We’re excited to announce we’ve partnered with Uber to offer all guests who are new to Uber a complimentary ride up to $20 using the promo code ARTSTAR
Uber is an iPhone/Android app that lets you tag your location and summon a professional driver to your side within minutes. Once in the car, the driver will take you wherever you need to go. The fare is billed to your card, with no need to tip, so you don’t have to worry about handling cash.
Just click the promo code below and sign up! You’ll be riding in style in no time at all.
We are thrilled to announce that we will be participating in this year’s Crafty Bastards Fair in DC! We have heard so many incredible things about this show over the years and are so thankful to have the opportunity to participate this year for the first time ever!!
For those of you that have not heard of Crafty Bastards, it is very similar to our annual Art Star Craft Bazaar. The show features some of the best makers from across the country, a beer garden, DC’s best food trucks, family friendly activities + more at Union Market in DC on September 28th + 29th from 10-5.
We have partnered with Crafty Bastards and are able to offer all of you some special deals if you plan to make the trip to the show. You won’t be disappointed, we promise!
There is a small fee to enter Crafty Bastards ($5 for the day / $10 Weekend) but we scored you a special deal – a weekend pass for just $8! Because one day will not be enough, believe me! Enter Promo Code Vendor2013 when purchasing a weekend ticket and you will get the discount!
For those of you who want to take a trip to DC for Crafty Bastards, check out the Courtyard Marriott. It’s conveniently located within walking distance of the festival and they are offering a special rate of $126 per night, September 28th and 29th. Book your room today via this link or by calling 1-800-321-2111 and mention the Crafty Bastards room block. If you plan to stay and shop for the weekend, don’t forget to enter discount code VENDOR2013 when buying your tickets to get a special $8 weekend pass!
Speaking of comfort, we know how shopping for great crafts can make one, well, parched! With that in mind, Crafty Bastards for the first time in history will be serving craft beer. In partnership with New Belgium Brewing, there will be an outdoor beer garden featuring several of New Belgium’s amazing Belgian-inspired beers, plus food from local vendors and food trucks. We have a special discount code for you craft beer lovers, a single day pass and 2 beers for $10 when you enter the discount code CRAFTYBEERME when purchasing your ticket online.
We hope to see you there! Be sure to visit our booth and say hi!
Art Star artist, Amy Rice, has put up these 4 Valentines that you can download for FREE!
(click the image above to download)
*Tips: Use a heavier stock white paper and set your printer to the highest quality.*
Also, check out our new Valentines Day Section on our website
& pick up a token of love for your sweetie. Enter Promo Code LoveBird for 15% off your purchase through Feb. 15th!
Here are some quick gift ideas:
stitch up messages of love with these kits by Chez-Sucre-Chez, $12.50-$14.50
"I Like The Way You Smell" print on wood veneer by Spread the Love, $27
You're Sweet letterpress notecard by Sycamore Street Press, $4.50
Well hello there! I’m Julia Walther and I make pottery in Washington, DC.
My journey with pottery began nearly six years ago during my senior year of college when my ceramics professor told us that clay can do anything, you just have to ask it at the right time. That mix of constraints and possibilities is a large part of why I’m so in love with ceramics.
I throw almost all of my work on the wheel using a porcelaneous stoneware that’s a beautiful creamy color when fired. I then spend most of my time decorating those pieces with slips and colored underglazes and carving back through the layers to reveal the bare clay underneath. In the midst of those decorative choices, I’m constantly surprised by threads of ideas that can lead my work down completely new paths.
The cacti decorations have come out of my appreciation of papercutting, and other folk crafts that use abstracted shapes to convey stories and show evidence of the human hand. I also really enjoy carving out the spikes!
After the glaze firing, I’ll choose a few pieces to which I’ll apply metallic luster accents and do another firing specifically for that. So your pot may have had a trial by fire three times before it ends up in your hands.
I work alongside about twenty artists working at Red Dirt Studio, a repurposed firehouse just outside Washington, DC. I love the community we’ve established through weekly seminar meetings and by sharing the building. It’s easy to accidentally isolate yourself as an artist, so I’m glad to have this flow of interesting people around my studio space.
At the same time, this is also the first instance in my career where I’ve had freedom to call nearly all the shots. I want to spend the precious time I have in the studio actually making work and taking care of my body to prevent injuries from overwork. In the last year, that has meant switching to a commercially produced pre-mixed clay, and changing the firing temperature of my work so I can use electric kilns, which tend to be more compatible with an urban environment. Additionally, for the past three years I’ve been throwing standing up, which will hopefully prevent future back issues related to sitting and leaning forward (the worst possible position for your back!).
Pots are special because they can be both a sculpture and a canvas. I’ve found a lot of joy in scribbling on the surfaces of my pots, freezing the movement of a hand in time. I’m excited about creating those juicy points of interest that ask you to turn the pot in your hands to soak up the details while you eat your meal or admire your flowers or engage with the piece in any other way. The last step of making pottery is getting it into the hands of the user, and that’s where a new adventure begins.
