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Lunchtime Lusting Notebooks Paper Stationery

Lunchtime Lusting- travel stationery sets

It’s a mere two weeks before I will be jetting off on a family holiday to Positano, Italy, for some much needed rest and relaxation.

Of course I will be taking a notebook and pen/pencil with me, but sometimes it just doesn’t cut it to simply have a couple of items loose in the bottom of my bag. This, I feel, will be one such holiday and I will need something a bit nicer; a grown-up pencil case, basically, so I can keep all my stationery essentials handy, compact and tidy.

And so I explored the web to find the best travel stationery sets I could. Here’s what I discovered…

Having written the line about wanting something grown-up, it turns out that one of the best little all-round sets I stumbled upon is in fact a Hello Kitty one. It has a ballpoint pen, pencil, ruler, eraser, notepad, felt tips, plus (and this is what makes it so good) a sharpener that catches the shavings. I feel this is essential for a travel set, when you won’t know if there’ll be bin handy. You can get it from Tesco and it’s pretty darn cute:

If, however, you’re looking for something a bit more upmarket, why not try this travel set in a fancy leather case? According to the site it’s “A luxurious way to carry all your stationery essentials”:

Just want to do a bit of sketching on your holidays? There are quite a few sketching wallets about. This one’s from Derwents and contains a sketch pad of nice paper, nice pencils/charcoal etc., an eraser and a sharpener:

This little set from Ryman’s is pretty handy, with just the basics of nice pencils, erasers and that all important sharpener. This one not all collects the bits, but it has different sharpening sizes for drawing/writing etc. Who knew these existed? Not me! This one’s also nice and compact, with good quality erasers that sit nicely over the tops of the pencils:

Now that you’ve got together the right set of pencils/pens etc. you’ll need something to put them in. Good old Paperchase has a great selection, ranging from eco-friendly wooden ones to nice soft zip-up ones, both plain and patterned:

And finally, for any of you hardcore crafters out there, why not try making your own from this awesome tutorial?

Categories
Craft Notebooks Paper

Button Book – first attempt

A while back I did a post on ‘things with buttons’ and featured this teeny little button book:

So cute! And such a great idea. I’ve been wanting to make my own for quite some time now and I finally got round to it.

The idea I had for it is taken from something I’ve had in mind for a while now: “He is always dancing with me…” is a line that’s been kicking around my ideas book as something that I want to illustrate, and finally with this miniature button book I’ve incorporated it into something.


I would like to make more for my Folksy shop but I’m not entirely sure what I would market them as! ideas?!

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Craft Notebooks Paper Stationery

New notebooks

Will be getting some of these up on Folksy soon:



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Notebooks Paper Stationery

National Stationery Week! 22nd – 28th April, 2013

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!

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Craft Notebooks Paper Stationery

New blank notebooks – with or without a key?

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?


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Craft Notebooks Paper Tutorial

Coptic Binding – first attempt

Coptic binding is something I’ve been wanting to try for ages and I found a really great tutorial. I love this one particularly as the pictures are so clear.

To practise this technique, I decided to bind my old sketches together. They’ve been laying around, sheets of A4 from sketch pads that have fallen to bits… I don’t really know why I keep them but I do! Binding them all together meant I could keep them all tidy in one place and also have a go at coptic binding. Winner.

I love the spine!

One of the advantages of this type of binding is that allows the pages to lay nice and flat:

🙂

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Craft Notebooks Stationery

A trio of mini notebooks

Craft complete! The cover material came yesterday and I finished my trio of miniature notebooks. Very happy with the results:

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Craft Notebooks Paper

Happy 2013! New Year, new projects

As 2012 is now over, I think it’s high time I knuckled down and finished some of the projects I’ve either started or been thinking about!

First up, I have 3 mini notebooks to finish, with black covers. Sadly the black bookbinding material has been out of stock, but it’s now on order to be delivered! I have the cover boards all cut and ready for covering. Come on postie! I need to make more of these:

I’ve had some awesome material from Ikea to make into cushion covers for a whole year now, so they will be next on the list for finishing off:

I got some great key embellishments that have flat backs, perfect for adorning my notebooks:

Completed projects to follow 🙂

Categories
Craft Notebooks Origami Paper

Visit The Craft Fantastic Folksy shop!

Oh, go on, go have a look. I have a fancy new banner and everything.

I have Christmas origami gift tags:

Knitted wrist cuffs and headbands:

And a selection of little notebooks, only £1.50 each!

 

Go on…

Categories
Craft Notebooks Paper Stationery

Knitted and paper craft stall