Collection: Picnic Collection

A handcrafted leather collection of items you can pack and take with you on your bike, or on a long hike, when you head to the beach, or lake, or even camping!

When I was little my family split our summers between our home outside Scotsburn, Nova Scotia and beautiful Prince Edward Island, where we basically lived at the beach. As such, our mom had a little travel case of plastic yellow cups. I loved these cups. These cups inspired my entire leather Picnic Collection, fuelling me to create my own leather version, but there were other inspirations too. 

I lived in “Incredible India” for about two years, and came home more obsessed than ever with handicrafts, starting a small traveling handicrafts shop: The Rangoli Closet. After returning home from my leatherwork apprenticeship in Mexico, I discovered a box of stainless steel dinnerware that I had shipped home from India, and intended for another project. I immediately got to work designing and creating leather cases for the cups, and also for the lunch boxes, sometimes known as “tiffins”. From here I decided to create a different type of picnic basket - a picnic basket you can bike with, carry on a long hike, or take camping. The Picnic Purse is the heart of my Picnic Line collection.

In my increasing search for items to help me travel hands free, I designed a set of blanket straps as a convenient way to take my (deflated) floatie to the lake via bicycle. You could use these “blanket straps” to carry many different items on a picnic/hike/camping or to the beach/lake - from your floatie or picnic blanket, to a beach towel (or a couple beach towels if you roll them together), a sleeping bag, or even a yoga mat!

Most cases in the Picnic Line come with the stainless steel dinnerware, unless otherwise noted. If you would like to increase the number of cups or plates in your set please email Laura at skunksnroses@gmail.com to see if it is possible.

The Picnic Line is primarily handcrafted with bark-tanned leather, handmade in small batches and sourced and brought home personally from Chiapas, Mexico (for more information please visit About Leather). The collection is inspired by Nova Scotian wildlife, and this motif carries throughout the entire line, with inlays of mussel shells, seaweed, and hand carved and tooled wildlife images.