I (heart) Paper!

The second part of my Paper Place experience - the goodies I brought home!  Expect to see these papers cropping up again when I blog about Christmas crafts.

This marbled paper is from Brazil - very beautiful and very expensive.  I bought little 5x7 sheets because it cost less and I could take home four different designs.  I love the colours on the teal one (bottom right) but the shapes in the purple one (bottom left) are great.

A lot of my purchases were heavy on the red, green and gold.  Christmas crafting anyone?

This glitter paper doesn't show up very well in the photo - just imagine a sheet of glitter and that's pretty much it.  It's fairly light weight so I'm hoping it folds easily (wouldn't wish stars look great in glitter?).

These textured papers are fun.  The white one makes me think of snowballs.  I'd love to wrap a present in it!

There were some non-Christmas purchases like this floral/paisley pattern. So detailed and ornate!  I think a little will go a long way.

I picked up a few non-paper goodies too - washi tape and paper string.

I get excited just thinking about all the great paper I have to use - I plan to set aside some time in the upcoming week to play with it and see what happens.  Stay tuned!

Paper Heaven

Yesterday was my birthday and part of my day was going in to Toronto where I visited The Paper Place.

It was my first visit there and absolutely as amazing as it looks on the website!  I thought I did really well to spend less then an hour in there and go through the whole store (I would have been longer but they were closing).  I spent all my birthday money, and then some, but I came home with so many gorgeous papers - I can't wait to get crafting!  I'll be back in the next day or two to show you what I bought but for now enjoy a few shots of the store.

Do you see those things that look like bolts of fabric on the right?  On the green shelf?  They are "bolts" of chiyogami paper - I'm sure there were over 100 patterns there, all arranged by colour.  If you find yourself in the Toronto area I highly recommend you visit the store to see all the loveliness for yourself.

A Little Sewing

My latest sewing project has been these little "taggies" blankets for some moms-to-be at work.  I wanted to make them a little something and these were simple and fun.  The little "tags" all came from my ribbon drawer (I did think of buying some ribbon but clearly that was unnecessary!).  For the front of the blanket I made a little quilt square with cotton prints.  The back is striped flannel.  Next time I think I'll do flannel on both sides - it's so soft and without the quilt bit they'll be so much faster to sew, making them easier for those last minute gifts!

(On an unrelated note does anyone know why I have both "fabric" and "sew" as labels for my posts?  When did I use one and not the other?)

Happiness Is...

• a golden autumn day
• Friday afternoon of a long weekend
• knitting a gift for a friend
• weather warm enough for a tank top and shorts... in October
• finding out my small camera fits in the gel pocket of my bike shorts
• getting all of the ends sewn into my Fiddlehead Mittens
• finishing a good book
• browsing this year's 101 Christmas Cookies magazine
• getting a birthday surprise from a local store in the mail

Beautiful Paper

A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to go to a talk about Japanese paper at the local art store.  Nancy from the Japanese Paper Place shared her love of Japanese paper and wealth of knowledge with us in a most pleasant evening!

In the body of the talk Nancy showed slides of her latest trip to Japan.  She visited a few different paper makers and took pictures of the many parts of the process.  The paper she "followed" is made from kozo, a plant that is grown in Japan as a crop (with paper making in mind) and is completely renewable.  The paper making process is quite involved: growing, harvesting, steaming, stripping (of bark!), soaking, cooking, pounding, picking (out stray bits) and finally dipping the screen into the vat of pulp to create a sheet of paper. 

Some of the interesting qualities I learned about quality Japanese paper is that the thinnest paper is usually the best quality- although it has a similar weight to tissue paper this paper can stand up to quite heavy use.  Also great paper is still great when wet.

Unfortunately I forgot didn't even think to take my camera so I wasn't able to take pictures of the many pieces of art Nancy had displayed.  My favourite piece was a small drawstring bag made out of chiyogami paper.  The paper had been treated with komyaku (a sealer) and sewn like fabric!

I was so excited to get a sample pack of paper to bring home to play with!  Nancy gave suggestions on how each paper could be used, drawing, painting, batik, crumpling, printing, sewing, etc. 

 

If you're interested to learn more head over to the Japanese Paper Place website, they have lots of information and inspiration there!

What I've been up to...

In my blogging absence I've been keeping busy with lots of things.  Most notably I've been training for triathlons (the short, try-a-tri version!) and have competed in two!  I've joined a training group that meets at a local lake.  The weather has been great and going swimming at the lake has just seemed more appealing then sitting inside at a sewing machine or craft desk.  This is me in action, getting ready to head out on the bike during a race.

Back in June I had the opportunity to attend a celebration for Olympic champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir.  It was a great way to continue the Olympic high I rode in February. The highlight for me was getting to hold one of their gold medals!  Tessa and Scott have been so generous in sharing them with Canada.  Wherever they go the medals come along for people to touch and hold.  They also signed autographs and chatted with the many fans who turned out for the event.  As well as being brilliant skaters they are just awesome nice people.

Right now I'm in my last couple weeks of my ECE distance ed program.  After three years of taking courses I am less then two weeks from being done!!  Yipee!!!  Less school work = more time for crafting.  Speaking of which, I attended a talk on Japanese paper yesterday.  Very interesting and inspiring, I'll be back to share.

Exciting News!

This morning I read some exciting news that finally dragged me over to the "new post" button.  Yes, I've been MIA for... well, much longer then I intended.  And somehow once one week turned into two and then it was a month it became harder to get the motivation to blog.  But anyways I'll fill you in on what I've been up to later.  For now the exciting news is that LiEr over at ikatbag is co-hosting a how to draft series!  If you've never been over to ikatbag you should run over now!  LiEr does incredible things with fabric (without commercial patterns!), cardboard and occasionally electronics.  All done with extreme modesty and a great sense of humour. 

Oh, and when I say there's a how to draft series starting soon I mean how to draft patterns - clothes - starting from scratch!  I can't wait to begin!