Big Love

Lavender Heart Valentine at Etsy.

Art print cards on display at Glittering Conscience.

Van Dyke brown botanical print tote at Artists & Fleas.

Cyanotype botanical print at Mascot Studio.

My husband Matt is a true romantic. Recently, he created a heart shaped wreath made of dried lavender from our garden, and made a few test prints. They were a hit, so we've expanded the theme for our Valentine's collection of botanical heart note cards, totes and prints for Handmade On Peconic Bay.

Our Lavender Heart note cards are eco-friendly and come in six amorous colors, perfect for Valentine's Day or any heartfelt occasion! They're available at Etsy and Glittering Conscience, 96 West Houston, in NYC. The one of a kind cyanotype lavender and rosemary heart, pictured above, is available at Mascot Studio. Mascot Studio carries a carefully curated selection of Handmade On Peconic Bay prints and note cards, in a tiny jewel box of a shop, tucked away in Manhattan's East Village.

For those of you in the hood, come visit us in Williamsburg, starting this weekend, when Handmade On Peconic Bay make its debut at Artists & Fleas. Shop our entire hand crafted Valentine's collection of art print note cards, one of a kind cyanotype and Van Dyke brown canvas totes and prints, plus a whole lot more!

Lovebirds

The term lovebirds was used as early as the 16th century to describe a couple with a tendency for PDA. Lovebirds and doves remain popular symbols in Western culture, representing love and fidelity. A bird is also slang, used by blokes looking upon the fairer sex with a slightly more carnal eye. With that in mind here are some avian inspired goodies for the season of love.

A very feminine amethyst and pink tourmaline partridge charm necklace and dangling partridge charm ring make cute love tokens for your bird on Valentine’s Day.

In nature lovebirds are a small and social species of parrots, noted for human-like affection for their mate. Lovebirds sleep sitting side-by-side and turn their faces in towards each other, like the pair on this note card by Handmade On Peconic Bay.

Cynthia Rybakoff sterling silver Love Bird Necklace, $48.00 on Supermarket and Shopflick. Mrs. Partridge sterling silver charm ring, $28.00, on Supermarket. Love Birds note card by Cynthia Rybakoff for Handmade on Peconic Bay, $3.50 at Supermarket and Etsy.

Heartfelt

I’ve just launched my Spring 2010 card collection for Handmade On Peconic Bay, my husband’s line of unique art prints and paper goods. The un-retouched photo of a spectacular sunset over Peconic Bay, used in my Sunset Love design above, was created with Valentine’s Day in mind but is perfect for sending a heartfelt note to someone special on any occasion.

New this season are botanical blank note cards in a range of hothouse colors like Chive Flowers, shown above in Iris. Based on a scan of dried and pressed edible wild flowers from Matt’s Long Island chef’s garden, I’ve taken some liberties with modern software in creating a 2D graphic photo illustration of the original. We print and fold our cards by hand, using a high end Epson ink jet printer with archival inks on fine quality Strathmore paper. Each card comes with an eco-friendly recycled paper envelope and contains a little bit of our Peconic Bay.

Cynthia Rybakoff for Handmade On Peconic Bay Valentine’s Day cards, $3.50 each at Supermarket and Etsy.

11th Hour Gifts

The holidays are such a busy time around our studio that I always end up dashing out at the last minute to buy gifts, as the occasion arises. I haven’t even sent my holiday cards yet, and so they will probably end up becoming a New Year’s greeting by default. By the third week of December, I’m already so over Christmas anyway, and happily at work on my Valentine’s Day and Spring collections, so a New Year’s card makes perfect sense to me. Our Earth colored duotone Nest & Eggs cards will be a perfect way to greet 2010, and the set of 8 blank note cards tied with a satin ribbon also makes a wonderful last minute hostess gift.


Speaking of hostess gifts, we've had a full calendar this season, so I came up with a chic and easy gift idea that would be appropriate for any type of holiday gathering. I filled mini Kraft shopping totes with a bunch of goodies, including a packet of our Handmade On Peconic Bay cards, some yummy Li-Lac Chocolates and a decorative but not necessarily holiday themed ornament from Anthropologie, and topped it all off with some brown tissue and an iridescent peacock colored ribbon bow.


We celebrate Hanukkah as well as Christmas, and fortunately for us it’s a very forgiving holiday. My husband Matt and I love the fact that we have 8 days and nights to find last minute gifts for each other, and we shop right up until the 8th day, which happens to be today! Matt is always happy with the gift of chocolate, and Li-Lac specializes in cute holiday themed items. Golden chocolate coins are a tradition in our house, but this year my favorite choco-gifts were Li-Lac's dark chocolate Christmas Moose and Hanukkah themed chocolate pops tied with blue and white raffia.

