Inkymole

It is more than likely that you have already seen the work of British illustrator Sarah J Coleman without realising it as her work has been used on packaging from products as varied as Avon cosmetics to Double Gloucester cheese. Her work is a brilliant marriage of design and lettering ; quirky and retro, sharp and amusing. All the things we love in fact!

We especially love the little map she has created of the Crystal Palace area of London with charming designs for the relative shops drawn over a background of a fine lace tray-cloth.

The delightful illustration titled "The Protest" showing a phalanx of disgruntled traditional childrens' toys, is also hugely appealing to anyone old enough (ahem!) to remember having only the option of toys that relied on clockwork, muscle-power or a fertile imagination!

Sarah J Coleman can be contacted through her website and has her own blog.

In Memoriam: Tana

Sad news today - Tana, the beloved dog of Hello!Lucky employee Kelly B. passed away this morning. Tana was a much-loved fixture in our studio. She spent her days sleeping under desks, watching the passer-bys and occasionally receiving snacks from other employees when Kelly wasn't looking. She was even known to participate in the occasional brainstorming meeting, giving her silent but meaningful consent as we developed new stationery designs.

Tana, you will be missed.

Memorials to Tana created by our staff (above).

The Jacksons' Mural

We love walking around the Notting Hill neighborhood, with its pretty row houses, trendy boutiques, and thriving weekend street scene thanks in part to Portobello Market. On a recent visit, we had to stop and admire this mural on the shop front of The Jacksons, a neighborhood clothing boutique.

We love the apricot and sea-foam color palette and the graphic pattern of flowers and buds. Lovely!

Wooden friends

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

Wedding wall decals

Wall decals are all over the place these days, but we couldn't resist the idea of these custom made decals from Etsy seller Dali Decals. Personalize your reception location with your names, new monogram, or an inspirational quote or word. You could even use a decal as a backdrop for a photo booth!

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.

Belgian cappuccino service

We love taking inspiration from little things in everyday life so were delighted when our friend Amy sent us this photo of cappuccino service from a seaside cafe in Belgium. We love the design of the cup and saucer and all the details in the presentation, from the sailboat chocolate wrapper to the silver tray and doily. Wouldn't this be a fun touch for coffee/tea service at a wedding?

Vintage french notebooks

We found this lovely set of reproduction "Papier Superieur" French school notebooks at French General. Love the fonts and composition!

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!

19th century fashion details

These pictures from V&A Museum curator Lucy Johnston's book 19th Century Fashion in Detail (via Style Bubble) are just too gorgeous!

Love the frothiness of it, and all the stunning details, which we can totally imagine incorporating into modern wedding finery.

Reminded us of this painting, "Too Early" by Tissot. So inspiring!

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!

Fabulous cake stands

Ah, cake stands! They can be the life of the party, especially when mixed together with lots of delectable cakes. One of our new favorites is this woodsie cake stand from Bell'ochio ($175 and up) - it would have been perfect for the Alice in Wonderland theme party we threw last year...

Above:  French porcelain cake stand ($70); Fenton milk glass cake stand from Robbin's Nest (vintage, $75).

Simple silhouettes: Hand-pressed milk glass cake stand ($74.95); White scalloped cake stand ($42 - $52); String of pearls cake stand ($24.99); Thistle pressed glass cake stand ($49.95);

Whimsical birds on wire cake stand ($32.95); blue blossom 2-tier stand for small cakes and trifles ($19.99).

Gorgeous white bird cake stand  ($80 - $130) and scalloped cake stand ($85 - $145), both by Bay Area artist Whitney Smith (available in a range of colors).

Modern Met Studio Visit

We had the pleasure of meeting Alice Yoo, founder of My Modern Metropolis, a new social networking site, on Friday.  She and her husband Sam stopped by the studio and we had fun giving them a tour and chatting about what it's like to be an entrepreneur (read about their visit here).  Fellow designers often approach us for advice on starting a small business, and we're always happy to share experience, so herewith, a couple of our top tips:

1. With great autonomy comes great responsibility. Being entrepreneur is liberating and creative, but comes with sleepless nights and big ups and downs.  You have to have guts of steel and be ready to work long hours. And you have to be humble - there is no job that is too low when you're starting out (including cleaning toilets, licking stamps, and answering phones!)

2. Choose your partners well. Be sure everyone's ready to roll up their sleeves and put in their fair share of work, cash, sweat, grey hairs, sleepless nights, etc. One of our biggest criteria in selecting employees is whether or not they have "Hello!Lucky in their hearts" (to quote one of our hilarious and beloved veteran staffers!). If everyone's passionate and loves what they do, success will be more likely to follow.

3. Develop great products. Be true to your vision, but listen to the market and refine accordingly. And make sure the economics of creating, selling, and distributing the product are workable (discount your projections by at least 10% - entrepreneurs tend to be a wee bit optimistic - they have to in order to handle the risk!). If you can't find funding for your business, whether it's from friends and family or investors, it's probably not viable.

4. Cut your losses. If something isn't working, change course. Everyone makes mistakes; it's how you respond to them that determines the final outcome.

5. Stay objective. Every entrepreneur has moments when they wonder whether it's worth it to go on; sometimes this happens with uncanny frequency!  It's also easy to take ups and downs (especially the downs!) personally and lose confidence. While you need to be realistic, it's also vital to step back from the setback of the moment and look at the positive, whether it's press mentions, customer testimonials, or sales. If things are trending in the right direction, then keep it up and don't take the setbacks personally!

P.S. Happy Labor Day!

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

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!