Pride in the City

The pandemic has changed so many "real life" events in 2020, but New York City always celebrates PRIDE in style during the month of June, and this year is no exception. The big official gathering will be a Virtual Rally on June 26th from 5-8pm via FaceBook and YouTube; but at The Ink Pad we're starting a bit early, with a card version! It's on TIP Blog today! ♥

Rainbow Tag

I never seem to get tired of using Michelle Ward's exclusive line of stencils and stamps for The Ink Pad. Somehow new combinations of images, formats and color palettes keep popping into my head, a bit like an artistic game of Clue, lol. For example, how about: NYC Tourist Stencil with the Skyline Stamp Set, in pastel rainbow shades, on a giant tag?! :) Hop over to The Ink Pad Blog to read all about it!

"I Want to...

...Wake Up in the City That Never Sleeps!" as Frank Sinatra sang so memorably. At the moment, New York is not quite the hustling, bustling metropolis we all love and grumble about in equal measure. I definitely never expected to miss traffic or a crowded commuter train! In the two months which have elapsed since the last time I was at The Ink Pad in the new Chelsea location, I've even found myself feeling nostalgic for things that usually make me complain the most. But I know we will be back there again,  hopefully before too long. In the meantime I'm making projects that send good vibes to my favorite town! Check out this one on The Ink Pad Blog today!

City Thoughts

New York City has been on my mind a lot lately, for perhaps obvious reasons! I like using my Michelle Ward Exclusive New York themed products from The Ink Pad at any time, but they seem especially useful right now, to make a hopeful card. All of the stamps on this card come from Michelle Ward's Manhattan Map Stamp Set, and the star-centered stencil is from Michelle's Manhole Covers II Stencils and Masks set.

I made the pink butterfly wings and the creamy butterscotch "argyle" background using two of Sally Lynn MacDonald's Sweet Nature Shapes Gel Press Petite set. One of my favorite ways to use the Gel Press Petites is to stick them on an acrylic block, cover them with paint or ink, and "stamp" them. Sometimes I just stamp a few and cut them out... like the two layers of butterfly wings, stamped in Charming Pink VersaFine Clair ink. Other times I stamp them over and over to make a pattern, as for the argyle, which used Scattered Straw Distress Oxide. I used the fully inked diamond mini to make the dark areas of the pattern and stamped a second time with just the residual ink to get the lighter shade.

I stamped the Manhattan Map on a large manilla tag. On a fussy-cut manhole-stenciled gel print I added the Places in New York,  NY Postmark and Building, stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black. I stamped the Building a second time, on the offcut of that manilla tag, and cut it out, so I could mount it on foam tape on top of the butterfly wings, and above the "shadow" building, after I assembled the little collage of items that make up the finished card. 

I hope you'll be inspired to make a card or journal page based on your favorite city, and if that town happens to be New York, Michelle Ward and The Ink Pad definitely have you covered!!! ♥

I (heart) NY!

This seems like an especially good time to send some extra love to our favorite city, so here's a bold and elegant New York Card featuring Hero Arts' Deco in the City Stamp, from their 6" Bold Prints line; and the I (heart) NY from Michelle Ward's Skyline Stamp Set. Lots more on The Ink Pad Blog!

Since this gorgeous stamp had Never Seen Ink, I'm linking up with the Stay Crafty With Hero Challenge! ♥

New York, New York

A city so nice, as the saying goes, they named it twice! Everyday Explorers Co. has only named this stamp set once, "Passport: New York" but it is equally fab and very useful for planners, travel journals, or (as in this case) cards! Oh and it's available at The Ink Pad of course! Read more about it on The Ink Pad Blog!

Stencil Sunday: Rainbow Skyline

I love New York. That is both a statement of fact and a reference to one of The Ink Pad's exclusive Michelle Ward stamps, which I've used to make a card as colorful as the city itself. Hop over to The Ink Pad Blog to see the whole card and hear the whole story!

