A thick haze has taken up residence in my head during what I’m sure is going to go down in the books as my busiest month ever. How is it I always get the most sick when I can least afford to?
I’m just thankful this cold didn’t hit me before the Conqueror Design Awards! I would have been a total zombie – incoherent, grey in the face and leaking bodily fluids. Not quite the person you’d want to see out of a quarantine zone.
The second the haze clears and I can string together complex sentences again, I’ll be putting up a recap post of the evening, along with photos of the finished letterpress certificate I designed and printed for the show.
That reminds me: did you all get one as you were leaving? I’ve gotten a couple of emails from attendees saying they missed out somehow. If you did too, drop me an email with your mailing address and I’ll see if I can find a spare to post to you. I promise to not sneeze on any!
I can’t believe there are only two days left till The Conqueror Awards. Suddenly, I don’t feel quite as prepared as I’d like!
If you’re already a fan of letterpress, I totally recommend attending for the door gift alone: a specially-commissioned, limited edition letterpress print! I’m not going to ruin the surprise, but here are some sneak peeks of what the lovely people at Antalis (holding company of the Conqueror brand) let me cook up for the attendees:
As you can see, it was clearly designed by a typophile, for typophiles.
Look closely – do you see the hint of glimmer?
Yup. Gold edge painting. No kidding.
I hope you’ll come claim one for yourself on Wednesday! Also, if you wanted to hear me talk about letterpress -and see photos of me printing these – my segment starts at 6:00pm.
Remember, you have to register for tickets so if you haven’t done that yet it might be a good idea to click here and get that sorted post-haste!
I’m feeling a bit like Rip Van Winkle today.
Seems like just yesterday I was telling myself I’d give myself December off from blogging (and work too, but that didn’t happen) but here I am now, smack dab in the last bit of February feeling guilty for not having come back sooner.
Anyway, to catch you up on things, I had a nice, quiet holiday season with friends and family – just the kind of downtime I needed to balance out a fairly eventful work calendar that shows no signs of lightening up in the next month.
2011 was an amazing year for Paper Tiger Press, and from what I can tell 2012 is set to fare no worse…all due to your support, of course. Thank you all so much for that.
I can’t wait to share all the amazing projects that have hit my desk lately – my new year’s resolution is to update this site more – so stay tuned. Here’s hoping your new(ish) year is on the up-and-up too, and that it takes me less than two months to come wandering on back to this space.
Photos via We Heart It
So did anyone make it out to some Black Friday sales?
I’m glad to be in Singapore and far away from temptation this year – my closet is in serious need of an edit. I’ve just realized that the golden rule of a beautiful wardrobe is Space>Stuff, and it’s surely going to be one of my 2012 resolutions to work towards that ratio.
Besides, I’m not a big fan of crowds, and the only times I’ve ever lined up outside a store were:
1. At Best Buy in Toronto, the day the Wii’s came out…and that was technically a hostage situation (*cough*Adam*cough)
2. At Chanel in HK, because we were too hungover to walk any more but too proud to just sit down. Plus I figured it was good revenge for occasion #1.
If you’re made of sterner stuff than I and dove head first into the swarm today, I’d love to hear about your Black Friday scores. Happy hunting!
Photo via White Linen Interiors
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Aren’t these flower arrangements lovely? Season appropriate but unexpected, and so perfect for the modern Thanksgiving table.
We actually did Thanksgiving a day early this year to accommodate a somewhat last-minute business trip, so I’m already looking forward to leftovers from yesterday – I’m dusting off my pasta maker and earmarking the last of our of mashed potatoes for pierogies. Yum.
I have so much to be thankful for this year, and I love that Thanksgiving forces me to take a step back and let it all sink in. Even if you don’t officially celebrate the holiday, I hope you’ll take a moment today and do the same.
I have no idea where I found this, but it’s so funny – and actually pretty helpful!
