Paper Love Wednesday

This week's feature is from the Canton Box Company and is the last creative business I bought from on our mini road trip. Tyson & Angie Lamielle are a husband & wife team who create home furnishings, stationary & gifts and whose favorite materials are wood & paper. I bought 3 cards & a framed vintage book page dictionary print. You can also find them here on their blog.

Canton Box Company is having a Mother's Day Sale now through May 1st. Enter the coupon code Mom11 to receive 10% off.

You can see past Paper Love Thursday features here, here, & here. Happy Wednesday! 



Creative Tithing - Support Handmade

Hope you all had a wonderful Holiday weekend. Today, I wanted to share some of the other items we bought from our trip here and discuss the concept of "creative tithing." Inspired by this post, Caiti writes about how she has started a monthly practice of supporting the handmade community & her motivation behind the practice of creative tithing.

By consciously choosing to buy handmade, you are supporting others not only financially but you're also contributing to & supporting a person's goals and dreams. You're recognizing their talent & the time & care that each person took in creating their product. Caiti hits close to home for me, when she says that she never purchases anything from Etsy but that she can go to Target & spend a lot of money on things she doesn't really need. I'm the last person to advocate against big box stores or companies because I so willingly purchase stuff from them. What creative tithing is about though, is finding a balance & to think about how you can support creative business owners, alongside the big businesses.

So without further ado, here are some of my handmade purchases:

These incredible vases are made from wood

Mark and Linda Milich are an adorable husband & wife team, from Marshallville, Ohio, who fashion these absolutely gorgeous vases from wood, found on their property, & elsewhere like Africa & South America.  The coloring is all natural; meaning the wood is not stained. Unfortunately they do not have a website, but their business is called Wood Art & you can leave a comment if you'd like their contact info. We bought the 3 vases below:

This is Walnut.

This is Maple & was a fallen tree. The lines running
throughout are actually mold.

This is Paduak & Cherry.

We also bought a lamp from DS custom concrete. The base is fashioned from concrete & the lamp shade is constructed from paper & wood. The artist, Dave Schoeppner, resides in Magnolia, OH, & works for his Dad's construction business. He also creates amazing tables, sinks, & other home decor, all made from concrete. You can check out his gallery here. Prepare to be blown away by his unique craftsmanship.

I haven't found a place for it yet, hence the
 floor picture. We're still waiting for furniture
 to be delivered & assembled.

I'll have one more creative business we bought from to share with you on Paper Love Wednesday. For handmade goodness, check out Etsy, Heartsy (you have to sign up for this & its like Groupon, where you pay a small amount for a lot larger amount to spend on handmade items at specific shops) & feel good deal of the day. (*Full disclosure: If you sign up for Heartsy or the feel good deal of the day, please let them know that I referred you because I can earn credit. Thanks so much!)

Thanks for stopping by & here's to a great week!





New Freelance Gig

A bit ago, I had posted about how I was waiting for some exciting news regarding a joint freelance project both M & I applied for. We were accepted & now I can share what we're doing. We are writing for examiner.com, the Columbus, OH edition, as Ghost Hunters! Yes, you read that correctly. Not only do I have a love for paper but I also have a fascination with the paranormal. We have posted 2 articles already & you can read them here. Here's an excerpt from our first article which explains our intentions:

"What we hope to accomplish is twofold. First, we aim to understand the background and mythology that led to the belief that a paranormal event has taken place in a particular location. On a micro-level, we want to understand the individual making the claims and on a macro-level, we want to follow the nature of the evolving meme that has been created in a community of people holding a given belief. This is as equally interesting as to whether or not an “event” actually took place. This is meant to go beyond whether an old pipe is pretending to be a ghost. Second, we, of course, want to determine the validity of the paranormal events being explored. Here, the balance of the skeptic and the believer will be used to shed light on whether or not there are really paranormal events reaching out to us from the ether."

We'd really appreciate if you're interested in the supernatural/paranormal that you'll visit us there (disclaimer: the more traffic we have, the more opportunity we have for earning a small compensation - though we are not doing this for financial reasons but for the love of both writing & the subject matter. We need to put those English & History degrees to good use).

We're super excited & hope that you'll visit us either at the examiner or at our personal blog.

Thanks for your support!

Paper Love Wednesday

Today's feature is from SpaceDog Studios and is one of the vendors I bought from mentioned in this post. Sarah is a fellow Ohioan and lives in Columbus. She was super sweet & had an amazing assortment of handmade journals/books.

I purchased these two journals and I wanted to buy one of everything she had:

 Sketchbook and Flash Card Pack

Hope you're having a great week & thanks as always for stopping by. You can find last week's feature here.

