Treasures from Japan

As a birthday gift to myself I ordered a few items from (a couple of weeks ago) Hiki's store Uguisu the Little Shoppe. Hiki has the most beautiful assortment of goods and art from Japanese artists. My favorites are always the stationery, you can never have enough paper goods. One of my absolute favorite Japanese artist is Aiko Fukawa. Fukawa-sans delicate paintings are joyful, strange and a sheer delight to look at. I was fortunate to have found a few lovely pieces in Hiki-chan's shop including a wonderful notebook filled with Fukawa-sans work and still enough room to add your own notes. Plus, I'm waiting for a lovely 8 card set of Fukawa-sans's paintings which will hang in my home. Along with these treasures I bought a beautiful letterpress coaster set entitled "Squirrel Forest" also a gorgeous packet of origami paper by Cochae.


Beautiful wrapping by Hiki

special surprise gift inside from Hiki, lovely vintage stationery. Thank you, Hiki-chan! xoxo

Summer Give Away! Stationery!

Hello hello! Hope you have all had a lovely weekend.  I've been a busy little beaver, beavering away on my computer and pulling out all my vintage ephemera to be inspired to make stationery for you lovely folks. I've put together two cute sets and I'm doing a summer give-away in celebration of the Summer Solstice approaching this week. The first set is called Shimokita Vintage, this is a collage of vintage airline ephemera, and one of my most prized vintage finds in Shimokitazawa a ceramic 60's pup. Plus a watercolor drawing of Calpico I did while in Japan and polkadots. You'll get the set which includes two notecards, two envelopes, two gift tags, and 3 sheets of giftwrap. The second set is Tokyo Triangles which is all pretty pastels in triangle, polkadots and stripes. The envelopes have the signature fox from the Usagi Por Moi logo and pretty bunting. This set includes, two envelopes, 2 notecards, 4 sheets of giftwrap (If time allows for me to finish designing the tags this week they will also be included, but they will definitely be available when they go up in the shop next week).
Both sets will be available next week (June 24th week) in the shop.
Ok here are the details. Leave a comment below of which is your favorite, plus your name and email and I will announce the winner next tuesday, June25th.

New Stationery- Elephant Tags & Envelopes

I am developing a whole line of stationery products based on my paintings on vintage ephemera and this sweet elephant is the next one I came up with look for the set in the shop next week.

Lovely Acquisitions and Sad Goodbyes

I share these lovely zines with happiness and a little sadness, because our dear friend Sewon gave these to me and D as a going away gift. Sewon is moving on with her very adventurous life outside of New York and she will be sorely missed by us. With that said I am thrilled to be the owner of these fine zines, the photography in both is exquisite and the Korean recipe are scrumptious! In other news, in continuing with my collection of vintage ephemera to use in my stationery I just purchased these lovelies...more to come....

Avril Yarns and Chevron patterns

I was so pleased to get my yarns from Avril-Kyoto on Friday, they are so beautiful! They also come on these lovely cones. I can't wait to start projects with them. This find is thanks to Beebee on WTWS. Then earlier in the week I found myself at Paper Presentation and happened upon the cutest mini envelopes with a chevron pattern, plus a chevron stamp! Yay! for stationery stores!

Crafty Holidays

As Fall starts to wind down into winter we saw our last leaves and had Thanksgiving with family.

Little Miss Francie takes her last Fall ride in the basket liner I made for her. Reminds me of a scene in E.T.

We had traditional and Cuban fair.

I've also been working on all sorts of cold weather accessories like this hat, it has a detachable pom.

My dad had his 75th birthday and we celebrated on Thanksgiving, I made him the card.

Treats from Betty Bakery
Awesome stage design for the Mike Perry final gala at Wondering Around Wandering, Owenand the Eyeballs played.

International Paper Love Swap II-Mail Outbox

Hello, hello, hello...Here we are again with the International Paper Love Swap hosted by dear friend Kelly Zarb. Here's a little sneak peek at my packages going out. One is for my swap buddy Magdalena in Singapore and the other is for lovely Kelly, who's birthday I missed and I want to send her a late birthday surprise!

Art papers for crafting

I've been working on these prints for gift wrap/art papers in between my design work this past week. I will be putting up a set for sale in my etsy store shortly keep an eye out. You'll get 6 pieces 2 of each design, Ditzy Dots, Pastel Trifecta, and Auntie Em's pink gingham. Plus a sheet of labels to cut and paste on to your gifts, notebooks, sketchbooks or turn them into tags like I did here in the pics. I'm considering adding a mini zine with how-to's on making the flower pom, trifecta poms and accordion bow. Stay tuned in the next couple of days and I will let you know when its up in my etsy store.

New Vintage Label Stickers

I was fortunate once more that my favorite vendor at the Brooklyn Flea had more unused vintage labels. I got pharmaceuticals, cosmetic, cigarettes, and liquor labels. I have made them into stickers and they are for sale in my store. Here.
Stickers

Original labels

Goodies from Kino!

I went to Kinokuniya this week I hadn't been in about over a month or so and I bought a few things I needed like the tape and labels, plus got some new MT tapes, cute photo corners, and tiny kokeshi post its! I also got two books and a mag. Here's one of the books it's a wonderful collage book.

Book:
Hannari Handmade collage
Hannari Hall, Inc.
ISBN 978-4-416-31207-0 Mon 04 issue (s) 2012