V&A Prints

V&A Prints is an online collection of over 3,000 images from the Victoria & Albert Museum's collection of art and design. While the images are great simply for inspiration, you can also buy a print or canvas of the image in a range of custom sizes, starting at just £5! How cool is that?  You can browse by artist, collection, era, color, etc. We found this gorgeous floral in the Art Deco section.

Stunning Art Nouveau furnishing fabric...

A fabric designed for Queen Victoria's Jubilee.

Fabulous Ikats. We're loving the inspiration. Thanks, V&A!

Joseph Churchward, Type Designer

Chun Yee O'Neill, the intrepid founder of our UK office, just pinged us about a fabulous exhibition on Joseph Churchward's typography at the Te Papa Museum in Wellington, New Zealand.  We'd unwittingly seen Churchward's type designs before, but where thrilled connect the work to the artist and learn more about him. Churchward is a Samoan-born graphic designer who has hand-crafted over 500 original typefaces,  distributed worldwide since the 1960s. He was born in 1933 and continues to design fonts even today, at the age of 75!  Some of our favorites are shown below, and are available to download right here.

Graphic designer David Bennewith is currently working on the first monograph of Churchward's work, due out in February 2009, and also created this groovy screen print inspired by Churchward's work, available for 30 Euros right here.

Letter Man: Joseph Churchward's World of Type Through February 9, 2009, 10 - 6 daily Te Papa, Cable Street, Wellington, New Zealand Free admission

Featured Retailer: Bell Jar

Do you ever visit a store and wish that you could move in immediately, Anthropologie style? That's exactly how we feel about Bell Jar, a relatively new boutique in the ever-cooler Mission District here in San Francisco. Owner Sasha Wingate fills her airy space with vintage finds, fashionable wears, and fabulous letterpress greeting cards. Everything is displayed in such a beautiful and thoughtful presentation - it's hard to resist! There is even a gallery space in the back with changing exhibits.

Bell Jar

3187 16th Street

San Francisco, CA 94103

415.626.1749

www.belljarsf.com

The best of New York gift, part 3

We were introduced to the designers from Mizzonk by our friend Stacy (another fabulous designer!) and were immediately blown away by the intricacy and level of detail in their work. As a Canadian based design workshop, they produce an amazing laser cut art collection (featured here) as well as furniture and home accessories.

Mizzonk's work is sold in stores and galleries internationally. For a list of retailers, please click here.

Lyndie Dourthe

Lyndie Dourthe is a French artist that we came across via the lovely folks at Rag and Bone. She makes these amazing little dioramas and bits and bobs from paper, fabric, beads and other ephemera. We love the mysterious, cabinet of curiosities inspired quality of her work. Given our ongoing fascination with the aesthetic of 19th century natural science and the like, we find these magical little bits of nature captured under glass absolutely irresistible!

Her boîtes à trésors are available at Egg Mercantile. They feature images taken from encyclopedia illustrations of the 17th & 18th century. The images are transferred onto coarse cotton canvas which is then filled, embroidered and/or beaded, and hand stitched. Each has a silver plated stick pin attached so it can be worn as a brooch and comes in its own painted box. Lovely!

The best of New York gift, part 2

Although we are slightly obsessive about all things vintage, we also have a strong affection for modern design. Especially modern design from Publique Living, a local San Francisco studio. Although everything that Publique Living creates is truly well designed and beautifully crafted, some of our favorite pieces include these limited edition posters, which feature a typeset airport code over a graphic interpretation of a landmark of that particular city:

They also produce stunning gift wrap, as well as luxurious alpaca throws, which we are coveting something fierce!

But our all time favorite item are the laser cut placements - don't they just make you want to have a dinner party tonight?!

The best of New York gift, part 1

One of the best things about going to the big shows is meeting people that you truly respect and admire. We set the bar pretty high with our encounter with Jonathan Adler, but we were still more than thrilled to meet stationery icon, Anne Taintor.

