raw materials

join us at the la street food fest

2010-02-07T01:55:51Z

On Saturday, Feburary 13, you can find us at the first LA Street Food Fest along with tons of food trucks with tasty food and cool wares from some of the best local designers and artists. We’re sponsoring the “DIY Den,” where you’ll be able to make your own love notes and Valentines… for free!

We’ll have a bunch of great Stabilo markers and pencils, along with a host of other supplies so you can finely craft the perfect message for that special someone that you left at home, or who ditched you at our table while they dove into the food from another truck. Maybe if you declare your devotion to Chef Ludo by hand-made card, he’ll add a little extra love to your fried chicken!

krylon clear choice art scholarship

2010-02-06T05:52:14Z

The deadline for the Second Annual Krylon Clear Choice Art Scholarship competition is fast approaching. Scholarship applications are due by March 1, 2010. The program will award $12,300 in money, grants and art supplies to future artists and their schools, including five $1,000 scholarships and five $500 grants for winners’ high schools.

The scholarship program is open to high school seniors and college freshman and sophomores in the United States and Canada. Students are required to submit a portfolio, artist’s statement, letter of recommendation and transcripts. In addition to the $1,000 scholarships, the five recipients will receive a package of Krylon artist sprays and adhesives for use in their work worth approximately $70. Each of the high schools from which they have graduated from will be given a package worth $250, from which numerous art students can benefit. Ten additional students and their high schools will receive product gift packages as well.

To download the application form, to see more about the 2009 scholarship winners or for more information about the Krylon Clear Choice Art Scholarships, visit the Krylon Clear Choice Scholarship Program.

new product: moleskine folio notebooks

2010-02-04T21:13:19Z

Moleskine Folio Notebooks are huge: these aren’t the notebook for your back pocket! They are just like their little siblings, and feature a hardbound cover, elastic closure, cloth ribbon placeholder and an expandable accordion back pocket. Each book contains off-white, acid-free, FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified paper in a durable thread-bound binding. The A4 format books measure 8¼” x 11¾” and the A3 format books measure 11¾” x 16½”. We have both the plain and lined varieties in stock right now.

You can bid on one autographed by celebrities backstage during rehearsals and show day of the 52nd Annual GRAMMY® Awards Telecast, or you can come by and check out the pristine ones we have in the store. Get one before the end of February and we’ll throw in a free Stabilo Bionic Pen. (And check back for more on those new pens soon!)

new product: pre-made frames

2010-01-30T01:03:11Z

We finally found a supplier of pre-made frames with a quality we were happy with, and it turns out they were practically in our back yard. Framatic is a Southern California company that makes pre-made frames including several lines of “seamless” frames. We’ve started out with a small selection of frames in black and white from their Modern line, as well as some larger Superlight poster frames. These are an affordable alternative to the custom framing services that we offer, and work well with the pre-cut mats from Logan that we stock.

For the month of February, get a free pre-cut mat with the purchase of any pre-made frame. We’ll be working to build out our selection of pre-made frames and mats in the months to come.

new product: winsor & newton oilbars

2010-01-22T20:26:22Z

We have had a few of the Ivory Black Oilbars from Winsor & Newton in stock for a while now, as well as a set of Slim Oilbars, but we’ve recently added more colors of the original size of Oilbars.

Here’s what they have to say about them:

Artists’ Oilbar is an artists’ quality oil colour in stick form, enabling you to paint and draw freely and directly onto your surface. It is a unique medium because it provides the artist with the buttery consistency and richness of oil colour together with the freedom and directness of pastels or charcoal.

Oilbar is fundamentally different from oil pastels or oil crayons due to its unique formulation. Each of the 35 colours in the range are produced by combining artists’ quality pigments with linseed oil, into which are blended specially selected waxes. To provide further flexibility, Oilbar sticks are available in three different sizes.

Winsor & Newtown Oilbars are 20% off every day. If we don’t already have a color that you’re looking for, let us know! We’ll be working to expand our selection to include the whole line.

new product: pilot parallel pens & ink

2010-01-20T01:24:34Z

The Pilot Parallel Pen is a breakthrough in calligraphy pen design. The pen features a nib that consists of two parallel plates, allowing the writer to produce lines sharper than existing calligraphy pens. Ink cartridges can be switched in the pen to create gradated color lines and mixed colors. Available in four different nib sizes, each set comes with a Parallel pen, one black and one red ink cartridge, a converter to clean the pen and a nib cleaner. Refills in many colors are also available. Get your own Parallel Pen for 20% off for a limited time.

new product: marker and pencil holders

2010-01-20T01:22:01Z

Made by a local FIDM graduate, these art marker and pencil holders are perfect for carrying around the Prismacolor markers and pencils that you stocked up on during our 40% off sale. The marker holder holds 49 markers and is $19.99, and the pencil holder holds 38 pencils and is $15.99.

checkout gripe #1

2010-01-07T00:00:00Z

This will be the first in an ongoing series of posts that will be of interest to almost nobody, but will let me blow off steam about Checkout, the point-of-sale software we use.

When a new purchase order is opened (what is used to track inventory orders and receipt), it presents this friendly list of suppliers. You’ll have to take my word for the fact that navigating this list is, for our setup, brutally slow. (Consider the overall slowness of Checkout my biggest gripe, but I can’t really show it to you via a screenshot.)

But take a look at those “Needed Products” values. Look useless? It absolutely is. You can set up what you want your minimum stock for each product to be, and that and your inventory drives the numbers in this list. But if you have an extra product of one SKU, that will balance out a product under the minimum of another SKU. The more products you source from a supplier, the more useless this number becomes.

Seem like a small gripe? It is. I’ll try to come up with something better next time. (Want a big gripe? You can’t import or export the data in purchase orders. I’m in the middle of entering a purchase order of about 250 SKUs right now. Something I have to do every week. And just working with purchase orders makes the rest of Checkout go slower. Nothing fuels rage like having to spend an hour hand-entering data that would take a second to import.)

parking validation

2009-12-19T05:07:21Z

We now validate parking for the Athena Parking garage across the street from the store (at 415 S Main St). We’ll sticker your parking slip for 1.5 hours free parking if you spend more than $30 at the store.

new product: artist canvas folds

2009-12-13T16:58:56Z

The new Artist Canvas Folds from Art Alternatives are premium grade, natural, unbleached artist canvas, and ready for priming with either oil or acrylic primers. They are excellent for painting with oils, acrylics or alkyds. These two-yard folds of canvas are perfect for students or professionals requiring just enough canvas in easy-to-transport packaging. The folds come in three weights (7oz, 10oz, and 12oz) and two sizes (52″ or 72″ by 2 yards), and are 20% off every day.