Long Weekend

Apologies for the absence from the blog, but it's been a bit busy around here! Thanks to everyone who has placed an order, or enquired about custom work - when the post office opens tomorrow, I'm going to have a quite a few packages to send - so thank you!

But, it hasn't all been work. As my title says, it's the long weekend and we've had some fun too. Yesterday was the only sunny day of the weekend, and we went to a garden centre and bought a million (well, not quite a million, but a lot) of plants for the back garden. I have this vision of a wild, rambling English country garden, combined with a French potager. Right now, it looks a bit sparse, but once the plants fill in, it will be great. I'll get some photos when it stops raining.

We met my brother for a pubby dinner last night - it was great catching up and talking about music and movies. (Note to self - buy new Portishead album). This morning, I made this yummy Apple Puffed Pancake from Wish - kind of like a sweet Yorkshire pudding. Yum. Today, it's back to work - hopefully, a good day where I'll accomplish lots!

Oh, and in the photo above are my new summer shoes. I never thought I'd say that I'm the proud owner of metallic shoes, but I am - so there you go. (:

Japanese Paper Cutting Books

After reading a post on Sugarloop about a Japanese craft book on paper cutting that she had found on Etsy - I did a bit of my own investigation on Amazon Japan and found a treasure trove of paper cutting books (like the one above)! I want to buy them all. When I was in Sydney, I spent the better part of an afternoon at Kinokuniya checking out all the craft books. Few were on paper -lots on origami, but not the kind of paper craft I like. If anyone out there knows of any other wonderful Japanese paper crafting (esp. bookbinding) books, please let me know!

Another Cloudy-Day...

Another opportunity to play with the lightbox. This time, the subjects are my favorite pieces of (not-so) fine china.

Cloudy-Day Photography

I spent the afternoon photographing some books for a client, and some albums for my Etsy shop. Since it was a cloudy-day, I made a lightbox, which I read about on this site. It's basically just a cardboard box, with three sides cut out, you tape tissues over the holes and voila - lovely diffused light. I just used a daylight lamp that I had sitting on my desk as a light source. With all the cloudy, dark, rainy days that we get here in Nova Scotia, I think this little contraption is going to get quite a workout!

Double Happiness in Canadian Living

I am absolutely thrilled to announce that my albums were featured in the "Great Ideas" section of the June 2008 Canadian Living magazine! I'd like to extend a huge thank you to everyone at Canadian Living who put together the piece and made this possible. The photography and words are really lovely - my scan is a very poor facsmilie, you'll just have to go out and get the magazine. (; And, if you've found me via Canadian Living - welcome!

Japanese Papers

I spent this evening working on some books, and then doing some work on my website. Many people have been asking me what paper patterns my books are available in, so I put together a couple of PDFs of the papers I have in stock and uploaded here, and also provided links on my website. It's a little bit cumbersome, but it works until I have time to put up a new page on the site. And, I love seeing them here all together like this - it reminds me how beautiful all these patterns are...swoon. (:

Japanese Papers, Part Deux

More Japanese paper patterns, available on my books....

Short on the legs, long on top...

I think that's the haircut that Milo asked the groomer for. I didn't like it at first, but I'm thinking it looks pretty cute now. He's like a little bobbleheaded dog. (: