…and there’s nothing like a cute, cuddly friend to make you feel happy! This is Keisha our shar pei cross. She’s a rescue dog and didn’t have a clue about being loved when we first got her. She seems to have figured it out along the way though… : )

Have a happy weekend, and don’t forget to enter the giveaway for your chance to win those vintage kimono goodies!

Here’s one of my biggest Spring loves: magnolia blossoms.

Sunrise-shaded bud bejewelled with morning dew drops….

Layers of origami petals unfolding…

…palest pinky-white to deepest fuchsia with a russet crown at its centre.

So beautiful!

Thank you to all you lovely people who hung in there and kept coming back to check in on me, leaving me comments and sending me messages, letting me know you missed my posts and were wondering what had happened to me. You’re wonderful!

Well, Spring is here, the season of fresh starts, and I’m beginning my blog Spring with a competition giveaway as a way of thanking you all for joining me on this (sometimes rocky) blog journey I’m on. 

The competition prize contains one set of my Paper Fan Inspiration Cards (in the little black purse), one pack of my Kimono Paper Tape, two sets of my vintage kimono postcards, and a fan-shaped decoration I made out of a piece of a 1930s brightly coloured girl’s kimono.

To enter: simply leave a comment by the morning of Tuesday 7th September (New Zealand time), saying where in the world you are, and something that you’re loving right now about this time of year. I’ll choose a winner at random and am happy to send the prize anywhere in the world. Good luck! Here’s a few more pics of what’s in the giveaway.

The set of Paper Fan Inspiration Cards (below) comes in this black, salmon, ochre and sky blue kimono fabric purse.

The Kimono Paper Tape is a pack of ten different strips of lusciously coloured sticky tape printed with real vintage kimono fabric prints.

The giveaway also contains two sets of these 100% recycled postcards. Each set has three different vintage kimono designs. 

Over the next few days I’m going to be showing you some things I’m loving about this time of year, and I look forward to reading your comments and finding out what you’re enjoying wherever you are.

Oh it’s good to be back in blogland! Till tomorrow…. Lucy x

I created a simple little papercut this week and it’s winging its way to each of you to wish you a happy weekend. However busy or quiet your weekend is, I hope you find some carefree moments of bird joyfulness along the way! : )

I love paper art and here are some of my favourite master paper cutters:

Rob Ryan
Jayme McGowan / Roadside Projects
Elsa Mora

If you have a favourite paper artist or do paper cutting yourself, do post a link in the comments.

Have a great weekend!
Lucy x

Old red stamps: cherries and ping pong; Christmas prayers and Communist workers; a dragon, a lion, a horse and an ox.

Red toy vehicles from our childhood: Toy trains powered by steam, electricity and small hands; a double decker London bus with most of its paint worn off; a digger, with dirt still in its caterpillar treads; and a battered, repainted truck.

Origami paper, a Chinese paper cut, vintage kimono badges and a geisha coaster.

Games pieces: Various counters and dice, a Rummy number 7, a Mastermind peg, a tiddlywinks wink, a carrom puck, a battleship and a biplane.

Red heads.  Royalty, politics and history.

Vintage buttons, a crochet hook, a 1950s (or maybe ’80s?) buckle, and a spool of thread.

A handmade book from Udaipur, Rajasthan which my mother kept as a diary in 1990 during the 8 months my family and I spent in India; an old book about the artist Albrecht Dürer, a small Japanese notebook covered in washi paper, coloured pencils and a letter A.

Red odds and ends: a ball of cotton; a plastic bangle that looks like carved coral at a glance; an old pendant made from coins and beads that my father picked up in Morocco in the early ’70s; a small German glass jar with roses painted on its lid and old glass buttons inside; a vintage brooch bought at Spitalfields market in London; a paper mache toadstool and a vintage buckle.

I’ve been quietly celebrating a few things this week: Monday, of course, was the Winter solstice; on Tuesday my man returned home to me after several weeks away visiting his family on the other side of the world; and on Wednesday my lovely friend Amy had her birthday… So this mandarin lantern is a warm, glowing, citrus-scented kiss sent out to cosy winter nights in front of the fire, to loving and being loved, and to dear women friends.

Here’s what you need for making a mandarin lantern:

1. Mandarins – the loose-skinned variety are the easiest to work with 
2. A sharp knife
3. Cooking oil – I used sunflower oil, but I’m sure you could use whatever oil you have in your kitchen
4. Matches
5. And a husky dog with a penchant for fruit (although if you don’t have one of these to hand, you could simply eat the fruit yourself, or perhaps find a willing child to help you)

Start by cutting the mandarin horizontally around the middle about a third to a half of the way down. Try not to cut into the fruit too much, although if you do, it’s not the end of the world (just a little bit messier later on!).

Gently ease your fingers under the rim of the top part of the skin and remove it, being careful not to split the edges (this took me two attempts).

You now want to lift all the segments out from the bottom half of the fruit. I found the knack to doing this is to hold onto the inner corner of each segment and pull outwards. Again, be careful not to tear the peel (and again this took me two attempts!). Note: The internal pithy “stalk” will become your lamp’s wick, so try to leave at least a little stub inside the base of the lamp.

This last step is where your husky-dog-with-a-penchant-for-fruit comes in handy. Our magical, David Bowie-eyed husky-cross dog, Silver loves most fruit and was a devoted helper during this part of the project.

Cut a chimney hole in the top of the lantern as shown. Your lantern is now finished and ready to be filled with oil and lit!

Trim and pinch the central pith bit in the bottom of the lantern so that it resembles a candle wick. Pour a little vegetable oil in and light the wick. It may take a few moments for the oil to be absorbed into the wick so don’t worry if it doesn’t light immediately.