This will be my first year at the Art Star Craft Bazaar, and I’m so looking forward to the show! I’d love it if you stopped on by Booth #59 and said hello.
Photo by Mikey Ilagan, Courtesy of Night Market Philly
This local favorite street festival features the best of the city’s ethnic restaurants & gourmet food trucks in different neighborhoods throughout Philly. This Thursday it will be in our hood – NoLibs & we couldn’t be more excited! We will be set up at the festival, along with 9 other local crafters.
Guapos Tacos (one of my personal favorites) Photo by Mikey Ilagan / Courtesy of Night Market Philly
There will be more than 40 vendors offering Philly’s yummiest food for under $5. Yards Brewing Company will also be selling beer. Get FREE beer by signing up for LEVEL UP (this year’s sponsor) online with promo code FOODTRUST or at the event. LEVEL UP will also make a $5 donation to the food trust in your name when you sign up. I think I’ll do just that!
Photo by Mikey Ilagan / Courtesy of Night Market Philly
EVEN BETTER – become a “Friend of Night Market” for $50 & get FREE beer PLUS FREE food, cocktails & more!
My favorite dessert food truck: Sweetbox Cupcakes will be there! Photo by Mikey Ilagan / Courtesy of Night Market Philly
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) defines requirements for designers and developers to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. It defines three levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA. the Art Star website is partially conformant with WCAG 2.1 level AA.Partially conformant means that some parts of the content do not fully conform to the accessibility standard.
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Visitor Address: 599 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106
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Despite our best efforts to ensure accessibility of the Art Star website , there may be some limitations. Below is a description of known limitations, and potential solutions. Please contact us if you observe an issue not listed below.
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Use of the theme color, f27e9a: Color contrast may be impacted because of the use of the color f27e9a in our theme. We are actively reviewing the use of this color across our website. Because it is used in our logo and our brand we are evaluating how to adjust its usage across all print and digital materials. If this issue has impacted you we’d love your feedback so that we can collaborate on making this site the best experience for you as possible. Please contact us at info@artstarphilly.com.
hello! welcome to the home of art star’s new blog. We will be posting artist features, new happenings in the store, events, etc. For the month of April, we will be focused mainly on our upcoming Art Star Craft Bazaar. Erin & I have been hard at work organizing & promoting the show. This year we got in the most applications to date, which is awesome but it made jurying the show very tough. We believe we chose the best of the best. We tried very hard to make sure that there is something for everyone & I think we succeeded in doing that. The complete vendor list is now up on the site – check it out! We will be posting a map of the space w/ booth numbers, along with a corresponding numerical booth number list & alphabetical list, so you can easily find all your favorites. Check back for that soon!
We are also working w/ local artist, Eleanor Grosch, to re-design our website. Eleanor designed this blog for us & the website will look similar. We will have a search engine so it will be easy to find specific items, work by particular artists, etc. We will also be expanding our shop categories & will be able to offer promo codes to our shoppers. We reward our loyal customers w/ a frequent buyer card in the shop & want to offer similar rewards to our online customers. We hope to have this up & running before the holiday season!
Shop Eleanor’s work on our site: ABC’s Print $40Modern Menagerie Mug $12
Thanks to both of my parents, I was born as someone with a compulsion in his blood to visually describe the world to others. There was always a story to tell in a meticulously rendered portrait or a quick accidental brush stroke resembling something familiar.
Playing to my strengths, I was focused by my teachers and honed by my years at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s illustration department. After college and the requisite years that a twenty-something guy spends in a van playing music with his friends, a series of events pointed me towards a job in New York City that evolved over years into a position at a better known apparel catalog as a head fashion photo retoucher/compositor. Though grateful for the experience over those years, there came a point where I realized I needed to spend the majority of my time creating rather than concealing. Although it was mildly rewarding to have a god-like command over reality through Photoshop, it felt unnatural to be largely defined by covering the tracks of others so that it seemed as if no work needed to be done in the first place.
Every night I would come home and scrub dried up pixels from my hands and try to squeeze a few minutes of drawing in before sleep takes over and the alarm resets the day. So when the corporate belts started tightening and heads needed to roll, I opted for the fresh air of Central Massachusetts so someone else could have my desk instead of an unemployment check.
It’s been an exciting year since then, from teaching myself the craft of screen printing to publicly displaying my work for the first time. The din of a midtown office has been replaced by the sounds of migrating birds and the echoes of my past professors/peers while considering my compositions.
In addition to my personal work, there have been the opportunities to produce hand-printed gig posters, music packaging, greeting cards, and entire suites of custom wedding invitations as well as the chance to teach youth printing workshops.
