A sister act you'll want to support

Earn brownie points by shopping at Creative Handicrafts, a fair trade arts and crafts store in Bandra. Every garment, accessory, toy or stationery item you buy will help a group of enterprising slum women, who make them to eke out a living

Earn brownie points by shopping at Creative Handicrafts, a fair trade arts and crafts store in Bandra. Every garment, accessory, toy or stationery item you buy will help a group of enterprising slum women, who make them to eke out a living

The next time you go shopping on Hill Road, make sure you drop by a tiny boutique called Creative Handicrafts, where you are bound to find a range of delightfully quirky products.

Au00a0spanish nun's labour of love
The story goes that more than two decades ago Spanish nun Isabel Martin, who did missionary work in the slums of Andheri (E), was approached by poor and uneducated women from abusive families to help them become financially independent.
u00a0

Humpty Dumpty stuffed toy, a stuffed squirrel, Santa pencil pouch

Martin encouraged them by counselling their families and providing childcare facilities to their kids. Two of those slum women went on to start their own sewing classes and soon, the Andheri workshop started operations in 1984. Here, women made handmade garments and stuffed toys.
u00a0
Since then, the number of women employed at the workshop has swollen up to 300 and the products they make are sold at the retail outlet at Bandra that opened seven years ago.
u00a0
Their products are exported to Spain and the US, thanks to word-of-mouth publicity. Though the nun retired several years ago, her labour of love is very much alive and is now overseen by a a trust.

One product, many uses
Check out the stuffed snake-shaped puppets (Rs 115) that will spook your pals or double-up as cushions. The velvet Santa pencil pouches (Rs 60) can brighten up even the dullest of days. Their range of garments includes western wear such as short dresses, skirts, scarves, cute tops and capris as well as ethnic wear such as churidars and salwar-kurtas.

We liked their Warli kurtas (Rs 260), which boast of simple yet catchy Warli designs. Warli is a recurrent motif in their designs, thanks to the simple designs that are easy to reproduce. You will spot it on their mobile pouches, greeting cards and folders too.

They also have cute embroidered folders, made from block-printed sari fabric (Rs 125). Their pillow dolls (Rs 120) are innovative and can pass off for a roly-poly doll by day and morph into a pillow at night (as soon as you loosen the lace and remove the doll face).

If you are sick of the same ol' stuffed toy puppies and kittens, check out their stuffed squirrels, rabbits and octopuses (Rs 125). Their embroidered cushion covers (Rs 360) have two patterns: one depicts scenes from life in a village with actual cloth dolls depicting men ploughing and women busy on the grinding stone and the other represents the life of the Kolis with the blue sea as a backdrop, colourful boats and Koli women in their typical sarees. If you are given to crying at the drop of a hat, feel better about it and plumb for their cloth tissue box, shaped like a sofa (Rs 60).

Get set for a treasure hunt
Don't go by the small size and instead dig deeper to spot the unique products, which are at times hidden underneath plain stuff. Their USP is definitely the reasonable pricing; nothing exceeds Rs 500. Happy shopping, we say.

AT: Bandra Homeland Co-operative Society, Hill Road, Bandra (West).
CALL: 65727015. Open from 11 am to 8 pm, closed on Sundays.