These come in 3 different shapes!

Officially it is not summer yet but I feel we have turned a corner with the weather. Here are the store, the door is shut and the A/C is on. If you need a little break, come inside where it is cool!

I had a little jaunt to San Francisco where it’s always cool at this time of the year. On Memorial Day, I ate a balsamic strawberry ice cream from Bi-Rite Creamery out on the lawn at Dolores Park. There were so many people and dogs and babies there, and a man playing pretty great stuff on guitar, and strippers having a bake sale – a very San Francisco afternoon.

Anyway! New at the shop: sweet porcelain faceted bud vases, melamine plate sets from Poketo, breezy summer tops from Talla, portable photo albums covered in crackled cream leather. We are restocked on catnip bird and branch sets and on anatomical heart necklaces. I expect we’ll have more little bird vases in soon as well. Stay cool out there.

Not a great shot of our window but I wanted to show you the new design from Three Sheets 2 the Wind. Jenny screenprints on linen and makes lovely pillows and wall hangings. This pillow is printed in a rich shade of marigold. It goes great with the Matt & Nat bag, Beehouse teapot, Xenia Taler tile and Sugarloop print. We’ve added this pillow plus a couple variations on the design to the webshop.

Have a great holiday weekend, everyone! We’ll be open Saturday and Sunday as usual, then back open on Wednesday.

I had quite a busy weekend – of course my weekend is your Monday and Tuesday – at the Stationery Show and at ICFF. Both have been covered quite well in the blog world and I am still making decisions about what works for the store, but I’ll just say for now that many wonderful things were found. One fun surprise was seeing an interview in print – Meg who is a mom, a writer and a paper goods and housewares purveyor has written a book for crafty entrepreneurs and it will be released in a couple months by Chronicle Books. It’s called Craft Inc. and within, yours truly talks about opening a retail store. There are many other interviews and lots of great advice about getting your business off the ground. Congrats Meg!

Lots of new stuff arrived today too – read the rest of this entry for some news and photos.

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Just a couple things – Lisa Congdon’s show “Anatomie” ends this Sunday at Rare Device. We have exactly two pieces remaining – thanks everyone for supporting this fantastic artist! If you haven’t made it by in person, this is your last opportunity.

After we remove the show from the webshop, we’ll put up our favorite picks for Father’s Day. In general we don’t like to dictate what you ought to buy but sometimes a little guidance is good

We also got a late shipment in of some fab art books. We’re now restocked on the Book Design by Japanese graphic designers (yay) and I got two great new books in – one is called “The Age of Feminine Drawing” and has tons of illustrations, plus a peek into designer studios and a little directory as well…lots of great Japanese female illustrators! The other is called “Special Effects: A Book About Special Print Effects” and for print designers and packaging lovers, it is a super resource. Various pieces of collateral are presented and all the fancy effects are described. You get a peek into designer studios as well. I have images from the books after the link, so please do read the rest of this entry!

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