I'll be doing some lettering at The Ink Pad's Seventh Avenue store today from 1-4pm, why not stop by try out the brand new Karin Metallic Markers... I guarantee you will looooooooove them as much as I do! ♥

Nostalgic NYC

It's Stencil Sunday on The Ink Pad Blog where I've got a card with a bit of a glamorous 1930's vibe thanks to two beautiful Michelle Ward Stencils, Fishtail Pattern and NYC Manhole Covers II. For the record, I think this may be the first time ever that anyone has typed a sentence which has the words, "glamorous" and "manhole cover" so that's pretty exciting too, right?! :)

By the way, the stencil is inspired by actual New York City manhole covers, some of which really are cool looking! This is what is awesome about Michelle Ward, whereas we might not even notice manhole covers are as we walkover them, she thinks, "Those are beautiful and they would make awesome stencils and stamps!" That's definitely my kinda designer! ♥

I'll Take Manhattan

To paraphrase Sir Mix-a-Lot, "I like big cards, and I cannot lie"! Case in point the A9 that's featured on The Ink Pad Blog for Stencil Sunday. It features not one, not two, but three of Michelle Ward's beautiful New York City themed stencils made exclusively for The Ink Pad. Prefer stamps to stencils? She's designed some of them too. You should probably check it out! ♥

So Nice They named It Twice!

New York, New York, that is! Home of The Ink Pad where you will find many treasures, including a whole line of exclusive stamps and stencils designed by Michelle Ward. The Downtown NYC Map Stencil is one of my favorites and I've used it on this card, the entirety of which you can see in my Stencil Sunday feature on the Ink Pad Blog today! ♥

new york, new york (so good they named it TWICE!)

hi guys, it's my day on the eyelet outlet blog again, and i've got a pair of fun NYC themed items to show off! yes, i know, you would think that living in new jersey, and spending a fair amount of time manhattan, that at some point i'd stop being excited about new york themed art supplies... but it hasn't happened yet, lol! my latest obsession? eyelet outlet's new york city washi tape, which I've used as the sentiment on this city-centric card:

can you spot the other EO goodies on this card? yep, there's an uber-cool taxi cab brad and it's sitting on a strip of road washi. anything else? howsabout the cloud washi, glitter black and glitter silver tapes?! because there are soooooo many cool uses for tape, and one of my favorites is to apply it neatly in strips to scraps of cardstock and make custom patterned papers! in this case i've used the clouds as a background and the two glitter tapes have been diecut into streets full of buildings. fun, right? and really... except for the "new york" banner this idea works for ANY city... 

i realize that not everyone is quite as "maximalist" in design as I am, so here's a more pared down version of the same idea. i've teamed the taxi cab brad and road tape again... (well, let's face it, they are perfect together!) ...and added a little bit of music note washi, too. 

this time i've stamped the cityscape and used a heart brad to visualize one of my all-time favorite sentiments. 

because yes, I do... and always will... *love* new york! ♥♥♥

SOS197: lost and found

can you guess what we want to see for this week's challenge at shopping our stash? it's called "lost and found" which should give you a pretty big hint: we're looking for creations that feature something you lost track of for a bit... whether it was actually lost, or perhaps you just forgot about it? i've got a bit of each on my tag, which i'll esplain in a minute.

ok, i realize as i start typing this, there really aren't any official papercrafting products in this one, unless you count the (admittedly awesome) dymo label sentiment, the tiny mrs. grossman's heart sticker, and the basic grey patterned paper i used as background for the photo. lots of vintage and thrifting goodies tho: sheet music and chinese text from two seriously elderly falling-apart volumes found at book sales; little buildings cut from a new york tourist brochure; a real (tho expired, obviously) metrocard and o'course my "FOUND" items: plastic slide mount of which i have nearly an entire box (yahoo!) and that funny little heart pin (jeff ripped the back off it for me) which was in a box of treasure i'd started to think got lost or donated when we moved! oh yeah and a fab tag from amy tsuruta, who rocks, as i'm sure you already know! ♥

the thing i thought i'd lost is the little blue plastic heart pin; but actually i thought i'd lost my whole entire tin of little pins acquired at various garage sales over the years. worse yet, i knew that was in the same box as my buckle collection, a bunch of game pieces and cards, lots of weird funky earrings and other dimensional "treasures" i haven't seen since we've moved. i'd love to say i suddenly found it now because i've been doing a major organizing project in the basement, but in fact, it was a fluke discovered whilst looking for something else entirely for lovely husband jeff! the thing i'd forgotten i owned was the cool half full box of plastic slide mounts i got at goodwill, i think, quite some time ago. those guys turned up while linda was here, and we had fun playing with them.

