Scrap

We took a quick field trip to Scrap last week - another fantastic reason to live in the Bay Area. Scrap (Scroungers Center for Reusable Art Parts) is a haven for crafters. All their material is donated, so you never know what you are going to find. The idea is to provide art materials at a low cost both to encourage creativity and to prevent our overcrowded landfills from becoming even worse. There are piles of fabric, yarn, paper, household items, and building materials available.

The inventory changes constantly, so it's a new treasure hunt every time! Some of our discoveries included tiny vases, fabric and decorative metal ornaments.

Our favorite finds were needlepoint holders, perfect for displaying vintage fabric scraps, lace or a cute print.

Scrap

834 Toland Street

San Francisco, CA 94124

415.647.1746

Hours: Tuesday through Saturday 9-5

Wooden friends

We love these lovely wooden sculptures from Romp! Each is beautifully handcrafted and all are just too adorable to put down.

Paper lace

Trolling Esty is dangerously addicting. But with such amazing treasures to be discovered, the hunt is to compelling to pass up. Check out this amazing paper lace from Brookerpie - just think of the possibilities!

Handcrafted details

We love how Brooklyn-based Tamar Mogendorff incorporates vintage fabrics and special details into her doll designs! We file this under just ridiculously cute.

Wedding Registry - Beyond Towels from Macy's

For those of you who are looking for a way to register for groovy, electic items you'd never find at Macy's, we just came across MyRegistry.com - this website has a handy little tool that you drop into your bookmarks toolbar that allows you to add anything from any online store to your wedding registry.

If, say, you'd rather fabulous vintage silverware, Scottish blankets, and colorful glasses from ReFound Objects, than the standard fare, this website is genius!  Pottery from Jonathan Adler and dishes from Anthropologie, anyone?  Unique table top pieces (like these bird terrines) from Mothology or glamorous finds from Jayson Home & Garden? Also, you have the option of adding cash as a gift by setting up a cash gift fund (no longer will you have to figure out a non-tacky way to ask for money for your dream honeymoon or towards the down payment you're working on for that house!)

If you like to balance out your karma with some charitable works (we know how difficult it is not to loose control with that little scanner thingy they give you over at Williams-Sonoma - it makes such a satisfying noise!), we also recently came across Global Giving via A Practical Wedding which allows you to create an easy-to-use registry for donations to good causes all around the world.

Things we're loving at Plümo

We love the eclectic Anthropologie-ish goods over at London-based Plümo.  They've got some great stuff in their shop right now, including this Argentinean belt, cheeky eco-friendly tote, and babushka key rings.

This slouchy woven leather bag is lovely. All these lovely items are available right here.

September Flea Market

Although it was one of the warmest Alameda Flea Market's to date, the hunt for treasures was still just as fun. There were adorable vintage clothing and furniture, as well as housewares. One of our favorite finds were the presidential pencil sharpeners - who wouldn't want to sharpen a pencil with Lincoln's head!

Paper party decorations

We've previously raved about our obsession with paper pom poms and lanterns, which make wonderful, inexpensive decorations for weddings, showers, and parties. We just love these paper garlands, balls, and snowflakes, from UK-based Re-found Objects.

Aren't these paper flower garlands adorable? (From Pedlar's, also UK-based).

For those of you who are looking for paper decorations state-side, we found a great selection of Mexican paper picatas at Lee Carter Company (above).

123 Party has a great selection of tissue paper balls, bells, and fans (flat circular shape - shown above) in a wide array of colors and sizes. We found this pretty tissue paper snowflake decorations at Target. We found a nice dove garland (similar to the one from Re-found) at Oriental Trading Company.

Happy decorating!

Fuchsia and curry

It's hot here in San Francisco! It's the perfect time to celebrate summer with this fun and cheerful combination (and how cute are those shoes?!).

From top: Dress and shoes from J. Crew, Eva personalized stationery from Hello!Lucky, pillow and storage box from Hable Construction, chair, pillow and throw from Designers Guild.

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!

Hot off the presses!

We're super excited about our latest card release - some of our best cards yet! The new collection features this fab psychedelic love card, and  3 new designs by Julia Rothman ("Support" is one of our faves - perfect for girl friends, moms, and bridesmaids! These were also just featured on Design*Sponge - thanks, Grace!).

We're giving the "Lookin' good" card (below) to Eunice & Sabrina's mom, who celebrates her 60th birthday this week but still has washboard abs looks a like a beauty queen, with no surgical intervention! (Go, mom!)

We're also thrilled to introduce a brand new collaboration with one our favorite UK-based illustrators, Kate Sutton (she also has some fantastic DIY card projects in our new book, Handmade Hellos). "Choo Choo" (inspired by the Simpsons!) is one of our favorites.

This globe illustration cracks us up and the sentiment is so sweet (awww!)...

Kate also did some wonderful Mother's and Father's Day cards for us:

We illustrated a garden-themed Mother's Day card as well, plus an anniversary card featuring a tattooed circus strong man (below). Both use a cool new watercolor wash technique we recently developed...

And finally, there's our favorite - the BBQ parade Father's Day card! The hilarious anthropomorphic grill items continue their shenanigans on the back of the card - you'll have to buy it to see them!

All these cards are letterpress printed on 30% post-consumer waste recycled cardstock, and are available right here for just $4.50 a pop!  Enjoy!

Paraphernelia

Paraphernelia is a jewelery designer (for both ladies and gents) based in Manchester, UK. We love their Victorian (and slightly gothic) style.

We love this new series of buttons ("I'll trade this button for a...") - they'd be great party favors! And we adore their necklaces using vintage silhouette vignettes.

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

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!

Featured Retailer: Broadway Paper

We always love catching up with Tracie Stier-Johnson, owner of Broadway Paper, and she recently e-mailed us to tell us about her brand new blog. It's a fun place to learn all about goings-on at the store (including celebrity sightings!) as well as musings about life and Tracie's wonderful family (we did her daughter Hunter's birth announcements what feels like ages ago!)

The shop is a paper destination in Milwaukee and carries some of our favorite fellow designers, including Egg Press (love their thumbprint note cards!), Snow & Graham, and newcomer Susy Jack.

Located at: 191 North Broadway, Milwaukee, WI (414) 277-7699 Store hours: Monday - Friday 9-7; Saturday 10-5; Sunday noon-4

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.