Shwop on Sunday 11 December. Man, there are going to be some great threads and footwear up for grabs!

To make sure it was fair, I used a handy computer application to generate a random number. You can call me a geek, I don’t mind.

So Comment #5 was the lucky winner – congratulations Tracy – you have won two tickets to The Big Shwop on Sunday 11 December. Tracy wrote that she is bringing some unworn wedges to shwop that are a size too small. They sound fabulous. We look forward to seeing you, and your shoes, next weekend!

If you haven’t got your ticket yet for NZ’s largest eco-fashion event, pop over to our website now and buy some!

What about the boys?

The Big Shwop 2011 is for women only and we have had  a few emails asking where the He -Shwop has disappeared to. You are right – we did open it to men for the first time last year but this year we have decided not to. It was exciting to grow the shwop concept a bit wider, definitely. But on the day with just a smattering of guys in amongst hundreds of other shwoppers, it didn’t exactly fly.

So we’ve decided to take our time on the He Shwop and do it right. We have been busy surveying men to see how they shop and use clothes, and will be marketing it a bit differently should we go ahead with another He-Shwop.  So, for now the He-Shwop is on the back burner. Along with another one of our ideas that is developing, The Small Shwop  - clothes swapping for the little ones in your life. We’ll keep you posted on both, I promise!

Photo Booth Fun

Photo Booth Fun is New Zealand’s Photo Booth Company, specialising in bring the joy of retro photo booths back to life. The booth takes four photos and prints them instantly.

Brett and his fantastic Photo Booth will be at The Big Shwop 2011, so you can get snap-happy in the Shwop Interlude.  Woop woop! We are sure it’ll be a cracker jack hit with y’all.

Win a double pass to The Big Shwop 2011!

We are giving away two tickets to The Big Shwop 2011!

Simply leave a comment below telling us about one item you are planning to shwop and why. Did you buy it for a special occasion and have only worn it once? Is it the wrong size and you’ve been awaiting the day it’ll fit? Was it an impulse buy that was never quite right? Have you enjoyed it and are now happy to see it on someone else? It might be something fabulously vintage or perhaps designer, and of course it will be in tiptop condition. Tell us all about it.

Comments close on Wednesday 30 November. We will choose a random comment as the winner. So get commenting people and be in to win!