Holiday wishes!

Well, it's clear that over the holidays I need to make myself a lightbox.  I had a ton of really cute designs to list for Christmas, but the weather in Toronto did not cooperate.  It was either overcast, drizzling, or windy every single day since the beginning of December.  I shouldn't complain because we've hard record warmth as well, but the weather we had did not allow me to take pictures of my designs.  I need to set up an indoor space to get this done, obviously.  In the meantime, here are some sneak peeks.  :)

Yummi Sushi (I've been rewatching Buffy lately, and her pjs spurred me to make this set)

 Call of the Sea

 Three Little Bears

I've been a really prolific pen pal writer lately, and I'm super proud of myself for that.  Of note is that I found another new pen pal, this one in Ireland, and sent off  a letter to her that included some free stationery. I've also been drinking a lot of David's Tea lately.  Coincidence?  I think not!  :D

Mail call!  This cute envelope came from a Canadian pen pal who reminded me that great envelopes don't always have to be super elaborate.

To send back to her, I tried my hand at another envelope made from calendars.  The charities I donate to monthly always send me a calendar at the end of the year, I think to try and convince me to continue my monthly donation the following year.  I keep telling them it isn't necessary, but they don't listen to me.  I end up with 5 different calendars for the year, and I never use a single one.  I've decided to re-purpose them for pen pal letters.  This time I tried sprucing it up with a funky lining too.

This one came in time for Halloween, and I've been super delinquent about replying.  I've gotten started on it finally and I think I'm up to 10 A4 Novi Tomoe River sheets.  :)  One day I'll finally finish it and send it off though, Michelle, I swear!  Michelle has sent me a lot of gorgeous envelopes, but I think this one is in my top five.  

These came from a pen pal in the UK.  The paper for the envelopes are amazing!  Thanks Adrienne.  :) 

This fun fountain pen sticker came in on the back of an envelope from a pen pal in Toronto.  She is a friend from the Toronto pen meet ups who bought a pen from me at the Scriptus 2015 show.  I wanted to see how the pen wrote, so she sent me a letter.  I sent a reply and now we're pen pals.  See what I did there?  :D  I'm sneaky when it comes to drumming up pen pals for myself.

If I don't write again before Christmas, I hope everyone has a great holidays season, whatever you celebrate.  I'm planning on just having a small family dinner on the 25th, mostly vegan.  I have grudgingly agreed to let someone else bring in a small amount of turkey breast for my 90 year old aunt who doesn't "get" the whole "vegan thing".   But that's it!  Other than that, my best friend is making yummy chicken seitan pot pies, I'm making sweet potato mash with maple syrup and summertime succotash, and my mom is bringing carrot salad with apples and pineapples.  I'm hoping my friend will also make me a pear and blueberry pie.   :)

Happy holidays, everyone!  I hope you all get some time to sit down and write letters during the break.  

Upcoming designs

The raffle prizes started their journeys towards the winners this afternoon, winging to the UK and New Zealand.  I added a few freebie sheets into each packet too, and I hope the recipients like them.  :)

It's been a busy week for me, what with finishing off my class for the term with an exam on Wednesday and trying to figure out what's next in terms of schooling for 2016.  Do I take more university English courses, or do I enroll in the continuing ed writing classes at Woodsworth College at U of T?  Ideally I'd love to do both, but even one course this term felt like a lot, piled on top of all the other stuff I do.  I'm still torn about what to enroll in, and I'm not sure how much time I have left to decide.  Arg.

I've been designing some stationery, dividing my time between the old school letterpress stuff I really love, and the more modern, coloured images I've worked with for the past year or so.  Here are some sneak peeks of both.  First off, the letterpress stuff.  These are from older book designs from the early 1900s, I think.

And here's a snapshot of some of the coloured designs.

Lastly, mail call!  I got some really cute washi tape in the mail this week, from two different people.