Mini Road Trip

This past Saturday, we took a mini road trip to Canton for the Art is Alive event (a 2 hour drive one way). This was our first time visiting Canton and I was pretty impressed with its Arts District. The draw for me was to see Tim Adams (a fellow Ohioan) speak about his successful experiences with Etsy & his super popular website Handmadeology. He also wrote this book, which I had him sign & plan on jumping into this week.

For those of you who are familiar, you may remember, I opened my Etsy shop in December of last year. I’m ashamed to say that I’ve since done nothing with it and am just now ready to take it seriously & give it a complete face-lift. I was hoping for some uber inspiration & motivation from listening to Tim speak & from walking through all the craft booths. I definitely came home excited & re-engaged. I’ve got numerous to-do lists & ideas spilling out, so I’d say it was a successful trip.

As for the craft booths/vendors, there were so many talented individuals & it was difficult limiting ourselves money-wise. We definitely did our part & contributed greatly to “creative tithing.” I’ll share what we purchased later this week & explain the concept of creative tithing as well.

For now, here are some of the pics I took around town in the Arts District:

Cool 3 dimensional faces



Huge insect



Mural/Paintings on the side of a parking garage

Canton's Art District slogan

Paper Love Wednesday

Today's pick are these awesome pictogram movie posters (source: a cup of joe)

My personal favorites are:

I also wrote about these posters  (inspired by men's style) a bit ago but wanted to re-post since we ordered 6 of them & they are even better in person. Can you tell that we love movies around here?

Thanks for all the post card swap comments. I am giving it another week so that hopefully more people join & then I will have a post with all the details. Again, thanks so much for stopping by & a warm welcome to all the new people who've visited via iHanna's swap & blog.

Post Card Swap Part III

I joined another post card swap, this time, through iHanna's blog. We had to make 10 post cards & it was international. Seven of my cards were sent to Sweden, Germany, Malaysia, Spain, & Canada. You can see my post cards for the first swap I did here.

This time, I decided to go simple. No paint or gesso. I used a lot of washi & masking tapes, collage ephemera & quotes. I thought I would share my cards with you (Sorry the picture quality is not the best. If you want to know what a specific quote says or have any questions about the process or products used, just leave me a comment).

I'm really looking forward to receiving my 10 cards. I've already received 4 & I'll share them all with you in another post. Would anyone be interested in joining a swap that I would organize? I'm open to anything. It can be a-choose-whatever-you-want-to-send creation (i.e. poem, collage, card, sewn item, sketch, etc.) I know some of you are thinking that you're not "creative" but that's not true! Creativity takes the form of anything, like putting together a stylish outfit, or cooking a meal. Of course, I realize that you can't send food or clothes in a swap, but you can use that same process. Please don't be shy. Just think of it as how you'll be helping me out in my first organization of something like this, which is a big wish of mine. Leave a comment if you're interested. Thanks!

And to all the new visitors from the post card swap - welcome & thanks for stopping by. I really appreciate the kind email responses you've sent. Perhaps, several of you will be interested in another swap?

Here's to a great week!

Paper Love Wednesday

The Paper Love Series is back. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Today I have 2 features. The first are these book cover illustrations from Sara Mulvanny for Random House & Puffin Books. The Alice in Wonderland is so perfect. The teacup & dress - how wonderfully clever.

(Source for picture & info: creature comforts)



The second is this gorgeous and quite amazing Butcher Paper Spring Wreath from Alisa Burke. She outlines her step by step process with pictures & instructions in her post. 

Credit for photo & project: Alisa Burke

Hope you enjoyed this week's picks & the return of this series. Have a great week & thanks for stopping by.

A Great Reminder

Source

Because sometimes its nice to be reminded. Happy Tuesday!

Happy Sunday

I showed you our before and after pics of our new shelving in my last post. Yesterday. we finally moved some of our books onto the shelves & it gives it a lived-in feel. Makes it ours. Yes, I said some of our books, because we also moved books into our other shelves in the living room & we each have several book cases in our separate offices with books. Ok, so we may have a book addiction.
Here's another pic.

I also wanted to say how proud I am of M. We just found out that he is going to have his first short story published in this online publication! [He had a great editor, if I do say so myself ;)] You rock babe & this is only the beginning!

Speaking of writing, M & I are working on a joint project together & applied for a freelancing gig. Hopefully, we'll know in about 2 weeks if the job is ours & I will share more with you. If not, we plan to go ahead, so no matter what, I will share details soon. We're very excited.

I'll be bringing back the Paper Love Series. Maybe not on Mondays. I'm thinking a little later in the week. You can catch the other posts here, here, & here.

Happy Sunday!