the layout of my tag is based on miss leslie's latest crooked stamper sketch challenge (CSSC #2 to be precise); though admittedly i've done a pretty a loose take on that fab sketch:

i've been doing a lot of mixed media backgrounds lately, so it felt really cool to be making an old school collage this time. oof i nearly forgot to mention my favorite bit of this, which is the tiny picture of the queensboro bridge-- it's from an illustrated children's encyclopedia-- which is the absolute perfect size for the slide mount. even more exciting is the fact that the book in question has LOTS of illustrations about this size, so yeah, you'll be seeing this trick again for sure! :)

the other sos designers have been busy finding treasures, too-- you really need to hop on over and see the fabulous things they've made! ♥

from norway (& nj!) with love

recently i had the very great pleasure of having my lovely friend linda brun come to stay for 10 entire days of art-making, treat-eating, shopping, cooking, journaling, crocheting... in other words, pretty much the best STAYCATION ever! :)

cool chicks onna train
(photo by linda brun)

during that time we made several excursions into new york city: we had dim sum at golden unicorn, took in the feast for the eye that is the rubin museum, and even cruised a couple of favorite thriftshops on 17th street... (angel street and housingworks chelsea) ...tho alas, we have no amazing finds to report from the latter.

sesame balls... my favorite!

on a different day we met up with massachussetts' sweetest and most talented freestyle crafter sandi taloumis, and together we all rode the subway a few short stops out of manhattan to visit the brooklyn art library, home of the massively inspirational sketchbook project*! obviously we had to do a bit of art shopping, as well, at blick and the ink pad. in the face of such overwhelming fun, i somehow managed to take NO PHOTOS AT ALL, so i'm posting (with permission) this one linda took of the three of us (plus 2 extraneous passers-by, lol!) that i really love:

in front of the ink pad
(this pic and lots more awesome ones by linda brun; go check out her instagram account!!!)

the main purpose and event of linda's visit, though, was what we came to call "art camp". we set up a big long folding table in the living room, loaded it with supplies-- paint, stencils, stamps, pens, pigments, vintage paper, magazines, modelling paste, and pretty much anything else that struck our fancy-- and spent the majority of our free time playing and experimenting in our journals. you can see linda's work on her blog-- my favorites are the series of "found faces" that she made over the course of several days; i posted some of my things on instagram at the time, but here are a couple more pages, both finished...

craft paint squirted right out of the bottle, tinted modeling paste thru circles stencil, lots of outlining, plus hand drawn and shadowed bricks. the latter were linda's idea, she thought the word looked like graffiti--this is why it's great to make art in the same room with other people, i would not have thought of bricks! :)

...and unfinished:

modeling paste through a fern stencil, shadowed with stabilo pencil on top of random ink spotches; i'm not in love with this one, but i wasn't really going for a finished product, just playin' with my stuff! 

finally, to cap the whole visit off in style, linda made fabulous new multi-media journals for herself, sandi and i:

we are going to all three work in each of them in turns, via the mail, so that at the end we will each have a book with work by all of us in it. i'm thinking we'll all need to meet up again next year to review the end result! well, ladies? who's in?

