CSC Review and Giveaway: Nankeen Tote

This contest is now closed! Please check out our contests and giveaways page to see our current giveaways!

I'm a girl (had you already guessed? Hm, brownie points then...) and I'm a girly-girl at that. What does that mean? I love fashion. Bags, shoes, purses, SHOPPING (hence, the blog and blog name) -- you get the picture. Oh, and I also like art -- stick me in a museum and I can almost sound snobbish, I swear. So, really, what could be better to me than something that is both fashionable and a piece of art at the same time?

Presactly. (That would be precisley and exactly combined.)

Check out these awesome bags by Nankeen. The designs fuse 100% cotton, indigo dye, and exquisite patterns using a traditional Chinese art form that dates back to the Song Dynasty. (If all of that sounds too wordy to you, just suffice it to say that the fabric is created through a really cool process that developed a long, long time ago.)

From the website:

The term "blue nankeen" describes hand-dyed fabric of artistic refinement and primitive simplicity, which originated on the Silk Road over three thousand years ago. Hand-carved stencils, originally made from wood but now from heavy paper, are preapered and a mix of soya bean flour and slaked lime is applied through the openings of the stencil onto the 100% cotton fabric. The cotton undergoes an elaborate hand dying process before it is perfected and made into one of our unique designs.

These bags have been featured in both In Style and Lucky Magazine, and are creating quite a buzz among celebrities. I have the Savanna tote, and I just love it. It functions well as a diaper bag, over night bag, or airplane carry-on. I toted it all around Europe this summer as a more fashionable twist on the diaper bag, and I always got lots of compliments. It also fits my laptop quite perfectly, so it frequently doubles as a computer bag. Oh, and I'm ashamed to admit this, but I sort of left a banana in mine for a week or so and had to wash it -- and after following the instructions on the tag, it came out looking as good as new, and still in great shape.

Would you like to own your very own fashionable piece of art? The kind folks over at Nankeen have graciously offered to give one lucky CSC reader the opportunity to win one of their fantastic tote bags. That is as much as a $175 value! All you have to do to win is follow the easy-peasy rules below!

• Visit Nankeen's Tote Section of their website and come back here and tell me which tote you would choose if you won.
  
• Earn extra credit! You may do these for extra entries.
• Blog about this giveaway and send me the link in a separate post.
• Subscribe to my feed and let me know about it in a separate post.
• Stumble my main webpage (not this post please, but www.chicshopperchick.com) and leave me your Stumble Upon name in a separate post.
• Favorite Chic Shopper Chick on Technorati. There is a button in my right sidebar, and let me know about it in a in a separate post.
• Add me to your blog roll. Not just my button in your sidebar, I'd love to be on your blog roll! Let me know about it in a separate post!

That's it! Good luck! Oh, and the official rules and legal jargon are below.

US entries only, winner will be chosen via random.org at the end of the contest. Winners are posted here and on Prizey Fetch, please leave a valid email address or blog address if you'd like to be contacted should you win. Winner has 72 hours to claim their prize. This contests ends at 11:59 pm CST on September 18th, 2008.