I find inspiration in old friends and new strangers, and in the varying levels of connections we all have with nature, technology and each other. These prints are a blend of vectors and gestures, flora and fauna, and the coping with (and preparing for) equal parts of both happiness and loss. Even though my back is sore and the hours are long, it’s now ink I’m washing off my hands every night and it still feels like I’m getting away with something. Thank you for taking a moment to visit the Art Star blog and I look forward to meeting passers-by at the New Antlers booth #54 at this weekend’s Art Star Craft Bazaar.
New Academy Press, founded by Justin George and Michael Burch, is a collaborative screen printing shop in Pittsburgh, PA. New Academy Press will be vending at our Art Star Craft Bazaar for the first time this year, so we were interested in learning more about them. Check out our interview and come visit them at the bazaar at booth # 110!
Art Star: What will you be selling at the bazaar? New Academy Press: We will be selling screen printed paper goods, such as illustrated prints, postcards, bookmarks, and paper sculptures.
AS: Describe your process. NAP: We take original illustrations and designs and screen print them by hand. Some of our prints are then cut, torn, folded, and glued to create 3-dimensional paper sculptures.
AS: Are you professionally trained? NAP: Justin holds a BFA in printmaking and Michael has one in photography.
AS: Are you able to make your work full time? If not, what do you do for your day job? NAP: We work full time hours for New Academy Press, but to stay afloat we also spend additional time as a bartender and restaurant manager.
AS: Where would you like to see your art/craft business in the next 10 years? NAP: We would like to move our operation out of our living room and into a larger, dedicated workspace allowing us to increase our creative output, and eventually spread our love for art making through teaching classes and workshops.
AS: Any exciting projects in the works? NAP: We are currently working on a suite of new prints for a gallery show in August at the Irma Freeman Center for Imagination here in Pittsburgh.
AS: What are your favorite things about Philadelphia? NAP: So many things! Michael spent a brief time living in Philly, and the things he misses most are the Museum of Art, bicycle lanes and beautiful old buildings. Justin enjoys the Mutter Museum and Ben Franklin.
AS: What are some of the inspirations for your work? NAP: We are heavily influenced by past eras of scientific exploration, design and manufacturing. We love learning about the people who have spent their lives searching for answers and discovering new things about the natural world.
AS: What are you reading / listening to? NAP: That is a very big question. We love talk radio, podcasts and audiobooks that teach us about this crazy universe, but when it comes to getting thing done we like really loud rock music.
Every January, of every year, I start to think about organization and improving our space here at Art Star. This year is no exception but with Clover Market right around the corner, Erin and I have been brainstorming low cost and creative ways to improve our craft show display set up. We also need to think about a display that is light weight enough and that breaks down easily so transport is not a huge hassle. One of my favorite ways to start brainstorming is to go on pinterest. I found some great display options that I thought I’d share here with you. We have an entire board dedicated to Craft Show Display Inspirations. If you are a crafter who needs a display make over like ourselves, please follow us on Pinterest!
pinned from Flickr (Ken Marten)
Since most craft shows use a 10’x10′ display footprint, we try to squeeze in as much merchandise as possible without making the space look cluttered. I’m always on the look out for creative ways to create a variety of heights. I love this rustic table paired with chairs and stools. A light weight, simple, yet creative way to create different shelf levels. I also love the neutral tones of the furniture and bright pops of color from the plants.
pinned from frenchbydesign.blogspot.com
This stack of crates looks great and is super easy! I think we will actually do something like this with our display this year. Plus, you can cart all your merch in the crates. That’s a nice bonus!
from Leah Jackson ceramics and display at Mr. Kitly. Repinned from pinterest – no direct link
I love the clean lines of this simple step shelf. Fits a variety of objects without looking too bulky. Plus, you could store extra merchandise underneath. It would just have to be made to break down and then put together easily for transport. It probably won’t work for our purposes but it is a great idea and would be really nice in a gallery show or shop!
Pinned from www.sfgirlbybay.com via the october issue of inside out magazine.
This is one of my favorites! I love the peg board idea for easily hanging goods and shelves. Looks pretty simple and low cost to create something similar too!
pinned from https://www.etsy.com/shop/SqueezeMyHand
We are always looking for unique ways to display lots of little things, like stationary. I have seen a few crafters use old library card filing cabinets to display cards. Looks really great and keeps the cards organized and easy for people to flip through. I could see a little tag for each type of card (ie birthday, anniversary, etc) labeled on the front.
Pinned from Kellimurray.com
It is very important to incorporate your shop logo into your display. We are always changing this up! Here is a fun DIY for a Batic Dye Wall Hanging. I could see this idea being put to good use as a shop banner.
Welp, those were just a few of my favorite display ideas that I’ve found on Pinterest. I’m going to continue to pin these to two of our boards: Craft Show Display Inspiration and Display Ideas (which is mostly for shop display ideas) but really any of these can be utilized in a retail space, your office or your own home.
Are any of you crafters out there also upgrading your show display? If so, please share your ideas or pins in the comment section! Follow all our boards on Pinterest!
