#lovinglately

Loving Lately... Shopikon

In my first post, I expressed how I love seeking out independent shops whenever I travelled. From Edinburgh to Budapest, it's awesome to either stumble upon a store or have a local recommend you to somewhere you would have never found in a regular guide book. These shops usually carry prints, accessories, gadgets, clothes and more that are unique to that city's culture or that neighbourhood's personality, and you end up purchasing something that you may not find anywhere else. So when I came across Shopikon a few months ago, it was love at first click! Though the website only currently covers shops in 7 cities (San Francisco, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona & Vienna), they do a great job of making each city easily searchable by breaking it down into both neighbourhoods and categories including home and design, markets, books, clothing and more. So if I'm looking for unique shops in Nolita in New York, I can specifically look up stores in that neighbourhood. Alternatively, if I want to indulge my sweet tooth while in London, I can look up all the candy, chocolate and bakeries in the city in the Food category. 

Shopikon also offers free apps that you can download for each city individually so that you can look up places on the go. I'm going to be in New York in the Fall and hopefully travelling to San Francisco as well, so I can't wait to explore these cities with the apps loaded on my phone!

They recently released this beautiful video to showcase some of their featured shop owners in San Francisco, Barcelona, Vienna and Paris. Be sure to take a look to see what to expect from this awesome service- thanks Shopikon!

Happy June everyone! I hope you enjoyed your weekend and got up to some fun and interesting things, and had good good days all around!

For today's Loving Lately it's my pleasure to introduce you to Papirmasse, the affordable art subscription. My goal in writing this blog is to introduce you to something new and unexpected, and Papirmasse founder Kirsten McCrea (who you may remember from my City of Craft roundup) does just that. Launched in 2008, Papirmasse delivers a monthly dose of inspiration straight to your mailbox, and I'm not talking email. For $5 a month, you receive a real print, which features a work of original art on one side, and a written piece on the other. It's like a beautiful union of creative expression.

Called "a magazine, work of art, and social experiment all rolled into one", Papirmasse wants you to get excited about work well travelled, and open your eyes to fresh landscapes, graffiti inspired portraits, illustrations, short stories, essays and poems and maybe, just maybe, encourage to take down that old poster from university and replace it with something different and unique. Their mandate is to start a "new generation of art collectors by making art accesible for all" which is something I can get behind. Plus, just think of the sweet gallery wall you could put together with all this art sliding under your door every month! Thanks for the awesome service, Kirsten!

Artists clockwise from top: JP King, Terrence Payne & Winnie Truong.