Local Venues: Boys Fort

This holiday season, inkstrand will start branching out to sell in a few shops around Portland. One of those shops was a pop-up shop in downtown Portland called "Boys Fort". I was fortunate to stop by the grand opening a few weeks ago and took a bunch of pictures.


The cozy entry way. Seriously, I wish my living room looked like that.


Some of my jewelry in awesome display cases. Love it.


The Boys Fort logo on the resident typewriter and journals by my crafty friend at WriteOwlDesigns.


More fabulous merchandise by other Boys Fort artists.


One of the handcrafted display walls and the salvage truck/display case.

The place looks so wonderful! If you live in Portland or plan to visit Portland during the holidays - definitely stop in. There are a number of local artists and galleries involved in helping to create this guy-topia (although I even found things I would covet) and all the work is wonderful and surprisingly affordable. Plus I love the vintage/steampunky feel to the decor - much of it courtesy of Old Portland Hardware (a lovely shop in SE Portland full of vintage goodies and the owner is a fan of Steampunk as well).

One of the challenges of working with a men's themed shop was creating more men's jewelry. So I've added a new item to my line - cufflinks. Here are two designs you can find currently at Boys Fort and will be soon added to my shop online.


Gear inset cufflinks and custom initial cufflinks.

Well that's all for now.

Happy Crafting!

News and local venues

Well, it's been a busy September and October is looking equally busy. I had quite a good response to my line after Mixer Match and then had a wonderful time at the Belmont Street Fair. I'm still a little behind updating the online shop with new items, but rest assured there will be new things listed soon.

On to the wonderful news - you'll be seeing our jewelry in shops around Portland soon. In fact, you can buy select items from the new line at Cargo in NW Portland (the Pearl district) as of this week! And soon you'll be able to find us at Mag-Big in SE and Boys Fort and Flora in SW/Downtown Portland.

I'll be posting updates about local venues as they become available and you can check the Shop Inkstrand tag for details and locations.

And lastly, October brings my favorite yearly event - Steamcon!
This year's theme is 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and I'm working on some new costumes. I considered selling at Steamcon this year, but I enjoy going to the event more than anything else, so I've decided to be an attendee instead.

However, I did participate in the festivities by including a little promo for the guest goodie bags. I spent all weekend making these little cards - the design is based on an old apothecary label - but it was worth it. I snapped this photo before sending them all off to a packing party.


It might not look like a lot, but 3,171 cards is a lot of printing and cutting.

So that's the update. There is so much going on and the holiday season isn't even here yet. Hopefully all this activity won't keep me away from the blog so long this time. Plus, I have a few tutorials, reviews and some giveaways in the works - so stay tuned.

Happy Crafting!