Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With String

My new correspondence card designs have hit the shelves at Meticulous Ink! The range features five designs letterpress printed onto luxurious cotton rich paper at the Met Ink HQ in Bath. Featuring a limited colour pallet of dusty sky blue and coral red. Packaged in brown paper boxes foil stamped with the Meticulous Ink logo, each box contains eight cards of one design with envelopes lined in red and blue tissue (four of each tissue per box - chose a lining on a whim). The motifs illustrate some of my favourite things; Dorothy's Ruby Slippers, The Ubiquitous Little-Red-Number, Jet Setting, Playing Your Cards Right (or keeping them close to your chest!!), and no range would be complete without the Cherry On Top! I'm working on a new range right now - watch this space!

Available to buy at Meticulous Ink now!
info@meticulousink.com   01225 333 004  www.meticulousink.com

Xocolatl - An Epicurean Delight

 

Apologies to Jesus, but my favourite things about Easter are the ubiquitous little fluffy chicks that suddenly appear and multiply (presumably made by elves in the Easter version of Lapland) and of course my favourite thing all year round, but especially when egg shaped - CHOCOLATE!

Like all the best things, chocolate was introduced to Europe in the 16th Century through carnage, bloodshed and ruthless exploitation. It’s first incarnation, a sacred Aztec drink called xocolatl, was ‘discovered’ by Columbus. But the bitter, scummy and peppery drink had been intensely disliked by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, so it never made it past the first round of auditions. Luckily for us, Hernando Cortés thought it a product worth pursuing and modified the mixture with sugar and vanilla making it more palatable and wowing the Spanish court.

At first it was very expensive, the reserve of aristocrats, and not universally liked. One critic proclaimed the mixture of cocoa beans, sugar, cinnamon, red pepper, cloves, fennel and aniseed a “wash fitter for hogs” - and he might well have been right! But xocolatl was here to stay and went through various modifications as it traveled from Spain to Vienna, then onto France and England before reaching it’s current well-loved status and Milton Hershey’s vision of the “snack of the future”. Boy, am I glad I'm living in the future...

My favourite chocolate experiences are:

• A cup of extra thick hot chocolate at cafe chain Apostrophe, I like to pretend it's close to the Aztec original, which if course it isn't. But, it is delicious and really thick!
• Visiting Selfridges chocolate section beside the food hall, the moving conch display at Artisan du Chocolate is worth starting with, to get your mouth watering...Other notables are the Maison du Chocolate stand, good old Godiva and those round boxes of champagne truffles from Charbonnel et Walker.
• Bags of broken Easter egg from Leonidas after Easter weekend - for some reason it tastes even better than the intact egg (I always get both - just to be sure).
• Leonidas's cherry liquor - literally a whole Cherry (with stalk and stone) infused with cherry liquor and all enrobed in dark chocolate. Truly divine!
• The Film 'Chocolat' with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp.

For further reading on this subject I highly recommend “The Connoisseur’s Guide to Chocolate” by Chantal Coady, where I gleaned most of the information for this post. It features lots of interesting facts about the history and production of chocolate as well as a directory of the best chocolate makers in the world.

Delectable Things That Bring Me Cheer!

This will be an ongoing series, as I have a bit of a thing for delectable things and regularly buy them on a whim. No. 1 in the series is this tin of White Tuna in Olive Oil that I found in Waitrose. I think what really drew me in was the way it was displayed; tins of varying sizes stacked together, with some turned on their side, like a good old fashioned 1950s grocery store. There is something lovely about lots of the same thing stacked together in a pleasing arrangement - which harks back to my earlier post "Tidy Up Time" about things arranged neatly...(there is a bit of a theme emerging here!)

The good thing is, it will keep while I mull over what to do with it - I'm thinking a nice Tuna Nicoise Salad...

Mad Days

 

I have been working on a Mad Men themed invite this week. The wonderful Mo, a friend of Mount Street Printers, lent me these great original Lucky Strike adverts to scan in. I am waiting for my order of Mad Men series 4 to arrive from Amazon at the end of the month, and I am so looking forward to it! I might take up drinking scotch, but I think I'll leave the cigarettes.

Happy St Patrick's Day!

I designed this snake to wrap around the existing Zuma logo a few months ago. The client came in with the idea after being inspired by Google's themed logos on their home page. It was die-stamped in green, gold and red at the top of an invitation to a jungle themed party. Very fitting for St Patrick's Day too!

St. Patrick’s Day Greetings from Ryantown

“You can do a lot with a small brain” is a sentiment that simultaneously makes me smile and gives me solace. Wise words make a healthy appearance in prolific artist, Rob Ryan’s work; who is known for his intricate paper-cut art. It is an art famed for it’s intense skill and patience; hours of painstaking cutting, hunched over a table, scalpel blades aplenty. And yet, Rob’s work is still infused with a wonderful sense of spontaneity, and playfulness. Rob’s hand-holding, ladder-climbing lovers remind me of the scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, when Holly Go Lightly suggests they spend the day “doing things they have never done before!”. Which culminates with Holly and her young gigolo friend having a rare old time, running down the street wearing cat masks stolen from the five & dime store.

I have long been a fan of Rob’s and nearly fell off my seat when he called me at work one day to enquire about bespoke envelopes with printed lining paper for one of his VIP clients. With a few of these envelope orders now under our belts I am very pleased to have made it onto Rob’s St. Patrick’s Day list! Above is this years offering and below is last years. I am planning on putting my small brain to work and framing them - but the problem is they are so lovely inside and out! What is a girl to do!? but, add them to box 59 in a series of 200, containing beautiful printed ephemera...

Follow this link to Rob’s blog where you can read an eloquent account of his love for the paper-cut art form. And, there really is nothing better than hanging out on Columbia Road of a Sunday and having a peek inside Rob’s shop, Ryantown.

"The sea oh the sea, Gradh Geal Mo Croide*. Long my it flow between England and me.

Pity the Scotsman, he'll never be free. But we're surrounded entirely by water"

*"Great Joy of My Heart"

Blood, Sweat and Golden Ink

As well as designing and typesetting, I spend part of my day advising clients on the technicalities and limitations of printing. Which, depending on the client or project, can sometimes get quite complex. Calligrapher, Paul Antonio’s projects usually gravitate towards the feat-of-engineering-spectrum of print. He never fails to surprise me with the crazy things he wants to get on paper.

The execution of the above invite was a collaborative effort between three companies. Paul Antonio (design and calligraphy), Cutture (intricate laser cutting) and Mount Street Printers (gold die-stamped text). Read more about the creative and technical processes from Paul’s perspective here.

Like all good invites, the party, hosted by Javier and Tony at By Appointment Only Design, lived up to everyone's expectations!


Read all about the party at Annabel Beeforth's wedding blog Love My Dress.