Candy!

Newest and sweetest: the Candybox Thank You note sets! Pretty round-edged notecard designs in flavours like marshmallow, marionberry, turkish delight, easter pink, fairyfloss, butterscotch and spearmint. Sold in sets of mixed shades... because with lollies, you can't be expected to choose just one!

Vintage Postage Fabulousness

This is the girly-version of the vintage postage stamp notecards. The pattern is printed in its original rose color this time, on folded notes with pretty rounded corners for a nice vintage accent. These notes come with either red or pool-blue envelopes.

I love the kangaroos.

Signed Sealed Delivered

I worked on images of vintage Australian one-penny stamps to create these notecards. The original stamp was a rose-red (although it was issued in various colors) but I've made it an earthy brown for these textured flatcards so that manly men can use them too. The printed side is for looking at, the other side is for writing on.

And you'll still need a stamp.

Shiny Birds

A fun way to welcome Spring – our sparkly silver block-printed bird greetings have been introduced on Etsy. Every card is individually hand-printed, using original designs carved into a linoleum block.

We've printed stationery sets and greetings like Bird-Heart-Bird and Birds Like Cupcakes Too.

Well, they do.

Front page: Hel-lo Sunshine!

Wow, my Hello Sunshine greeting was chosen to be on the front page of Etsy.com

This changes every day and it's a really nice honor to be there! And fun!

Thanks to Sarah from SmackOfJellyfish – she was the one who placed the card in the collection that made it to the front page.

Very cool collection

The "Hello Sunshine" girl is featured in a very cool Treasury on Etsy today!

...posted by smackofjellyfish, who is a fabulously talented designer (quite aside from her talent for compiling excellent displays of stationery!)

Plans

We are knee-deep in floor plans, real estate flyers and development brochures these days. Berry got hold of one of the house plans and decided to make a few adjustments (she thinks it shows creative vision; perhaps ahead of its time).

Spring!

Blue skies and pink cherry blossoms say it's spring at last! And it'll feel that way until the next rain, which will probably be... this afternoon.

The whole neighbourhood looks amazing though, pink- and white-covered trees everywhere. It's like they don't even waste time with leaves – just flowers! flowers! flowers! It's the botanical version of eating all the icing and leaving the cake, which I wholeheartedly support.

This tree is in our front yard (lucky us). Most of the year it just wears emerald moss, but it's really dressed up for the prom today.

Signs

I'm a sucker for an old sign. I especially love signs that look a bit like everyone has forgotten they're there.

Like this one, which was up the road from the art supply store I went to in Seattle... still unsuccessfully searching for emulsion remover.

Downtown

Tuesday was a mission in to Seattle for squeegees and the elusive emulsion remover (why is everyone sold out??). There were some great signs so I kept taking photos – I doubt they'll actually be useful for anything, but they're good to look at.

And you never know... quite a lot of the photos I use in the chopsueycocktails cards were taken with no intention beyond recording a building or scene that captured my imagination...

Treasury Part II

And the Bella Figura "All You Need Is Love" card was featured in another great Treasury called "Noteworthy".

A good weekend!

Treasury

Yay! The Ciao Bella Vintage Vespa card is included in a first-page Etsy Treasury called "Orange Brass"

It's in good company – everything in that treasury looks fabulous!

Little Lovebirds

Here's the latest lovebird stationery design – they're printed in papaya and pink on these blush-pink flat cards. The cards have lovely vintage-y rounded corners (which I love!) and come in sets of six, with strawberry envelopes. They're already available in my Etsy satellite store and will be coming to the Pepperina Press store very soon.

Funky Finds

More excitement!

Pepperina Press is featured in a lovely-and-glowing review online at Funky Finds. Made my day!

We all deserve cake...

Rare Bird Finds!

Yay!

Pepperina Press is featured on Rare Bird Finds – the Bella Figura retro greetings and the ChopsueyCocktails correspondence cards are there.

I've been a fan of this site for a while – check it out!

If you'd like to see other finds too, this is the main page. All the ChopsueyCocktails notecards are on my website. The Bella Figura cards are there too, and also available in our Etsy store.

Vespas Galore!

I started selling my new Vintage Vespa girl cards on Etsy and the first one went straight to New York. I've loved Vespas since the first time I went to Italy... I mean my life flashed before my eyes a few times with the inevitable road-crossing near-misses – but that's not the Vespa's fault.

Nathan is crazy about Vespas and his dad's restoring one for him. It's one of those long-term projects, you know. Like the 1920-something Cadillac my Dad has been working on for 20-odd years... except not that extreme.

So there are two designs so far, "Birthday Thrills" and "Ciao Bella", and they come as individual cards or in pair sets. I'm designing more Vespa-themed cards featuring different girls. I had to research what 1950s Vespas look like to get this right! The models after 1955(ish) look a *lot* better than the pre-'55 ones, so I went with that.

Well I've got more orders to fill ... the admin side of things, but it's fun to sell to people all over the world (London yesterday!) so I have no complaints!

Birds like cupcakes too

Another little Sunday experiment....

More birds!

More preliminary/experimental prints with the blocks I finished carving last night...

Birdcages awaiting a bird

I haven't printed the bird yet...

Babies: they look harmless enough....

The same old Berry/mummy tussle over getting changed and dressed this morning reminded me of something my brother-in-law sent me a while back. It feels very true right now (especially the goat bit), and worth sharing!

ARE YOU READY TO HAVE KIDS?

TEST 1
Find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience and how they have allowed their children to run wild. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behaviour. Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.

TEST 2
To discover how the nights will feel:
a. Walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 4-6kg, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly.
b. At 10pm, put the bag down; set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep.
c. Get up at midnight and walk the bag around the living room until 1am.
d. Set the alarm for 3am.
e. As you can't get back to sleep at 2am, make a cup of tea.
f. Go to bed at 2.45am
g. Get up again a 3am when then alarm goes off.
h. Sing songs in the dark until 4am.
i. Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up when it goes off.
j. Make breakfast. Keep this up for 5 years. Look cheerful.

TEST 3
Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems:
a. Buy a live octopus and a string bag.
b. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that no arms hang out.
c. Time allowed for this: 5 minutes.

TEST 4
Go to the local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child. A full grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat. Buy your week's groceries without letting the goat(s) out of your sight. Pay for everything that the goat eats or destroys.
Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

TEST 5
Check out how you will handle feeding an infant.
a. Hollow out a melon and make a small hole for a mouth.
b. Suspend the melon from the ceiling and let it swing.
c. Now get a bowl of soggy cornflakes and spoon them into the swaying melon.
d. Continue until half the cornflakes are gone.
e. Tip the rest into your lap.
f. Smile

Congratulations - you are now ready to have children.