JournalingDan.com is live!
+ a very stationery filled weekend report.
In this weekend report I: spent time scrapbooking with Martina Calvi, visited an Italian stationery store I had never noticed before, and finally launched JournalingDan.com !
Let’s recap the weekend (Nov 8-10, 2024) →
Friday: Scrapbook Workshop with Martina Calvi
Martina Calvi was in New York promoting the release of her book, The Art of Memory Collecting and hosted several events, one of which was a scrapbooking workshop at Haricot Vert in Willamsburg.
By day, Haricot Vert is a jewelry studio and café, but by night it’s the Craft Nook, a space for craft workshops and private events. The aptly named Dreamworld space is such a lovely environment to work in — tiny pretty things everywhere!
Carefully curated ephemera, vintage Seventeen Magazines, stamps, and stickers from Martina’s Tiny Store were artfully scattered across the tables like a veritable scrapbook supply feast. Journaling/scrapbooking is a hobby I usually indulge in alone, (and that’s the way I like it) but there is something to be said for working with your hands while meeting new people and socializing. The workshop was filled with many like-minded, creative, and kind people, and it’s always fun to meet online mutuals irl. I left having made at least one new friend and one scrapbook spread I asked Martina to sign since her book is currently sold out (congrats)!!! I love this crafty community Martina has created.
Saturday: an Unexpected visit to Pineider’s NYC location
After a morning ice skating session at Bryant Park (where admission is free with your own skates, and the crowd is very chill on Saturday mornings), I decided to wander over to Rockefeller Center to check out the rink (where it is exorbitantly priced even with your own skates, and NOT chill at all), and walked by a store with a beautiful window display on my way…
I used to work at the Paper Source in the basement of Rockefeller Center in 2019 (a little Journaling Dan lore, I’m now a Paper Source ambassador1), but I don’t hang around 30 Rock much these days, and didn’t realize this stationery shop was here! Past the fine leather goods on display, I spied colorful notebooks through the window, so I had to investigate.
As it was only 10 AM, I was the only customer in the shop, and so I received a very thorough introduction to Pineider products from the kind staff (thank you Menna)! The original store was founded in Florence in 17742, and there are now four additional brick and mortar stores in Milan, Rome, London, and New York, all of which opened after 2020 (which explains why I had never seen this shop before).
Pineider is a purveyor of leather goods and fine stationery. All products are made in Italy (materials and labor), and it is indeed a luxury store. I so enjoyed speaking to the staff about my love of stationery, and even shared that I have a stationery TikTok , making an irl connection! Much of my social media work is over DMs and emails, so it was so exciting to pitch in real life3, something I don’t get the chance to do often!
The mark of a true luxury shop is exceptional service, and Pineider is committed to providing this in-store experience. (For this reason I will always opt to visit a luxury shop irl if I’m making a purchase, instead of buying online—service!) It was so fun and informative to have their beautiful products demo’d for me. Gorgeous pens fill glass cases like jewels, fine leather briefcases are on display, I especially loved the notepad holder in collaboration with Poltrona Frau (fellow Italian furniture company), however I am not a lawyer so it’s not really a practical purchase for me4. I did of course, peruse their notebooks of various paper types (lined, unlined), sizes, and leather colors. This Travel Desk is straight out of a Wes Anderson film — complete with 14 pencils, a dip pen, inkwell + 14 pen nibs, writing paper and envelopes in various sizes, all folding neatly into smart and sleek case of Italian leather.
The Travel Desk set is priced at $8,250.005 (for reference in the luxury space, a 2023/2024 Chanel classic 11.12 flap bag retails for $10,800). While it’s not something I’ll go home with any time soon, it’s lovely to know that these wondrous, beautiful, and finely hand-constructed objects are still made and admired. The craftsmanship! I may have gone home with something else from Pineider though…more in a later post or video.
Sunday: JournalingDan.com goes live!
A project I’ve been procrastinating for a while now! I started working on my website over the summer, and after constructing one (complete with blog posts) on Squ*reSp*ace6, decided I didn’t like the template and scrapped it. I started to build a new website using Readymag and fell in love with the freeform design tool—but, Readymag doesn’t have a blog feature, so I was painstakingly hand-building separate pages for each blog post. Enter Substack (as the blog)—and subsequent redesign project to use JournalingDan.com as a landing page to direct people to all of the social medias, resources, and answer FAQs. JournalingDan HQ, if you will, finally went live Sunday morning (yay), marking the end of a very successful stationery weekend!
Shout out to my brother for buying me my domain for Christmas last year, and helping me with the more technical aspects. You can visit the site at the button below. Or here.
It’s true! You can use code JournalingDan10 for 10% off of Papersource.com purchases.
In keeping with the Florentine tradition of stationery and paper making.
I am a very shy person and I never do that, but Pineider was so wonderful I felt totally comfortable!
€5,500.00 in Italy. We covered this in my last newsletter but buying in the country of a product’s origin is so key!
Censoring this for no reason really. It was a perfectly fine experience but I found I wanted more creative freedom!
Love how your website cursor is a Micron pen - so creative and perfectly nerdy.
First time here. I just wanted to share that I love the footnoting. This whole post feels like an analog indulgence in a digital package.