The pumpkins are actually gold and shimmery on a clear backing.  Super pretty!  The blue washi tape came with this card.

I'm a sucker for blue, so this is right up my alley.  :D

This weekend I have a lot of chores to do, but I'm going to definitely carve out some time to respond to pen pal letters.  I've got probably 4 lagging right now, and that's more than I like on my to-do pile.  I'll also be finding some urban fantasy writing prompts to share with a pen pal of mine, and working on them with the goal of posting on my Kind Words of Fiction blog on Tuesday.

Happy weekend and happy writing, everyone!  

Raffle winners

This month I was feeling generous and decided that as a pre-Christmas treat I would pick two raffle winners for November.  :)  Congrats to Adrienne and erymis!  I've contacted both and I'm waiting to see what sets they pick.

I wanted to do a mail call today because I've gotten some letters with nice washi tape and paper.  Sadly, I've got an exam tomorrow and I don't have time to do all the scanning and replying to letters, so I'll post a mail call on Friday instead.  That way I'll even have time to try my hand at more envelope art!

I've decided that I hate the idea of posting creative writing snippets or extra personal stories on this blog.  It distracts too much from KWS.  But I have been meaning to make writing more a part of my life, and even though I do all my writing by hand with a fountain pen, I think that having a writing blog I have to post in every other day will keep me writing.  I just need some practice before I dive into writing the novels ideas I have puttering around my head.  I've set up a Kind Words of Fiction blog that is empty right now, but I'll put up my first post of writing on Friday.

I've got a few KWS orders left to get out today and I want to head home soon, so I'll sign off until Friday.  Catch you then!

Can I use this blog for non KWS stuff?

This is a question I ask myself a lot.   Since generally not a lot of people check this site out, 24 - 32 on the best days, I don't think deviating from stationery will be too much of a detraction.  Or will it be bad for business?  Are people coming here from my Facebook page looking for KWS information, and will they get off-put by my wandering into more personal territory?  I generally don't like to talk much about myself, so I don't think I'll ever turn this into a substitute for my journal, which I write in at least a few times a week.  Still, how much is too much, how personal is too personal, and how much of a tangent is too tangential?

So, I've decided to do an experiment.  I'll put up some personal posts, not many but a few, and see if I get any negative feedback.  Here goes.

30% off sale for Black Friday

I've got some stock leftover from the Toronto Pen Show.  Instead of having it sit around for a while, I've decided to let the sets go for Black Friday at 30% off.  It's mostly Tomoe River paper, but there's some Classic Crest and Neenah sets too.  There are mostly new designs, but some old ones too.

Check out my 30% off section!  $7.50 each set.  :D

Envelope Art

I'm so slow out of the gate on this issue, it's pathetic.  But I'm trying.  Here's some mail that I got in this past week.

I had to respond to this letter with something also earth related.  I had no maps, but I did have a calendar I recently rescued from the trash at work.  I did my first, clumsy attempts and envelope making.

I loved the tree theme, and way the colours blended with the image on the label and even the stamp!  :D

I also got this one in.

I love the stickers and stamps on it!  I sent her a fun mermaid in return.

Then I received a first letter from a pen pal I got paired up with on Geek Girl Pen Pals.  I felt terrible.  We had agreed to swap first letters, and I didn't end up sending one out.  Isn't the owl so adorable?  I'm going to put him on my wall at work.

 She also sent me this cute pin, which is already on my work wall, under a picture I took of High Park in Toronto.

I'm going to send a response to her letter AND a first letter, all wrapped up into one.  I already made the envelope, and I was ridiculously proud of my super lame attempt at an envelope lining.

I did get around to listing my Hedgehog Express, Under the Sea, Wandering Whale, and Home for the Holidays sets, but I didn't get to take pictures of my new cat meme one yet.  Hopefully we'll get some sun next week.  

I've also got some new holiday sets in the works.  :D

I'm late for class, as usual.  I'm off work tomorrow so all orders will go out Thursday.  We're coming to the end of the month, which means it's almost time for the November raffle!  I'm excited.  :)

LIFE.