Guest-list-whittling is such an exercise in diplomacy. I know at least one person who occasionally reads this blog is getting married soon, so for her and all the possible brides out there I thought I’d put this up. Sorry for the awful quality…
Last Friday, Adam and I drove past the Singapore Philatelic Museum on the way home. We hadn’t planned to stop, but when Adam heard me point it out and mention that I’d been meaning to go there and hunt for vintage stamps, he immediately pulled over and offered to take me. Boy, he’s charming.
We must have just missed Notabilia and her mother, who were also there that day. For an on-topic overview, I suggest reading about the highlights of her visit here. I ended up getting sidetracked and focusing on completely non-stamp-related displays, which means our experiences (though no doubt equally pleasant) were totally different.
So how does one go to a philatelic museum and zone out on the stamps? When one is obsessing over old letters, obviously. The brilliant specimens of calligraphy and wax seals that adorned each of them just took my breath away.
One of the best things about the museum is how diligently the curators and exhibit designers underscore the theme of stamps as windows to the past.
The Heritage Room in particular, though largely unrelated to philatelia, paints a richer picture of bygone eras than one expects from a specialty museum – a thoughtful and interactive way of fleshing out the nation’s backstory for foreigners and locals alike. I say interactive because we may or may not have banged on some display drums, paged through an old calendar and manhandled some clogs while in there. I’ll never tell.
After our tour through the museum, Adam and I finally remembered what we were there for and hit the gift store in search of vintage stamps. Remember my distress over the somewhat questionable stamps I sent my engagement invitations out with? Lets just say that episode left me determined – determined – to ensure our wedding invitations didn’t face the same fate. I’d picked out about twenty beautiful stamps before Adam tapped me on the shoulder:
“Honey? Shouldn’t you maybe design the invitations before you buy stamps to…uh…match?”
Charming and smart. Damnit.
Vintage stamps, I will be back.
I suppose my being back would mean a lot more to everyone had I bothered mentioning a week or so ago that I’d be away for a week or so, but nevertheless, I am finally back from Thailand. Actually, I’m finally back from a lot of things – these last couple of months have been so full of ups and downs that I feel like I’m just now starting to level out from all the turbulence. Birthdays, a wedding, a funeral, a move, and a particularly crazy bout of family dramatics that is thankfully over and mildly hilarious in hindsight.
In any case, I was hoping to leave this blog alone for a bit while Adam worked on switching the servers, but my dad (Hi Daddy!) of all people has been harping on me to update it so I figured I’d better hop to. If my family’s starting to lose patience, lord knows what the rest of you are thinking!
I don’t know about you, but every year on my birthday I like to buy myself a little treat. It’s almost always an impulse buy, because that’s really half the gift – the luxury of not have to mentally prove absolute necessity before purchase.
This year I bought a camera. A Contax 645 to be exact, with default Zeiss glass no less.
I’m still trying to figure it all out and find my groove, but it’s safe to say I’m already quite smitten by the photos it produces. These are some highlights from my first roll, which I’m going to kick off with an obligatory photo of Dolce (still the best ever impulse birthday buy).
Good thing I’m really getting into it, because Adam gifted me with a second Contax system yesterday as a “backup”, on top of the enormous film scanner I got earlier this week as an official birthday present. Looks like someone really wants me taking this new hobby seriously…
Aren’t vintage bicycles just the most charming things ever? I’ve already come to terms with the fact that I’ll never own one – seeing as how I can’t ride a bike – but that doesn’t stop me from doing a double take whenever I see a particularly interesting one.
Admittedly, this was actually Adam’s find, not mine. He insisted on taking his new toy (a medium format camera, a.k.a our vacation budget for the next five years) on a walk today and snapped this beauty somewhere in Chinatown. Looks like it could do with a de-rusting, but it’s beautiful nonetheless.
Another favourite photo from his day: this antique store with the best. sign. ever.
Did you smile a little? Good.
