Creative Love

With the bliss and beauty of Valentine’s Day rapidly approaching, we found it quite fitting to feature two local Designer Spotlight lovers. Brad Johansen and Christine Silva are two creative peas in a pod, but each has separate talents that share the same zip code. Midwesterners turned Greenpointers, these crazy kids came to New York to follow their creative pathways and have since landed their designs at local craft fairs and online. Having known each other since high school art class and dating since their teenage years, Christine and Brad both passionately believe that both their individual businesses give them a common thread that fuels their relationship.

Christine Silva comes from a crafty childhood of loving all things vintage, antique, recyclable and reusable. She soon learned to knit and started to produce small elephants and other handcrafted items with her family. She was only using old things around the house to decorate and embellish her own things. She soon started to create a variety of items not just for one type of customer, but for anyone who is in the market for beautiful, hand crafted gift items.

Her online store, (www.emilyestelle.com) named after her and her mother’s elephant tattoos, carries goods used from recycled and reusable materials. Her hand made only inventory includes knitted elephants, buttons, t-shirts, jewelry, tote bags and more. Supplies are collected from remnant sales, flea markets, vintage stores and things that she has collected over the years from her family or friends. The line of gifts that she carries covers a broad spectrum of customers ranging in age from infancy to adult. The collection is trendless and season-less which makes for an easy order and super fast delivery. As customer service and satisfaction are of utmost importance to Christine, you can speak to her about custom orders and depend on her to have original, unique items in her store year round. All jewelry and tees are one-of-a-kind which guarantees you an original every time.

The other half of this creative couple is Brad; master illustrator, story board designer, photographer, animator and businessman. The majority of his time is spent freelancing for companies that need a strong creative mind to help translate their ideas. His career goal is to help businesses and individuals illustrate their creative visions. With strong attention paid to technical details, Brad is known for his meticulous and precise works of art.

The original rebel idea of a pirate crew, a group of individuals that collaborate together, sparked the idea for his website www.piratesofbrooklyn.com. His artwork is posted along with his 3-D coloring books, videos, photo books, t-shirts, prints, postcards and buttons. Happy customers and custom artwork requests are what he prefers. He loves to work with clients to ensure that their ideas are translated in the language of art. He is certainly batting 1000 with the amount of work and requests he has coming in. If you are 13-25 and appreciate young, hip, street art, then Brad’s work certainly is right up your alley.

Find Brad’s rad variety of print and design work at: bjohansen2’s deviantART gallery, books: PIRATES of BROOKLYN’s Bookstore | Blurb and reel: Bradford Johansens Reel 2010 on Vimeo. You can also check out these creative lovebirds as they took part in the The Sketchbook Project: 2011 » Art House Co-op | We build art projects and communities on display until February 18th.

Stay tuned for his future online gallery and for more Brooklyn boutiques to start carrying his artwork.

For more style education, fashion information and creative love inspiration, please visit www.thedressrecycler.com. Your bargain fashion superhero!

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