♥♥♥♥♥

*the sketchbook project-- both as an idea and an exhibition--is AWESOME; however one thing you might not realize until you get there (at least, we didn't!) is that you won't be allowed to just randomly pull books off the shelves and flick through them, each item must be requested electronically and will be brought to you by one of the librarians. for maximum enjoyment, it's a great idea beforehand to cruise the digital library, create a free account, and make yourself a little queue of examples you'd like to see in person! meanwhile, the brooklyn art library is a short, safe walk from the L train at bedford ave, through a neighborhood with plenty of shops, restaurants and other fun places to visit! well worth the trip! ♥

best wednesday ever?

yeah, i'm pretty sure it was. yesterday, i mean. thanks to a couple of lovely crafty friends who let me hang out with them in new york city! the ladies in question are linda brun (who's from norway, here on vacation) and sandi taloumis (who, like me, came in on the train, just for the day). between the three of us we put a sizable dent in the city's stock of art supplies and thrift shop merchandise! here we are at the ink pad, with many thanks to anna for taking A LOT of photos before we managed one without me looking like i was having some sort of weird facial seizure:

 

don't believe me? here's a picture of the three of us on 14th street: sandi has a lovely smile... linda has a lovely smile... lauren looks like she just swallowed a bug. yeah. that's usually what i look like in pictures, lol!

but back to the fun stuff! here's linda outside the ink pad, which has a really cool board that miss hayden (who works there) made:

we also went to ♥SEVEN♥ thrift shops, which might be a personal best for me. in case you're planning a trip to new york and have only a limited amount of time, i will share one of my favorite thrifting secrets with you: on east 23rd street there are SIX charity shops within about three blocks of each other; not to mention a cool art shop*, the subway** and a post office (just in case you buy something HEAVY, lol!) walking east on twenty third street, from lexington avenue, they are:

housing works 

157 east 23rd street 

(betw lexington and 3rd ave)

salvation army 

208 east 23rd street 

 (betw 3rd and 2nd ave)

cauz for pawz 

212 east 23rd street  

 (same block)

goodwill 

220 east 23rd street  

 (same block)

city opera 

222 east 23rd street  

 (same block)

vintage thrift (east) 

286 third avenue

(around the corner from the others... betw 23rd and 22nd streets)

we went to all of the above, except vintage; but on the way there from the ink pad we hit another branch of housing works and angel street thrift shop, both on 17th street, near the rubin museum.*** we found some cool stuff at various venues, though no one made a "big score"; however, i think we could all have come away completely empty-handed and still have enjoyed the "thrill of the hunt" so to speak, each other's company, and some really good exercise!

eventually, we dropped sandi off at grand central. linda met up with her lovely hubby at penn station. and i got on a train back to new jersey. well, a girl's gotta crochet somewhere, right?! :)

i was sad for the day to end, but somewhat assuaged by the fact that linda and i are taking this awesome class with nathalie kalbach on sunday; whilst sandi and i have signed up for two classes with dina wakley in september!

good bye for now, darlings! see you soon!

♥♥♥

 *da vinci artist supply, 23rd st and lexington ave
**the 4 or 6 train at 23rd st and park ave; the n or r is a block further west at broadway
***which is utterly amazing if you like asian art at all. which i do! we didn't stop there this time, however. :)

new york, bound

last week i showed off my favorite photos from our recent new york trip; now would you like to see what i've done with them? (hint: i made a travel book! surprise, lol!)

i didn't think i was going to make a travel book this time. honestly! i mean, i do go to new york fairly often, and i keep the "treasures" i acquire in my ordinary journal AND my new york theme book; so it sort of seems like at some point these things would become a bit redundant. but being as stephanie was here, and we were actually going to spend most of the week in the city, within about 15 minutes of arriving, i had labelled this an official vacation... for which one obviously needs to make a souvenir book. (obviously!) the fact that i hadn't made journaling pages in advance suddenly became an advantage when i realized it meant that i could just collect up all the bits and bobs, then use my bind-it-all to make a "real" book out of everything when i got home. so i did. :)

it also meant i could do some fun, silly things, like make a custom "title page" out of my favorite picture, with lots of different fonts:

i emailed myself some quick notes each night, so i'd remember everything. when i got home i used my vintage typewriter (and stickers and a few photos) to record our itinerary from each day:

so what else is inside? a little bit of everything, really. menus from our favorite restaurants--with some teeny tiny pics attached because, bein' cheap, i like to fill THE WHOLE PAGE of photo paper!

