A couple of weeks ago I went up to Edinburgh to visit my wuvley boyfriend; and during my time there, we went and browsed in a couple of card/gift/craft shops. I took a few photos of stuff that caught my eye and thought I would share them on here with my imaginary friends on the interweb!
The first shop we visited was called 'Paper Tiger', which I admit I had been to a couple of times before, but it was this time round I had the good sense to take my camera with me! Up there is a Memory Book I found and consequently bought! Its sort of like a diary in which you record your experiences of each day of the year for FIVE YEARS! (So you can only write a few short sentences on each day - meaning you only mention the important stuff!) I loved the idea of recording a large chunk of your life for others to see in the future; plus I adore the Victorian style of it - I feel it looks rather elegant and will also have an air of mystery about it when in like,…30 years time, my niece/nephew may read it and be all "Woah, this is ancient!"
These are some card designs that I liked the look of - I'm really enjoying some vector illustrations, but also the sort of 60s/70s inspired illustrations - (the birthday card with the lady on the cake) please forgive my ignorance if my knowledge there is incorrect!
Paper Tiger didn't just sell cards/gifts but also crafty things - such as sticker sets, make your own covered buttons sets and these folded little puppet creatures! The design of them is beautiful - they had various other sets that helped a person make there own themed gift boxes - which I was very tempted to buy! I'm enjoying this new trend in paper engineering that is coming about, I would particularly like to learn to make my own pop-up cards!
My last few pictures from Paper Tiger feature a couple of products from a designer called Sarah Neuburger. One is a cute diary that I oh so wanted, in which you circled what the weather was like that day and drew a certain face to represent how you felt that day as well. A lovely child-like style - I loved the use of colour and just the innovative ways to make a diary more fun and interactive (which is a relevant word I think!) for a person!
The cuteness doesn't just stop there, you can find more lovely design at Neuburger's website HERE.
The next shop to be visited was a place called Helios Fountain (may have to double check that with my boyfriend though!), which was a quaint little book/card/gift/toy shop. I found this beautiful little fish purse smiling up at me from a basket that implored me to buy it but I told the purse there was somebody much better out there who would appreciate her ability to carry bits of change much more so than a simple wallet-girl like myself.
Helios Fountain also sold some quaint wooden toys that caught my attention, as well as some evil sounding toys which made me giggle a little.
As you can see they also sold a large variety of buttons and novelty earrings - they also had some amazing hamburger and hot dog badges (which I succumbed to) which were reminiscent of the early 90s…
The last image is the shop's window display which (trust me) looked even more beautiful in real life! I wanted to get some shots from the inside, as there were some lovely kites hanging higher up, as well as a small tree with various crystals hanging from it; but my fear that I would get some weird looks became too high and so I scuttled out the shop wearing my newly acquired burger badge instead.
Okay. The next image isn't cute little cards but I loved the tag line on this device! We went for lunch at a place called Wannaburger - very much inspired my American eatery sort of places. But the way you ordered was something I had never encountered before! You went to the cashier to order your meal, the cashier then gave you this funky device, and as the device specifies, when it starts vibrating, you just go up and collect your food!…..I thought it was interesting anyway….
And this was simply painted on the wall of a pub named, yup, you guessed it, Lebowskis. It looks like a awesome pub/restaurant and I hope to go there on my next excursion to Edinburgh! (I miss doing big paintings, I hope another project like the rhinos or the penguins crops up in the north west again some time soon!)
And finally (few, its been a lot of photos hasn't it people?), these aren't from Edinburgh, and I took them quite a few months ago in the HMV in my very own local land of Liverpool. I kind of giggle at anything Scooby Doo, so this box set of Scooby Doo movies made me grin like goofball. How awesome is it? EPIC AWESOME. Thats how awesome it is.
While I'm at it, I bought this amazing T-shirt design a couple of weeks ago from RIPT. (A cool website which sells a certain design on a T-Shirt for 24 hours only - you can find some really unique shirts here! Great for presents for loved ones, or just for yourself!)
(Psst, psst, ALSO, did you know, in the new series of Scooby Doo, Velma and Shaggy are a couple…and they all go to high school…including Scooby Doo…??)
Anyways, there ya go. I really enjoyed looking at all the cool cardy shops, I found them to be a real source of inspiration. So I suggest next time you see something you love in a gift shop, instead of buying it, just take a photo (as long as the shop keeper doesn't mind!), that way you'll be saving yourself a little bit of money! (Cause, come on, if you see something truly amazing…you've just got to buy it!)
The experience also gave me an appreciation for small businesses who really put their neck on the line in this scary world at the moment - plus they help us buy something a little bit more unique than what the big business shops could ever offer! I think what I'm trying to articulate (rather lazily) is that we need to go to support smaller businesses by buying all their amazing products! Hooray!
Well, theres another long blog post for you! Next time I hope to be waffling/moaning about what to do about my website and what on earth will the new design for it be! See you soon, party people!
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