Handmade On Peconic Bay Nest & Egg note cards, $18 for a set of 8 at Supermarket and Etsy.

Save Face

Cynthia Rybakoff Facebook fans save 15% this holiday season in my Supermarket shop on any item, including unique holiday jewels, great gifts under $50 and my handmade holiday cards. First, if you aren't already, become a fan. Then message me when you place your Supermarket order: "Hi Cynthia, I’m a Facebook fan!". Be sure to include your full name and email address in the message, exactly as it appears on your PayPal payment and I’ll immediately refund you 15% of the purchase price, including the shipping, when I receive your order. It’s that simple! This special offer is good through December 15th.

Happy Holidaze,

P.S Shipping is free thru December 6th on holiday cards!

http://cynthiarybakoff.supermarkethq.com

Blue Is Universal

Matt and I just launched our new mini-collection of Handmade On Peconic Bay Holiday art print cards, which was challenging because we don’t love the crass commercialization of the holiday season. Today is Black Friday, the late Autumn festival of competitive discount shopping, in case you missed the Christmas-crazed housewife in the Target television ads during your Thanksgiving reruns. And yet the Winter Solstice is inevitable in the northern hemisphere, so we participate in our own possibly pagan way.

For instance, when designing our holiday greeting cards, lengths were taken to avoid referencing candy canes and Christmas trees, and certain colors were immediately eliminated, including stocking red and forest green. Instead, we created a palette of subtle organic colors with names like Ocean, Earth, Marine, Grass, and Soil. In order to avoid images that seemed too kitsch, we axed the Christmas wreaths, angels, reindeer and Santa Claus caps in favor of botanicals, bird’s nests and dancing snowflakes (well, the snowflakes are kind of kitsch, but in a cool way). Then, in a perhaps misguided attempt to fit in and not completely alienate the folks who prefer that nostalgic holiday feeling, some traditional festive slogans were added in a vintage font.

One thing I think we can all agree on is that blue is perhaps a more universal color to represent the myriad of multicultural Winter festivals that take place this time of year. We happen to celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas, so a few years ago Matt brought home a snow white fiber optic techno-tree with filament branches that twinkle with the cool blue glow of pre-programmed energy saving LED's. We’ll decorate it with a variety of white abstract ornaments and have ourselves a merry little Festivus.

Handmade On Peconic Bay Holiday Cards, $18.00 for a set of 8 cards with coordinating envelopes, are available online at Supermarket and Etsy, and Mascot Studio in NYC.

Harvest Home

My husband, Matt Shapoff loves to cook. He picked up the habit, a few years into our marriage, when I suggested he expand his cooking repertoire from deep fried potatoes into other food groups. I’m somewhat of an amateur chef myself, having sweated away a few thousand hours in professional kitchens as a low level chef de partie, including a mediocre Hamptons fish palace and a charmingly upscale Swedish bistro. I even spent a Summer season being abused by a grumpy chef at the old Amagansett Farmer’s Market, who disliked my dicing skills intensely but taught me how to make a wonderful cold ziti pasta salad marinated in roasted garlic oil and flecked with fresh dill.

Most nights Matt and I prefer to stay home and throw together tasty meals made with local seasonal ingredients readily available at NYC’s many farmers markets and specialty food shops. In late summer, and throughout the fall, we enjoy the bounty of the harvest, marveling at the sweetness of the corn and the abundance of good tomatoes after months of sensory deprivation. We also keep a good supply of fresh herbs on hand from Matt’s Southampton chef’s garden, which grows a little bigger each year. Herbs do better than vegetables in the sandy bay soil and salty air and we end up with copious amounts of parsley, basil, rosemary, sage, lavender and chives, most of which gets pressed and dried for Matt’s Cyanotype and Van Dyke Brown botanical prints.

This past summer, in between cooking experiments with Native American ingredients and the re-working of an old recipe for squash, corn and beans we named Pilgrim Stew in honor of the first Thanksgiving, Matt created a new Cyanotype series using only pressed herbs and edible flowers from his chef’s garden. We mounted the prints in one of a kind upcycled frames assembled from reclaimed wood paneling complete with original beadboard details and peeling paint. Choosing modern vintage frames made from weathered wood seemed a perfect compliment to the pale cyan botanicals, which give the appearance of being faded from the sun with age. A selection from Matt’s Chef’s Garden Series is now available at Mascot Studio in New York’s East Village.