there are postcards and handouts and more photos (these are from the high line):

maps (both commercial and the google kind), plus the fortune from my favorite little temple in chinatown:

tickets and leaflets and museum brochures and even more photos:

i love that the bind-it-all lets you incorporate material of all different sizes... i like that you can see little hints of what's coming up next around the smaller pieces:

i especially like having a mix of wide and narrow, long and short, single items and collages.

i made sure to attach a few fun photos "upside down" to the backs of pages, too; thus when you flip the page you can see both "planes" at the same time.

i deliberately attached some of my photos to transparency scraps so they would "float" in the book. but this see-through page is actually the trimmed down vellum bag in which my purchases from kinokuniya were packed:

yes, i saved the chopstick wrappers from the sushi place. but only because they were especially pretty chopstick wrappers, lol!

finally, another big photo for the back cover, with a little side view of all the pages in the book:

want to know my favorite thing about this project?! i get to KEEP IT! (yay!) ♥

top ten* reasons last week ♥ROCKED♥ in a big, big way!

the amazing stephanie

met me in new york for a few days of serious revelry. which is already hard to beat on the fun scale!!!

new york's architecture

never, ever, fails to amaze me; a fact of which anyone who's seen my instagram feed is surely already aware, lol. grand central was only a few blocks from our hotel... (the affinia shelburne) ...as was the chrysler building, and the empire state. i've seen most of these iconic landmarks on a regular basis quite frequently for the past few years, yet i still never tire of 'em. i kind of hope i never do. :)

street art

this life-sized wall painting was on ludlow street, just below delancey. it's not a banksy, though there was one quite nearby. thematically, this sums up the week, but we saw so many amazing examples all over the city, it was almost overwhelming. in a GOOD way!

dim sum... and other extreme yumminess

this particular day featured lunch at the golden unicorn on east broadway, in chinatown, but basically every single meal we ate was glorious! from burgers and frozen custard at shake shack, to upscale indian fusion at devi, to the killer view and awesome goodies at the museum of art and design's restaurant, robert, we ate like queens the entire time!

front row

the museum of the chinese in america is a little gem, generally, and this exhibit was one of our faves. this luscious anna sui dress would even make ME consider giving up jeans. 

all the submarines of the united states of america

chris burden has all five floors of the new museum to himself at the moment, and has really made good use of the space, with large-scale, thought-provoking, conceptual installations like this. 

photo ops EVERYWHERE you look

about the only thing better than stopping 1,000 times to take pictures en route to any new york city venue, is traveling with someone who never thinks that's weird or inconvenient. just one of the MANY things to love about stephanie!!! ♥

xenobia bailey

the artist-in-residence at the museum of art and design on the day we visited was the amazingly talented, inspiring and friendly xenobia; i suspect she makes most of the people she meets to want to crochet colorful, whimsical creations... or just watch while she does!

shopportunities galore!

two big favorites: the strand bookstore for funky used books and periodicals; kinokuniya for washi tape, maps, tiny neko cats, and other fabulous japanese goodies

the subway 

yeah, it can be confusing, not to mention crowded; but you can pretty much get to anywhere in the city from anywhere in the city, for $2.50. and there's some rather awesome art to see on the trip, such as this gorgeous lichtenstein mural near the 42nd street shuttle.

crochet, crochet, crochet!

being on vacation means extra time to play with yarn; and being in new york city means you're only a short journey to union square's awesome lion brand yarn studio. so let's go!!!

daniel craig

although we did not encounter him-- not even cinematically-- being in the same city at the same time totally counts. totally.

the art of the brick

nathan sawaya's amazing LEGO art, at discovery times square. one of the best art events i've ever attended. and yes, i'm completely serious. if you're going to be in new york before january 5th, you MUST go... with or without children! you can thank me later.

*or, strictly speaking, as it turns out, top thirteen reasons. what can i say, it was a REALLY good week; i probably could have done a "top 50", so just be glad i'm this restrained, darlings! :)