The Vintage & Handmade Market 
Rolls of fancy printed paper at Dick Blick. Photo by Clea Hantman.
Perhaps you’ve seen the brightly painted mural as you’ve driven northbound on Interstate 5 past Old Town. It was the backside of Artist & Craftsman Supply (3804 Fourth St., artistcraftsman.com) a two-level, dusty-but-jam-packed art store that has recently crammed its goods into smaller digs in Hillcrest. The new store is actually better organized with a more intuitive flow, despite being a work still in progress. And the funny thing is, it looks like it’s been here for years. Everything is still a bit dingy. But no matter—the stock is fairly impressive with everything you need for oil, acrylic or watercolor painting, printmaking or pastels. It carries plenty of borderline art / craft stuff like sign-painters enamel, chalkboard paints and my very most coveted “craft” item: iDye, a supremely cool fabric dye that makes messy RIT obsolete. A&C carries a bunch of Plastruct (scale-model-building supplies) and has a wonderfully cheesy-looking video on how to airbrush, with your host, the soap opera-esque Kent Lind. There’s also plethora of stuff that fits neither the art nor the craft category and is just plain kitsch, like bacon floss and henna-tattoo kits.
Artist & Craftsman Supply is a chain with about 15 stores nationwide, but it’s run more like a local shop. The massive chain in town is Dick Blick (1844 India St., dickblick.com), which has been in Little Italy as long as I can remember. Like A&C, it’s got everything you need to make art, and then some. Blick also deals in all the accoutrements—the indie art books, the Small Object and Egg Press stationary, the KOLO scrapbooks, the Pantone markers, the Moleskine journals (oh, side note: it has the new line, which are called Moleskine Passions and are journals specifically designed to cull your favorite movies, films, books and recipes into pretty book form—at $20 for a journal, it’s pricey but a great little gift). I’ve always loved the racks of fancy printed papers at Blick but never know what to do with them. It has former San Diegan Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica doc DVD for sale, as well as all the standard Windsor & Newton, Princeton and da Vinci.
Until recently, you braved the big boys for your paint and canvas, but a small art-supply shop has opened in Normal Heights called Visual Art Supply (3524 Adams Ave., visualartsupply.com). Owned by local artist Jason Gould, the shop also hosts exhibits. With a lot less craft and kitsch than the other shops, you can cut right to the chase with the practical goods needed to create future classics—spray paint, oil and acrylics, brushes, canvas, pencils, art boards and stretcher bars and pads. It’s all here and you’ll get one-on-one service from Gould because he’s always here, too.
But I’ve left the best for last to reward those of you who’ve stuck with me. I’ve known at some point I would have to write about my most favorite store and give up my secret source; I tried to hold out longer. The best place to get all things grandma-craft, a sub-genre of the vast crafting world, is the wonderful Salmagundi (7765 Broadway, Lemon Grove, 619-462-0123.) It may be a cliché, but it’s cliché because it’s true: Walking into this store is like walking back in time. Bin after bin of doll and clown heads, boxes of crazy-colored chenille pipe cleaners, drawers full of puff balls and the miniatures—oh my! That’s to say nothing of the jewelry-making supplies. And endless ribbons and eyelet trim. Have you ever wondered where to get classic doilies? Here! Doll wigs? Right here! There are a ton of ’em. Salmagundi also has craft booklets on how to make everything from clown toilet-paper covers to massive manger scenes, and they’re the real thing—they’re actually old, some even still with 15-cent price tags on them (although you’ll pay somewhere around a dollar or two.) It’s dirty. It’s cramped. It’s moth-ball magical. You will not want to tell your friends. You’ll feel like you’ve hit the grandmotherload.
Write to clea@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.
