Everything is wrapped, packed and ready to leave in a couple of hours. I even managed to make some cards this chistmas, thanks to Robert Sabuda.

Before I leave I wanted to thank you all so much for all the lovely comments this year. And of course I wanted wish you all a wonderful christmas time and a happy new year!

Walking through Amsterdam we discovered this lovely shop called the Otherist, carrying many things from popular etsy-sellers like Ashley G.’s bearded guys but also lots wonderful (handmade) things I’ve never heard or seen before.

the Otherist
Leliegracht 6
1015 DE Amsterdam
Netherlands
On the Map

www.otherist.com/

A little bit sad that all of last weekends snow has melted and while the sun was shining beautifully yesterday, the weather has decided to give us rain for christmas.

But I’m very happy that everything is ready and packed and we’re enjoying a quiet christmas afternoon, preparing some yummie sauces for the family dinner tonight.

I hope you are having a wonderful christmas time too.
Happy holidays & take care!

After our short stop at Lieblingsstücke we went to visit Sandra of herzensart and Bogi Bell at their wonderful studio at Alte Fabrik in Siegburg.

I had already wanted to visit the studio opening a couple of months ago, but couldn’t make it. So I was really, really happy to finally make it to the open studio days.

I had already seen lots of impressive pictures from their awesome studio on Sandra’s blog and flickr account – and it was even more beautiful and inspiring in real live. And of course it was really great to meet and fun to talk.

I’ve already been a huge fan of Sandra’s fabulous viking “softies” and paper artwork – you can see her love for details in every piece. Everyone who knows my weak spot for speechbubbles can imagine that I’ve been totally in love with her beautiful viking greetingcards set. Thanx so much for giving me those, Sandra! I really think I might have to start a viking wall because I’m too scared to actually write on them :-) BTW you can find these lovely cards on etsy too.

I also loved to see and read about Bogi’s amazing drowning memories installation project and I hope to see more about it on her blog. Just wish I had had more time to talk and take pictures :-) You can find some more impressions from the open studio days on Bogi’s and Sandra’s blog.

And if you ladies are ever in Cologne and have some time, please let me invite you to some cake & coffee!

On Sunday we went to see my bf’s family and his mum took me to this lovely store in Lohmar called Lieblingsstücke (that’s german for favorite pieces. I had heard so much about it and was lucky that it was open last weekend because of the village fair.

The house with its wonderful yellow and blue shutters somehow made me think of Astrid Lindgren and Bullerbü.

I couldn’t resist all these beautiful ribbons and bought some of the red & white one.

If you look closely you can see the red RikRak on the wall – isn’t that a cute detail?

There were soo many fabulous things to discover. So I’ll definitely have to stop by again. If you like you can check out the Lieblingsstücke website and also order online.

Last weekend was filled with some fabulous events. On saturday we went to the “Designer Frühling” (that’s german for design spring) – a market for beautiful things handmade at the Luther church in Cologne.

There were lots of cute things – especially for kids. But I have to admit that what I liked most, was discovering these beautiful tiles inside.

As christmas is coming closer, I’ve been looking for some creative gift wrapping ideas on the net and thought I’d share some of the inspiration I found:

Since I love the simplicity of muji style, this wrapping by reeseau is one of my
faves.

This is a fabulous solution by popsie@flickr, if you like your gift wrapping to be eco friendly and beautiful at the same time.

If you are into calligraphie, this handmade giftwrap by Unhindered by Talent might be your thing.

I really like these floral bags by Craftpalooza, who used some buttons and ribbon for the closing.

The site http://www.boakart.com/wrap/WrapArt.html offers a whole galerie full of inspiration.

And in case you have something really big to wrap, you might consider this method by Wellstone:

Happy holidays!

I have had such a fabulous week! Last sunday I successfully moved my shop to paperama.etsy.com. I was a bit worried and scared, but I must say it worked out really great: I received a huge order only a couple of hours after I started listing in my new shop and I already got an amazing number of 140 hearts for my new shop in just one week!

One reason for that is probably that my first ever tutorial on How to brighten up your photos that I originally posted on flickr has been published on the Storque thanx to daniellexo. If you try the tutorial I’d love to see your results – you can share them in this flickr group as well as post questions there, if you have trouble editing your photos.

Another thing that made my week was that I discovered a wonderful singer called Lenka – she has an awesome website with great wallpapers. I’m totally in love with the art work and could listen to her song “Trouble is a friend” on repeat for hours.

And I’m really excited about my latest purchase – I’ve been a huge fan and frequent visitor of emmapardos etsy shop for a while and simply couldn’t resist this beautiful neck thingie!

The thing that made my week completely perfect was that I took my courage to ask about an exhibition in my favorite cafe called Vreiheit (that’s like Vreedom in english) and they said YES! I’m sooooo excited. They have tables that are covered with glas panes and work is exhibited inside of the tables, by a different artist every months. The date isn’t fixed yes – but it’s probably going to be in February. I’ll need the time to prepare as I have to fill 20 tables… OMG. This will be sooo much fun.

And last but not least I’m going on vacation tomorrow. I’ll fly to Abu Dhabi to visit my parents, who moved there almost a year ago and I’m excited to see them and Dubai and Al Ain and being in the sun and taking tons of pictures and visit a camel market and and and… Which reminds me, that I should get back to washing and packing like right now.

I finally found a shop selling Speedy-Stamp here in Germany and started making some stamps myself…

Handmade speechbubble stamp

Handcarved anchor stamp

This is an old photgraphers cutter used for cutting these old school style photo borders. I borrowed it from my bf’s mom to use on some of my pics. It works really nice…