Handmade On Peconic Bay Cyanotype Chef’s Garden Series by Matt Shapoff, on cream colored Rives paper in Antique White frames, $175-$250 at Mascot Studio.

The Wee Feather

Every feather has a story. Or at least a previous owner. Our striped feathers came from the wings of an unfortunate creature that found it’s final resting place on the quiet pebbled shores of Peconic Bay. Thank you little bird.

Tiny little feathers were carefully washed and dried to be used in a series of Cyanotype print gift cards for Spruce, a fab little shop in Memphis I recently visited and wrote about. If you’re in the area, be sure to check out the rest of our Handmade On Peconic Bay gift cards, plus all the other wonderful goodies Selena McAdams has carefully curated.

Spruce, 5040 Sanderlin Avenue, Memphis, TN 901-682-5513, www.spruceshop.com

Spruce Up

Just got back from a visit to Memphis, Tennessee, where I spent some time eating barbecue and checking out the local style. There was an abundance of great shops and galleries with exciting work by local artisans, but my fave was a super cute home decor and gift shop called Spruce.

Interior designer and Spruce owner, Selena McAdams writes "My love for design is ever changing, always evolving. It is an honor to be invited into a person’s house to help make it a home. My best compliment to date is a client telling me she awoke at 3am to sit in her newly designed living room while the rest of her house slept."

Spruce shop pictures via Facebook

Spruce features a well edited collection of contemporary furniture, modern lighting, hip personal accessories, art, & eco-friendly products for your home and office. And in just a few weeks you'll find our Handmade On Peconic Bay cyanotype gift cards in the merchandise mix as well!

For more information about Spruce and Selena's interior design services, please check out her website and get the latest updates on the Spruce Facebook page.

Jewel Box Gallery

Announcing Handmade On Peconic Bay limited edition Cyanotye and Van Dyke Brown prints, by Matt Shapoff, at Mascot Studio, a jewel box of a gallery located in Manhattan's East Village. Proprietor and artist, Peter McCaffrey hand picks eye catching art and objects for his impeccably styled shop, with a decidedly cabinet of curiosities aesthetic, and will also whip up the perfect custom frame for your own artwork. An influential resource for fine art and decorative objects since 1982, Mascot studio is really the prototype for the kind of design made popoular today by West Elm and other mass market retailers.


Handmade On Peconic Bay Cyanotype and Van Dyke Brown prints $25-$145, at Mascot Studio 328 East 9th Street, NYC, 212-228-9090.

A Tangled Web

It’s been a problem, telling folks where they can find me online. I am based at 8 sites I actively use and update. LOOK at my portfolio site, Cynthia Rybakoff, where items are mostly available by inquiry. SHOP at my boutique at Supermarket, showcasing my newest jewelry and gift items. READ my blog if you love jewelry. FOLLOW me on Twitter, where inspiration is instantaneous.

My new web card is a neat solution to the inconvenience of having to awkwardly write out all this information on the back of my business card, so proper in it’s 3.5 x 2 format delineating name, title, address, phone/fax and email with nary a pixel of space for Web 2.0!

What URL's didn’t make the cut? My husband Matt Shapoff’s Handmade On Peconic Bay shops on Etsy and Supermarket, where you can COLLECT affordable indie art by a rising talent. My Facebook group, which anyone can JOIN for news, product updates and invitations to sale events (my sample sales are a huge bargain, if you know when and where!) and Flickr, where you can PERUSE the flotsam and jetsam of my career in tidy photo gallery format.

Love Notes

It seems that pink is having another Spring moment, as it does every few years or so in the not so unrelated worlds of fashion and design. For Valentine's day, I've created a botanical photo illustration in geranium pink on smooth bright white stock and paired it with a grey textured envelope.

Love Notes, a blank note card, is part of our Handmade On Peconic Bay paper collection I design and produce with my husband Matt Shapoff, who is a photographer and printmaker. Our flagship store is a humble Etsy shop, where we sell my art print cards and Matt's Cyanotype prints and cards.

Handmade On Peconic Bay paper goods are also sold at The Parrish Art Musuem gift shop, and will be available on Supermarket in the near future. Be sure to check out Matt's stunning "Peconic Curiosities" series on CynthiaRybakoff.com, which is currently available wholesale only. If you have a shop and are interested in picking up the collection, contact me via Etsy or my website.

Handmade On Peconic Bay "Love Notes" Valentine's card, $3.50 on etsy.com.