Sunday 29 November 2015

Can I use this blog for non KWS stuff?

This is a question I ask myself a lot.   Since generally not a lot of people check this site out, 24 - 32 on the best days, I don't think deviating from stationery will be too much of a detraction.  Or will it be bad for business?  Are people coming here from my Facebook page looking for KWS information, and will they get off-put by my wandering into more personal territory?  I generally don't like to talk much about myself, so I don't think I'll ever turn this into a substitute for my journal, which I write in at least a few times a week.  Still, how much is too much, how personal is too personal, and how much of a tangent is too tangential?

So, I've decided to do an experiment.  I'll put up some personal posts, not many but a few, and see if I get any negative feedback.  Here goes.

Thursday 26 November 2015

30% off sale for Black Friday

I've got some stock leftover from the Toronto Pen Show.  Instead of having it sit around for a while, I've decided to let the sets go for Black Friday at 30% off.  It's mostly Tomoe River paper, but there's some Classic Crest and Neenah sets too.  There are mostly new designs, but some old ones too.

Check out my 30% off section!  $7.50 each set.  :D





Wednesday 25 November 2015

Envelope Art

I'm so slow out of the gate on this issue, it's pathetic.  But I'm trying.  Here's some mail that I got in this past week.




I had to respond to this letter with something also earth related.  I had no maps, but I did have a calendar I recently rescued from the trash at work.  I did my first, clumsy attempts and envelope making.


I loved the tree theme, and way the colours blended with the image on the label and even the stamp!  :D

I also got this one in.


I love the stickers and stamps on it!  I sent her a fun mermaid in return.


Then I received a first letter from a pen pal I got paired up with on Geek Girl Pen Pals.  I felt terrible.  We had agreed to swap first letters, and I didn't end up sending one out.  Isn't the owl so adorable?  I'm going to put him on my wall at work.

 She also sent me this cute pin, which is already on my work wall, under a picture I took of High Park in Toronto.


I'm going to send a response to her letter AND a first letter, all wrapped up into one.  I already made the envelope, and I was ridiculously proud of my super lame attempt at an envelope lining.



I did get around to listing my Hedgehog Express, Under the Sea, Wandering Whale, and Home for the Holidays sets, but I didn't get to take pictures of my new cat meme one yet.  Hopefully we'll get some sun next week.  



I've also got some new holiday sets in the works.  :D





I'm late for class, as usual.  I'm off work tomorrow so all orders will go out Thursday.  We're coming to the end of the month, which means it's almost time for the November raffle!  I'm excited.  :)


Wednesday 18 November 2015

LIFE.

I'm not going to lie - I've been feeling kind of melancholy lately.  My life is looking like there's a lot of upheaval coming down the pipe, spread over the next three years.  Some changes bigger than others, and none of them good.  LIFE, as my once-friend used to say.

To cheer myself up today, I couldn't resist making some stationery.  I think I'm going to offer it in the store as sort of a "design your own" thing.  There are a lot of cute cat memes to pick from, after all.

I've shrunk these images for the blog, but they are huge and crisp and detailed on the stationery itself.  I'll have pictures up after the next time it is sunny.  AGAIN, waiting on the weather.  Maybe it's time to buy a white-box?






I did actually manage to take some photos on the one sunny day there was in Toronto last week.  Tomorrow I'll sift through them and list the sets.  Here are some of the listing shots though, as a preview.











Lastly, I was thinking about doing a really simple set with some images from vintage Sheaffer ads.  They turned out looking a bit plain, but everything I tried to spice them up with looked really out of place.  What do you guys think?  Can vintage Sheafers carry a set?


Well, I'm off to class.  Catch you tomorrow!


Thursday 12 November 2015

Rainy in Toronto

There are a lot of pictures I want to take this week, both for the blog and the etsy shop, but the weather is not cooperating.  It's been gray and drizzling all week long here in Toronto.  Aside from listing photos for the Hedgehog Express and Under the Sea sets I debuted at Scriptus Toronto 2015, I've got some new Christmas sets I'm working on, as well as a Wandering Whale set that I'm currently smitten with.




