The Craft Fantastic
In light of the upcoming National Stationery Week, I’ve decided to run a little competition amongst my Facebook friends (indeed, the ones who are actually my friends!).
All they have to do is post me a hand written letter. That’s the whole brief, they can make of that what they will!
As a prize, the best one will be able to commission me to customise a lovely set of envelopes and note papers.
I will be posting the best entries and of course their customised prize. Watch this space!
While National Stationery Week is a mere 7 days away, I am glad I’ve found out about it at least a little in advance.
As it says on their site, ‘National Stationery Week is a celebration of the written word and all things stationery.’ And just to be clear, that’s stationery with an ‘e’, NOT stationary.
The idea is to encourage more people to write by hand and I for one am all for that. Not just because I want to sell people my notebooks- although actually, that is the main reason I started making them in the first place. I love writing things down, I wanted to do it more often and to create beautiful, fun places to write thoughts/ideas/lists in!
Here, then, are my favourite stationery items from The Craft Fantastic:
Simple, single section notebooks with beautiful paper all the way from Florence:
Japanese stab-bound notebooks with hand-drawn stencils adorning the front:
Delicately detailed A4 landscape notebooks/journals/scrap books:
Fun geometric shapes on simple stab-bindings:
Miniature books, for miniature thoughts:
Fancy Coptic binding:
Beautiful black hardback with a metal key:
Keep your eyes peeled for new stock, plus some goodies especially for NSW!
Beautiful cover, beautiful title, beautiful insides!
It’s a 21st Century Bestiary. “Ranging from the depths of the ocean to the most arid corners of the earth, Caspar Henderson captures the beauty and bizarreness of the many living forms we thought we knew and some we could never have contemplated, and invites us to better imagine the world around us.”
You can take a sneeky peek at the introduction on Amazon – you won’t regret it.
Pink strawberry flavour cupcakes, cream cheese frosting and good old sprinkles.
I just googled, looked at various tutorials, then played around with an old magazine – the chunkiest I could find!
Found the middle then worked my way out, alternating the types of folds evenly.
Ex Libris: Latin, meaning “from the books of”.
For a while I’ve been aware of bookplates, but never really thought about what they are and what they mean. I’ve seen them for sale on The Literary Gift Company and felt like I needed some.
Then the good old British Museum shared a link on Facebook for this book:
…and it made me investigate more.
Good ol’ Wikipedia says:
“Bookplates typically bear a name, motto, device, coat-of-arms, crest, badge, or any motif that relates to the owner of the book, or is requested by him from the artist or designer.”
Basically, they go in the front of all your books to say “these are MINE!” but in a nicer, more artistic and often very beautiful way.
Did you know there’s a Bookplate Society? You do now. This website makes me realise just how little I know about this topic- therefore, I hereby add ‘Bookplates’ to the ever-growing list of Stuff I Will Read Up On One Day But Don’t Have Time Right Now.
In the meantime, I find myself wanting to make a Craft Fantastic Bookplate, either with the little boat or the mermaid logo. While I’m designing that in my head, check out these absolutely gorgeous examples:
Simple to make and tasty. Kind of like making truffles; coat the moulds, make the filling (in this case, coffee mixed with sugar and heated, then poured over chopped choc and mixed till smooth) then pour into the set cases. When the filling is set and the top coat put on, smoosh a walnut half on.
Recipe taken from Miss Hope’s Chocolate Box.
So I made up a new blank notebook. Ivory paper:
Red and gold headband:
Simple black cover:
The intention was to stick a decorative metal key on the front, but I can’t quite decide how to place it. Which looks best?
I am both glad and sad that Shepherds Falkiners has moved. Sad because I can no longer browse their lovely store in my lunch hour, or wander down to buy more book binding supplies. Glad because it stops me buying yet more paper.
I am resigned to online window shopping and trying to think up an excuse to buy some of the following:
Oh. But I actually think I do need some of this French waxed paper for covering my notebooks:
Why? Erm, well, I just do…
Recent charity shop purchase:
And inside…
No idea what this book is, literally just saw the old cover and the fact it was 95p and bought it!