Anne has been making some of the most clever and witty stationery and gift items for the past twenty some years. Her collaged cards, magnets, totes and other products bear such ingenious phrases as "I love not camping," "martinis....they're not just for breakfast anymore" and "someone was going to have to set a bad example." Anne's booth is based on the design of her kitchen, and it fits the retro quality of her products perfectly. She even has a section on her website that interviews the models (called Taintorettes!) used in her products. Anne is an inspiration to those in the stationery world and she was so kind and friendly - great to meet you Anne!

Gotta love Ottolenghi.

As you know, we love to visit our various stockists around London and especially those close to one of the four branches of Ottolenghi as there is nothing better after an arduous spell of summer shopping than a lazy lunch in this bastion of good food (...other than a lazy dinner!) The heaped displays of puddings and salads almost pull you, siren-like, through the doors and the fresh ingredients for the kitchens are stacked waiting along the walls of the dining room.

Their philosophy is to create familiar, straight-forward and yet highly innovative food such as the stuffed courgettes and pea salad shown below and both of which went down a treat! The only difficulty may be in choosing what to have as everything is so beautifully prepared and meticulously presented.

Ottolenghi also run cookery courses, cater events from the smallest of dinner parties at home and have published a book of their recipies. We prefer just to be spoiled from time to time - all in the name of work!

Ottolenghi have branches in Notting Hill, Islington, Belgravia and Kensington.

Celebrity sighting of the year: Jonathan Adler!

Today, we had the honor of meeting one of our biggest design crushes, Jonathan Adler, when he stopped by our booth at the New York Gift Fair. We can't begin to describe how happy this made us (see our died-and-gone-to-heaven smiles above!).

Maybe it was the feng shui of our booth, or maybe it was just meant to be. We used Adler's fabulous Utopia Totem Vase in our booth display, and just yesterday shot the cover story for The Nest magazine at Sabrina's house, which is features several of his pieces. The day before, we'd even received an order from India Hicks, host of this season's Top Design (on which Mr. Adler is a judge), for her lovely shop The Sugar Mill in Harbour Island, Bahamas.

We're thrilled to say that he was simply charming in person - and was even kind enough to pose for a photo with us. Our crush lives on! Swoon!

Paper Dragon Books

We happened upon Paper Dragon Books on our way to the gift show. Intrigued by their antique book presses, we invited ourselves into their studio. Owner Gavin Dovey was kind enough to show us some of the projects that he was working on, including these stunning handmade boxes made to look like classic leatherbound books:

Paper Dragon hosts classes at their Chelsea studio, as well as creating their gorgeous custom work. We loved their airy studio filled with tools, buttery swatches of leather and a vintage guillotine paper cutter:

Paper Dragon Books

145 West 26th Street

New York, NY 10001

www.paperdragonbooks.com

Catherine's Animals

Thanks to Decor8, we recently discovered photographer Catherine Ledner's gorgeous and funny collection of animal portraits. Ledner, a veteran photographer, creates striking images of animals in front of pretty patterned wall papers, often to hilarious effect. We've long been inspired by animals in our greeting card designs, so we feel a kinship with Catherine's whimsical take on these fine, furry and feathered friends!

See the entire collection, conveniently organized in alpha order by animal, here (note - they are even more gorgeous in person!), or order a book of her collected animal prints here.

Anatomy of a booth

We arrived this morning in New York somewhat bleary eyed after an exhausting overnight flight (ah, the glamorous world of the gift show) ready to rumble! We made book cloth panels illustrated with a variety of ornate picture frames and hand lettered (we went through various eras and genres - there are Art Deco frames, Empire, Kurbits, and, of course, a little squirrel/nut action. By the end, we were going a little, erm, nuts, but so far it's looking pretty sharp!):

Next, we'll fill them with cards - we'll report back with photos of the completed booth!