I've had an essay due for a few days and I'm having trouble concentrating on it, what with the upheaval of family health issues and keeping up with KWS, never mind all my foster animals and my full time job.  This afternoon I'm really going to try and force myself to finish the essay and just have done with it, so I can ship the lagging etsy orders tomorrow morning.  In my defense, there are only two!  :)

This is pretty off topic, but have you guys heard of Tom Bihn?  It's a bag company I've been obsessed with for over 10 years.  My every day carry bag is from there.  Here's a shot of me on top of a volcano in Iceland in 2014 with my Imago.




I wanted to buy myself a back up Imago for Christmas, since I've had this one almost ten years.  I don't necessarily NEED one - this Imago still functions perfectly, and if I washed it, it would look like new.  But after ten years I thought a back-up might be in order, just in case.

I was horrified to discover that they retired the bag in 2013, and there are NONE LEFT.  I've been posting mournful posts on the Tom Bihn forums about it for days now.  LIFE! (as my ex-friend used to say).

I've rambled enough.  It's time to try and get moving on my essay so this weekend can be free to write pen pal letters.  I've got two sitting on my desk waiting for replies.  


Monday 9 November 2015

Blerg.

Well, the trail of the G.Lalo packing paper went bust.  Apparently it is made as packing paper specifically, but from the same material as Clairefontaine uses in their books they sell to the North American market.  They won't sell any to me, and even if they were willing to do so, it comes in HUGE rolls that wouldn't make for great shipping prices coming all the way from Europe.  Sadly, there won't be an influx of new paper to KWS just yet.

In other news, I've had a few sales of my A4 paper.  I am redesigning templates as I go, so if you do buy some, please feel free to contact me with suggestions about sizing for the images.  I'm sizing them up so they look to scale, but I'd love opinions from other people about whether they think the larger images overpower the templates or not.

The Toronto pen show was a lot of fun!  I didn't get to look around much since I was manning a table for KWS, but I did get to see Claudia and pick up some TR journals from Paper For Fountain Pens.  :D  Does anyone have pictures from the Scriptus 2015?  If so, send then to me and I'll post them (and credit you, of course).

Recently a pen pal sent me an adorable gift that she found in a consignment store in the USA.  Thanks so much Tamra!



Lastly, I came across this great picture that I took several months ago with writing samples for some yummy Sailor inks.  Enjoy!






Monday 2 November 2015

Store updates + raffle winner for October 2015

After getting a few orders for some of my older designs, I realized that I would be horrified if someone bought three sets of old letterpress stuff from me and wanted it on different types of paper.  So, today I retired the final sets lingering in the "retiring soon" section of my shop.  Cradle to Grave went with them - my apologies to the 10 people who had favourited it.  the only two I'll be keeping around are Mermaids Have No Fear of Depth and The Astronomer to Her Pupil, both of which would be a pain to put onto different sized paper, but I love them so much I'll try to figure something out to make it work.

I've also rolled out my A4 stationery sets.  I'm still somewhat apprehensive about this, but it's the right thing to do for a lot of reasons.



I've added an A4 section to my shop, and this is the only item in it.  Whenever you want to buy A4 stationery, you put the A5 stationery in your cart and then add as many of these "Supersize Me!" sets as you'd like in order to upgrade the A5 sets you're buying.  That means if you buy 5 sets and only want 2 as A4, you'll put 5 stationery sets into your cart plus two Supersize Me sets.  Then in the 'notes to seller' section, please list which sets you'd like upgraded to A4 size.

Finally, I used a random number generator online to tell me who won the October raffle.  I took the number it gave me and counted down the list of buyers for October chronologically from the beginning of the month until I hit lucky #7.  Congratulations to rogersdenise701!  I've already contacted her and she asked for my Victorian butterfly woman set in Tomoe River paper, with 10 sheets/5 envelopes (labels included).


We're into November now, so a new raffle has started up.  :)  I'm also considering adding a coupon to my shop - buy two full priced sets, get a third one 50% off.  The 50% off sets have been pretty popular, but they are restrictive in which designs and paper are available.  I'm hoping this coupon will help with that.  What do you guys think?