Put the lid on the lantern, place on a plate (I used a vintage Art Deco plate with Chinese lantern fruit on it), and enjoy! As the lantern heats up it releases a delicious, citrus aroma – perfect for dark, wintery nights. I love how each individual skin cell glows. Isn’t it beautiful?

Did you celebrate Midwinter in a special way? Or Midsummer of course, if you’re reading this from the Northern Hemisphere! If you posted about it on your blog, please do put a link in the comments. I loved reading Maya Donenfeld’s Summer solstice post on her blog maya*made.

This evening I’ve had the house to myself and it’s been wonderful just to collect my thoughts, take a deep breath…and suddenly find what I wanted to post about.

Winter has definitely arrived and this past couple of weeks have been extremely stormy and changeable. I’ve been admiring all the different graphic shapes and silhouettes of bare northern hemisphere trees…

…and this evening they made me think of a box of leaf skeletons that had belonged to my great-grandfather that I recently rediscovered.

My great-grandfather Heinz spent a lot of time in India in the ’60s, I think, and he must have got these leaves there. The large, heart-shaped leaves are from the same kind of sacred fig tree that Buddha attained enlightenment beneath. They’re so perfectly, delecately gauzy and papery.

Two of the leaves have illustrations on them. Painstaking work! They both look like they’ve been drawn in pen first, and then the woman’s been coloured in. I love them. Like paintings on a butterfly’s wing or drawings on a cloud!

And while we’re looking at leaf and tree skeletons, here are some photos I took of the most recent full moon silhouetting trees like shadow puppet scenery. 

The good news is that I’m still mostly feeling upbeat and happy, the bad news is that everything I was planning on doing at the moment has now had to be put on hold. So I was going to be launching my shop today, but instead I’ll show you some pics I took the other day of the pin board above my computer (and the shop will open soon, but just not today!). As you can see I’m at least up and about this evening, but moving s-l-o-w-l-y!

We made the pin board by covering a sheet of fibre board with hessian / burlap. At the moment I’ve mostly got bits and pieces of things to do with products for my almost-open shop pinned up there, mixed in with other odds and ends.

This first picture shows some more mini bunting made out of my kimono paper tape, this time using the cool colour range. The bunting is hanging over a Murobond paint palette, and below that is a letter I sent from Sri Lanka when I was 17 years-old to a school friend of mine  (she lent me the letter recently  to re-read) – ah the writings of a teenage girl! : )

Words of wisdom from Yogi Tea.

My mini bunting again and more of the Murobond paint palette, one of my new vintage kimono cards which will be in my shop, and an information card about my Paper Fan Inspiration Cards.

The photo of the man in the top right corner is one I took in Ladakh, North India when I was 19 years old. I asked him if I could take his photo (which I later sent to him) and he posed with his friend for me. I love the combination of his jewellery (including mother-of-pearl button ear ornaments) and his suit jacket. Great moustache too!

The cut-out face is for one of my Matryoshka kimono doll cushions.

The photo in the top left is from the same trip to Ladakh when I was 19. That’s me in the purple Tibetan dress, playing knuckle bones with the kids. We were staying in a tiny remote village, sleeping on the roof of a beautiful two-story mud house under an incredibly bright full moon. This particular day my friends and I spent hanging out with the kids, eating mulberries off the tree, swapping songs, and playing games. One of the most simple, joyful days of my life.

A swatch of one of the fabrics I use for making the little purses for my Paper Fan cards; old stamps that I used in my Colour palette: Green, and Coral, shell and bone posts; and a black and white photo taken by a photographer in India of my brother, Beren (hi, B!), and two little street girls we made friends with.

Another photo of a woman in Ladakh that I took, and two vintage kimono decorations that I made a couple of years ago.

What’s on your notice board? If you’ve posted about it on your blog, do link to it in your comments. I’d love to see.

The tape is perfect for all sorts of creative projects – scrapbooking, gift wrapping, collages etc. Here are some little ideas I’ve been experimenting with today, using some of just one set of the hot colours to complete all the projects.

The first thing I made with the tape was mini bunting. I got the idea from a great tutorial that Lisa Tilse gave over on her blog the red thread.

I made my bunting by sticking pieces of tape at even intervals along the edge of a sheet of paper, leaving a little bit of each piece of tape sticking up at the edge. I then placed thin string (you could use embroidery thread, cotton, dental floss etc) along the edge of the paper and folded down all the ends of the tape over the string to hold it in place. Finally, I simply trimmed each piece of tape into a little flag (being careful not to cut through the string).

Isn’t the finished result so pretty? It makes me happy every time I look at it! The card in the background is one of a set of kimono cards I’ve designed which will also be for sale in my shop.

Other uses for the kimono tape I played around with today: collage artworks made from cutting out shapes and letters. My sweetheart’s on the other side of the world at the moment, so this is a little shout out to him. Hey, baby!

…and of course gift wrapping. Simple brown paper, ribbon off-cuts, a cute little Japanese decoration… The cards in the background are two more of my kimono postcards.

More fun with kimono paper tape coming soon! …and of course it will be available to buy online very shortly.

Hope you’ve been having a good weekend.

I thought I’d show you some pictures from the very first bundle of vintage kimono fabrics that I ever bought over the internet, direct from a seller in Japan. 

It was a mixed lot of about 30 pieces, each cut neatly into a rectangle not much bigger than a post card. Many of those pieces are now long gone, made into purses or lavender wheat pillows and sold at markets in London or at Reiki events that I went to, but I took photos of each of those pieces and still use them as inspiration or the basis of designs and prints that I’m working on now. Such a beautiful range of pattern and style and colour.

Later I also bought many whole kimonos. Each time a new one arrived in the post I’d lovingly hang it up in our home for awhile so I could admire it whole, before painstakingly unpicking all the hand-sewn seams and sewing the fabric into new creations.