As many of you wait with bated breath, we have been badgering away at the new Artstore website like there’s no tomorrow; writing fabulous descriptions of paint sets, taking dazzling photographs of watercolour brushes and meticulously weighing everything around us (including our keys, coffee mugs and playing the “who can press exactly 1kg” game).

We’ve been a mess of blood, sweat and tears making this new website and you’ll be glad to know it’s almost there.

Many of you have enquired at our Queen Street store to find out when your favourite art supplies might be available to buy online, and we thank you for waiting so patiently whilst we try and make sure everything you want or need will be featured.  In the entire Artstore stock range, there are in excess of 40,000 product lines, and this is constantly growing, making our jobs ever more difficult to make sure all of the best art materials make it on to the new website.

Of course, there’s not just the products we have to worry about.  There’s hundreds of pages of technical jargon, terms and conditions and useful info that need written, so in between writing our extensive descriptions of watercolour pencils we like to take a break and write about other stuff for a while.

As some of you may have noticed through our Facebook and Twitter feeds, we’ve been having some exciting meetings with our developers, talks with our designers and PowerPoint presentations with our suppliers, tallying up to hundreds of cups of tea, perhaps thousands of bourbons and simply loads of great ideas.

We like to think of the whole website creation as like the tortoise and the hare: “slow and steady wins the race”.  We’re not exactly sure who we’re racing against, but we certainly want to make sure that we do things right.  Making sure we do things right means taking our time, double-checking, even triple-checking (depends on who has checked and double-checked before you), so that you can have the most productive shopping experience possible.

Anyway, down to the nitty gritty.  The website will be launching soon.  We can’t say exactly when but we know it will be soon.  If you want to know when then get your name on our mailing list, follow us on Twitter or befriend us on Facebook, because how else are we going to tell you where the launch party is?

We want to know everything about your degree show, from the rickety wooden walls to the tiniest bit of precisely positioned fluff in your installation.  We want to know how we can help you by stocking the right products, in the right colours, in the right amounts and at the right price, ensuring you have as little to worry about as possible during those… let’s say… “stressful” times.

If you’re after a bit of  varnish for finishing off those paintings or gum strip, filler and rollers to make sure your degree show space is immaculate, there’s no excuse for not making a proper go of it!

If you need anything special such as 1000 polystyrene balls or more framing tape than you can shake a stick at, please tell us!  This gives us extra time to make sure your requirements for degree show are met as soon as possible, leaving you loads of time to figure out how you’re going to spruce up that artist’s statement or organise your research

Remember, you’re not just limited to what’s in stock at our shop at the Glasgow School of Art.  There’s plenty more stock in our Queen Street store, with plenty of calming voices to ease your degree show woes and get you back on track to making the exhibition of a lifetime.

Either contact us through the contact form on this website, our Facebook, our Twitter, or just pop in to one of our shops and talk to the staff about what you need, when you need it, and anything else we can do to make your whole degree show process run like clockwork.

But now you’re a little older, and you’re trying to get the love and affection of more than just your mum. Well we’ve got the secret: the same hand made effect still works!

If you want to woo that special someone this valentine’s Day, we’ve got all the red and pink card, love heart cutters, glitter and PVA Glue you’ll need to make them go “awww”.  They might even stick it on their fridge door.

For those who doubt they’ve still got the artistic talent they used to impress Mum and Dad with when they were 7, we’ve also got the wrapping for that “saw this and thought of you” present.  We may even have the present too!  What says “I love you” better than this ”I Love You” silver sweetie?  (Hand made cards, obviously, but it’s a close second).

As ever, the artstore team are all soppy romatics at heart, and always happy to help you make your loved ones happy this Valentine’s.  All you need to do is ask.

But hurry, the artstore shop at the Artschool will be closed in line with Glasgow School of Art term: 12th December 2009 to 5th January 2010.

But don’t worry if you’re working straight through: artstore on Queen St will be opening late right up till Christmas!  Check out the opening times below.

Between working, keeping the kids from going hyper about some guy in a red suit, nativity plays and all the Christmas parties, we know squeezing in the gift shopping isn’t easy.  That’s why artstore are doing late night every night.. and early on a Sunday!

From the 1st December to 23rd December our Queen Street store hours will be

Monday – Saturday 0900-1900

Sunday 1000-1800

We’ve got great gift ideas for everyone; Galt and Great Gizmo box kits for the kids, retro and classic novelty stocking fillers for the older ones, and of course a great selection of Winsor Newton, Derwent and Daler Rowney Art sets too.  We’ve even got a great selection of Christmas cards and wrapping papers.

Come in and get the shopping over and done with.  Then you can step outside and see the lights of Royal Exchange Square and George Square just the way they were intended: relaxed, with the presents in one hand and mulled wine in the other.

Don’t worry, no reindeer or Santa’s were hurt in the crash, but our boss’ bank balance might be.  We’ve got fantastic prices on children’s box kits from Galt and Great Gizmos, Christmas classics like rubber band planes and matchstick models.  Of course there are Reeves art sets to suit all abilities and Daler Rowney and Winsor Newton sets for the enthusiast.

We’ve even dedicated a whole corner just to stocking filler’s.  So come on in and fill your socks right up.  Check out the sales promotions page for more great gift ideas.

But while we love giving great student bargains all year round, all the team are getting excited about one of our favourite times of year: Halloween.

We love any excuse to dress up, and we always have great fun hearing what you guys are dressing up as too. Last year’s most popular costumes were Smurfs and Heath Ledger’s Joker. Let us know what you plan to dress
up as this year and we’ll do what we can to help.

Whether you’re looking for facepaints, masks, fake blood, fabric dyes or novelty toys for trick or treaters (young and old!), we’ve got the lot.  Don’t throw your costume together too late: come in and visit us now!

Artstore is all about being creative, and we love that our neighbourhood is one of Glasgow’s best creative hubs. So whether you fancy being creative, or just want to watch others for some inspiration, the Merchant city is the place to be this weekend. Come on down and join in the party!

www.merchantcityfestival.com

We thought that whilst we’ve been jabbering on about some, quite frankly, very interesting subjects over the past few weeks, we would give you a little insight into the magic that’s happening behind the scenes on the Artstore website.

We’ve been cutting through describing products like a hot knife through butter, and although it’s probably the most tedious part of the project we’ve now gained a superhuman knowledge of art materials simply by forcing ourselves to learn about EVERYTHING!

As well as describing everything, we’ve been systematically photographing, weighing and measuring every product that’s made the cut for the website.  This is actually one of the more fun bits of the whole process, and allows us to be a little bit creative with some funky product photos, as long as we don’t get carried away weighing biscuits or the radio.  As I said, we  have gained a superhuman knowledge of art materials throughout this project, but we have also gained a superhuman knowledge of how much things weigh, and we can tell you straight off a 5p weighs 2g, a Hob Nob weighs 15g and our cellotape weighs 43g.

Apart from sorting the product side of things we’re getting ready to start some groovy promotion and are currently throwing ideas around for some art and video projects so we can get this ball well and truly rolling.  We’ve also got a nice bunch of guys working on the development side who are gonna help us make this website a little more than a glorified shopping basket.

Watch this space.

Come on in and win a prize: from fortune Telling fish to £50 gift vouchers, there’s hundreds of prizes to be won.

Check out the map on how to find the Artschool shop here.