Souvenirs

In that whole beautiful paper store, Kate's Paperie, I could only find a couple of things to buy. I really tried hard too! Any of their card-making supplies was stuff I can get around here cheaper. There were some beauuuutiful specialty papers but I'm not sure how I would have gotten them home safely. I would have bought a cardboard tube I guess. But that would have been one more thing to handle on the plane. Besides, as most paper crafters know, we love nice paper but we never want to use nice paper because then it will be gone! And what if we don't use it in the most perfect way and it's "wasted"?? I see some heads nodding.

I bought this card so I can learn to make this butterfly with Mizuhiki cord.

This is a card I made a few years ago - about the only time I've worked with Mizuhiki cord. It's paper cord and comes in tons of beautiful colors. You need about 6 hands to do it. Practice, practice, practice. (Our hotel was across the street from Carnegie Hall so that joke was resurrected several times this weekend. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. Ba-rump-bump.)

I also bought these two business card holders, which I would not have even seen if Gretchen had not pointed them out to me. I'll use them - and I'll also figure out how to make them!

Speaking of Gretchen and Kate's Paperie, being a writer, she loves pens. She by-passed the $6500 pen, a fountain pen, encased in Mother of Pearl and Gold, for one of these.

Gretchen, is this the right pen? She bought the pretty blue one, smack dab in the middle of this picture. The best part was, back in the hotel room, she kept giving me a tour of her pen. It came in a velvet sleeve, which was inside a metal tube that made that airtight thwop sound when opened - and that was inside a cardboard box. It was only $17, less the 15% discount I got because I joined Kate's Paperie Rewards Club. All that means is that I was given a one-time 15% discount for joining their mailing list. (Yeah, twist my arm.) But . . . I also get to carry this cool credit card like thing, for what purpose I'm not sure. Oh wait, it says I am to present it when making future purchases. I'm not sure if that applies to online purchases or not. So until my next trip to one of their four New York City locations (or Greenwich, Connecticut) I guess I'll just be happy with the cool factor.

Further proving how much I know about Kate's, did you know that "Kate's was founded by the current owners - Leonard Flax, Chief Executive Officer; and Joe Barreiro, President - who were united by their mutual love of paper"? It was named for Leonard's wife, Kate. So while there is an actual Kate, knowing the store was founded by Lenny & Joey, well, it's just not the same, is it?