I'm not going to lie - I've been feeling kind of melancholy lately.  My life is looking like there's a lot of upheaval coming down the pipe, spread over the next three years.  Some changes bigger than others, and none of them good.  LIFE, as my once-friend used to say.

To cheer myself up today, I couldn't resist making some stationery.  I think I'm going to offer it in the store as sort of a "design your own" thing.  There are a lot of cute cat memes to pick from, after all.

I've shrunk these images for the blog, but they are huge and crisp and detailed on the stationery itself.  I'll have pictures up after the next time it is sunny.  AGAIN, waiting on the weather.  Maybe it's time to buy a white-box?

I did actually manage to take some photos on the one sunny day there was in Toronto last week.  Tomorrow I'll sift through them and list the sets.  Here are some of the listing shots though, as a preview.

Lastly, I was thinking about doing a really simple set with some images from vintage Sheaffer ads.  They turned out looking a bit plain, but everything I tried to spice them up with looked really out of place.  What do you guys think?  Can vintage Sheafers carry a set?

Well, I'm off to class.  Catch you tomorrow!

Rainy in Toronto

There are a lot of pictures I want to take this week, both for the blog and the etsy shop, but the weather is not cooperating.  It's been gray and drizzling all week long here in Toronto.  Aside from listing photos for the Hedgehog Express and Under the Sea sets I debuted at Scriptus Toronto 2015, I've got some new Christmas sets I'm working on, as well as a Wandering Whale set that I'm currently smitten with.

I've had an essay due for a few days and I'm having trouble concentrating on it, what with the upheaval of family health issues and keeping up with KWS, never mind all my foster animals and my full time job.  This afternoon I'm really going to try and force myself to finish the essay and just have done with it, so I can ship the lagging etsy orders tomorrow morning.  In my defense, there are only two!  :)

This is pretty off topic, but have you guys heard of Tom Bihn?  It's a bag company I've been obsessed with for over 10 years.  My every day carry bag is from there.  Here's a shot of me on top of a volcano in Iceland in 2014 with my Imago.

I wanted to buy myself a back up Imago for Christmas, since I've had this one almost ten years.  I don't necessarily NEED one - this Imago still functions perfectly, and if I washed it, it would look like new.  But after ten years I thought a back-up might be in order, just in case.

I was horrified to discover that they retired the bag in 2013, and there are NONE LEFT.  I've been posting mournful posts on the Tom Bihn forums about it for days now.  LIFE! (as my ex-friend used to say).

I've rambled enough.  It's time to try and get moving on my essay so this weekend can be free to write pen pal letters.  I've got two sitting on my desk waiting for replies.  

Blerg.

Well, the trail of the G.Lalo packing paper went bust.  Apparently it is made as packing paper specifically, but from the same material as Clairefontaine uses in their books they sell to the North American market.  They won't sell any to me, and even if they were willing to do so, it comes in HUGE rolls that wouldn't make for great shipping prices coming all the way from Europe.  Sadly, there won't be an influx of new paper to KWS just yet.

In other news, I've had a few sales of my A4 paper.  I am redesigning templates as I go, so if you do buy some, please feel free to contact me with suggestions about sizing for the images.  I'm sizing them up so they look to scale, but I'd love opinions from other people about whether they think the larger images overpower the templates or not.

The Toronto pen show was a lot of fun!  I didn't get to look around much since I was manning a table for KWS, but I did get to see Claudia and pick up some TR journals from Paper For Fountain Pens.  :D  Does anyone have pictures from the Scriptus 2015?  If so, send then to me and I'll post them (and credit you, of course).

Recently a pen pal sent me an adorable gift that she found in a consignment store in the USA.  Thanks so much Tamra!

Lastly, I came across this great picture that I took several months ago with writing samples for some yummy Sailor inks.  Enjoy!