wish you were here

love this printable google map envelope concept. so easy - you just enter in an address and a personal message if you like, and an printable envelope template is created using a google map of that location. just print, fold, glue and mail. by designer beste miray dogan via craft.

paper + glue

a few weeks ago i attended the night of social crafting event and the art of craft exhibit at the vancouver museum with my friend kim. we dug in with diy gusto with the collage materials, and ever since i've been addicted to the paper + glue process. there's just something so perfectly imperfect about it. 'collage' may not be 100% accurate for what i've been doing - i have generally been just gluing favourite papers to favourite wooden things - but the air in here has certainly smelled a lot like mod podge lately.

one of the easiest and oddly satisfying things has been sprucing up a boring ikea desktop organizing drawer. i had a good plan for this thing apparently at some point, but once i got it home i never bothered with the whole lot of hammering required to transform it's flat-packed state into a set of drawers. after rediscovering it, unassembled and under the bed, i put it together with a craft hammer last year and it has sat on my desk in it's basic unfinished form since then. until last week, that is, when i went on a mission (one needs missions) to find the perfect piece of paper to make it more exciting.

or i should say, the perfect piece of pale pink paper to match the mental picture i have of my new and organized office space. we're moving in the spring, and our new home has a fab small/tiny/doorless OFFICE. capitals intended and well-deserved. it's the one area of the condo that i absolutely had to have the dimensions of, stat. it's new, so it will be freshly painted in neutrals. although i have some weird long-range plans that may or may not come to fruition, i know in the short-term i won't be doing anything to the neutral walls. but i'd like to use some knicknackery in pale pink and mustard tones, add some fun indie artwork, and a lot of space-enlarging white along with my white & blackish brown desk. this little gem will look perfect in my not-as-imaginary space:

it now sits proudly on my desk, complete with cleaned-out drawers containing logical desk and art-related items. i know it's just paper and glue, but it makes me happy.

and i should mention how much i love the little ari cat doll sitting on top of the shelf. it's by the talented mia hansen - i actually won it at the mov craft event. a miracle - i never win anything, let alone anything so cute. it has a permanent home there, along with my 50 cent owl mug (my only truly awesome value village find to date), a pinecone that cole picked up at the oxford botanical gardens last spring, a rotating number of oddly things that i love and library books that need returning.

i love you, pillow boxes

be still my heart - i am in love. i spotted this pillow box tutorial on the spotted sparrow recently and couldn't wait to try it out.



i was fresh out of cute cardstock (dear santa...) but i did have white 110# cover weight paper and a few very cute lino stamps from etsy's mayberry sparrow. using the template, i just cut out the shape, scored, glued and folded and voila:

i made these in true last-minute style for a few small stocking stuffers but i'm so in love with them that i'm going to design one for packaging my pins and barrettes at shows as an alternative to paper bags.