3/50 Project: RubyDog's Art House

We've posted before about the 3/50 Project to support local businesses, and ready or not, the Christmas shopping season is coming. It's an opportunity to support local stores, including ones that you might not necessarily have a reason to shop at normally. We'd love it if Green Earth Organics' members would send us information about their favourite local, independently-owned stores and restaurants. If you would like to share your hidden gem, please email info@greenearthorganics.com with about 200 to 300 words, including their address and their website if applicable, and let us know what name you'd like on the article. We deliver as far out as North Vancouver, Abbotsford, Maple Ridge, and all points in between, so please feel free to share your favourites outside of Vancouver too.

RubyDog's Art House by Melissa

RubyDog's Art House is, hands down, my favourite store. I was very sad when it had to close in June 2008 due to rent increases in its former location, and I was ecstatic when the owner, Leanne, found a new location this fall and re-opened: 623 Kingsway (near Fraser and Kingsway), Vancouver.

RubyDog's is a unique art supply store. Their focus is altered art, collage, mixed media, visual journaling, and assemblage. They carry an astonishing and diverse selection of art materials, including vintage ephemera, antique papers, imaginative 3-D items, journal, collage, and ATC kits, artistic rubber stamps, inspiring books and magazines, and much, much, much more. My favourite new discovery is making pendants out of dominoes. They sell single dominoes and a lot of fun collage materials that can be glued to them, and Leanne can guide you as to what other materials can be used. You can make beautiful works of art - or, at least, my mother really liked the one I made for her.

If you've never heard of Artist Trading Cards - 2.5" by 3.5" cards of original art - then RubyDog's is the place to discover this fun way of sharing your creative side with other artists. In fact, going into the Art House is an easy way of discovering all kinds of new art forms and new local artists. And the owner, Leanne, is incredibly friendly and helpful.

If you have a creative person on your Christmas list, RubyDog's is the place to find inspiration and things they can't get anywhere else. RubyDog's also hosts workshops, and they have gift certificates.