I'm Lynda Lye, a designer from tiny tropical garden-city island-country, Singapore, educated in design and the arts in Chicago, United States. Since a child, I have always been inspired by the wonderful childhood fantasies of bizarre fairytale adventure stories set in magical forests, resplendent with quirky images and wonderful illustrations of talking monsters, animals and trees. (The Wind In The Willows, Alice In Wonderland etc.) So in 2005, I started my lifestyle label, littleoddforest, as an outlet for my passion for pervasive creativity, based on that inspiration, and it so happened along the way that out of all my current range of creations, my bag designs became our best sellers. I'm currently working on including more home decor items, hopefully also a new jewelry accessories range, and of course, to continue growing my bags collection, and hopefully I can spread the love of colors and quirkiness all over the world.

I try to use only fabrics and environment-friendly synthetic materials for my bag designs. I love nature and animals, and avoid using non-animal friendly materials (leather etc.) -- littleoddforest's inspiration is derived from nature and all those things that fairytales, pretty dreams, and fun adventures are made of, so making a bag out of something that was once part of animal just goes against all of that. I'm really a kid-adult, with an eclectic quirky style, loves colors and will die without it, so my target audience are women/girls like myself, mainly 13 yrs - 45 yrs, who understand/support independent/small businesses, and appreciate handmade, fair-wage labor made goods. My bags are distinctive through my mixing and matching and use of colors - print fabrics with colored cotton denim/twill/corduroy fabrics - and also keeping away from the metallic hardware look, with more emphasis of handcrafted wooden handles and candy colored accessories.

I started my business, Forestprints Design, late 2004, because I have always wanted to do something on my own, which I could take pride in and truly love doing. I believe in being passtionate about my work, and not just go along with the flow. I love all design in general, and after graduating with my degree in Visual Communications, worked as a designer in graphic design and advertising firms. However, the work I did was never satisfying, and constantly giving in to clients' demands for design changes I did not agree with, made my resently - that kind of did it for me in the end, and I quited to stated on creating something of my own.

littleoddforest supports fair-wage labor and the home cottage industries, tries to be eco-friendly as much as possible, and supports the WWF and World Vision. Other than a small workshop studio in my home in Singapore, I have, with the help from my friends from the Philippines, set up a littleoddforest sweatshop-free workshop and living space there, for otherwise jobless and/or homeless, poverty-stricken women whom we have taught and trained sewing skills as a form of livelihood and provided fair wages. littleoddforest tries as much as possible to support only small businesses and individual crafters for all other non-sewn products that are not made by myself and my helpers. And I am still the only one making all the plushies and felt/fabric brooches, with the occassional help from my dearest mummy

I am not formally trained in fashion design and pattern cutting, which are required for apparel and bags etc. And because I choose to work only with small businesses and home cottage industries, almost all of the time, I have to be the one giving detailed how-to instructions, instead of having an in-house professional to rely upon. So without anyone to help look over my shoulder, I gave a wrong measurement once, and even though the entire pattern looked so wrong and monstrous, no one bothered to ask or let me know about it and they just went ahead and cut up all my last roll of vintage fabrics! And I still had to pay them for the work done. That was truly a hard lesson to learn. After that, other than going through a huge stack of fashion design textbooks borrowed from my friends and the library, I am now extra careful with my design prototypes and patterns, and triple-check to make sure that they all work out fine.

My greatest achievement would have to be the setting up of our very own home cottage workshop in the Philippines. I can now produce at smaller quantities than required from factories, and also support fair-wage labor at the same time. We also expanded the space sometime ago, to include living quarters for some of my sewers who were homeless, and seeing their lives improve and their children being able to go to school has definitely made all the money spent flying back and forth, sweat and tears worth it!