Swallows & Cherries - Rockabilly and Sailor Jerry Inspired Save the Date

We recently ran a save the date giveaway on Style Me Pretty - participants sent us their concepts for their upcoming weddings and we chose winners whose ideas we found especially inspiring (it was a tough, tough decision - everyone had such lovely ideas! In fact, we ended up choosing multiple runner-ups because we just couldn't decide!). This save the date card design was inspired by one of our runner-ups and by old school Sailor Jerry tattoos and the Rockabilly aesthetic, which we absolutely love. We even have a card line dedicated to this style - check them out here.

Vintage Hotel Door Hangers

Wouldn't these vintage door hangers be a fantastic addition to any home hosting out of town guests? And we can totally imagine creating custom door hangers based on vintage designs to greet your wedding guests at their hotel. Oh, the possibilities! Michael Lebowitz just posted a whole collection on his blog.

Found through Grain Edit's blog. (an amazing source for vintage inspiration!)

Prize

We just discovered these gorgeous photos of Prize, an eclectic shop in Ashland, Oregon, on the Paris Boutique Hotel blog (a favorite!) and we are frothing at the mouth! We want to drop everything and go, right now (unfortunately, however, we blew our budget for vintage ephemera at last month's Alameda Flea Market so we may need to postpone the spontaneous road trip!).

You can visit her adorable website here - just note that you can't shop online just yet. See more gorgeous photos here.

264 East Main Street, Ashland, Oregon (541) 482-0345

Store hours: Monday-Saturday 10:00-5:30 Sunday: 11:00-5:00

Vintage Travel Posters - Part 2

Here are a few more of our favorite travel posters - colorful San Francisco and deco New York City (a stylized skyline like this, minus the airplane of course, would be beautiful on a save the date or invitation paired with elegant Art Deco fonts...)

We love these cherry blossoms, and the pretty pastel color palette of this Seville poster.

And for beach destination weddings, these posters from Hawaii and Cote d'Azur are breezy and fabulous!

Vintage Travel Posters - Part 1

We have a longstanding love affair with vintage travel posters, and these next two posts are nothing short of an outright, shameless plea: if anyone is having a destination wedding and wants to use the golden age of travel to inspire your save the dates or reply postcards, please call us! We are dying to work with you!

We just love the color palettes and composition of these posters. Not to mention the Glamor, the Glory, the Romance!

Jude Miller & Crepe Paper Flowers

We love making crepe paper flowers, but artist Jude Miller takes our breath away with her delicate and intricately detailed work (via Oh Joy!).

The incredible realism and the delicate colors and details are simply stunning. So inspiring...

Her headpieces are to die for...and imagine having her fashion a gorgeous bridal bouquet that you could keep long past your wedding day!

If you're in the Bay Area and would like to learn how to make your very own crepe paper flowers, Castle in the Air in Berkeley offers a great class and carries beautiful duplex crepe paper that they import from Germany that's an absolute dream to work with, as well as all the supplies you might need to create a veritable garden of delightful paper flora.

It's a wonderful way to add floral details to your wedding design - they make great boutonnieres, table setting decor (think place cards holders, a little blossom tucked into a napkin...), hair pieces...the possibilities are endless!

Featured Retailer: Magma

We paid a visit to one of favorite design shops and Hello!Lucky stockist, Magma in Covent Garden, the other day. As always, they had an impeccably edited selection of modern, design-led gifts which we coveted, fawned over, etc.

We couldn't get enough of these ridiculous Japanese soft toys, shown on the left and far right of this shop window vignette. We relate to the expression on both their faces!

And, in our persistent effort to build our brand in the UK, we couldn't resist these diva-esque business card holders.

Magma Books, 16 Earlham Street, Covent Garden, London (Covent Garden tube) Opening hours: Mon-Sat: 10am - 7pm, Sun: 12pm - 6pm

We heart Ban.do!

Check out ban.do a brand new range of fabulous headbands brought to you by Jen Gotch and her friend Jamie. We love the combinations of vintage flowers and details, feathers and other bits of loveliness.

These would be beautiful on any bride...

Though really, any excuse to wear one of these gorgeous bits of finery is good enough for us!