Papernation

I bought this beautiful postcard, with a couple of others, at a car boot sale yesterday.  It’s not in great condition, but I thought it was so pretty.  The postmark on the back dates it to February, 1915.  Printed on the back is the following:

This is a HAND-PAINTED REAL PHOTOGRAPH of a BRITISH Beauty.

MISS GLADYS COOPER

I bought the card because I was charmed by the picture, but when I got it home and read the back, it made me smile even more.

My Dearest Sis,

I suppose by this time you have got off with some of the soldiers at Frome or Westbury. If they were nice ones keep them till I come down, or tell them you have a nice sister that wants a young man.

Love From Your affectionate Sis

Hilda

I’ve been having a bit of an Angela Lansbury moment this afternoon having sat down at my new Imperial typewriter to bash out the next instalment of ‘Murder She Wrote’ – oh if only…..

This is it,  my Good Companion portable typewriter -

and here’s the rather stylish metal carrying case  -

You may be wondering why I bought this little piece of  last century cutting edge technology.  There’s no reason other than I saw it in the local reclamation yard last weekend and thought it looked lovely.  I resisted until today when I obviously decided it was imperative that I own an Imperial portable typewriter.  There it was sitting on the same bench – it was meant to be.

It does actually work and I’ve typed a few words but the carriage return sticks a bit, no matter, I think I have a long way before I publish my first novel.

I’m very pleased with my purchase, it was the typewriter or an iPad, how could I not.

We love this brand new ad for Stabilo pens. It’s due on TV from next week, and will be showing though the breakfast TV slots.

Today’s Big Bank Holiday Bonanza Competition is another photo competition! This time, we want you to ‘display your desks’…just tweet us a photo of your desk…it can be untidy, piled high with all sorts, or a gleaming example of minimalist chic.  There are no hard and fast rules for how we’ll pick the winner – it will simply be the desk that says something to us, that appeals the most in some shape or form.  So let’s see your desks….

The prize for today’s competition is shown above, a Modern Geometry business card holder and set of two pen pots.

As with previous competitions, we’ll add the entries to a gallery on this page, so you can see how the competition is shaping up as the day goes on…

UPDATE:  The winning desk is LitoApostolakou – congratulations!

Today’s competition takes the form of a doodle contest.  No artistic talent is necessary, just good old enthusiasm!  Create a doodle on the theme of ‘sunshine and holidays’ and then simply tweet your doodle to @papernation.

The winner will be announced at the end of today, and we’ll post entries here throughout the day.

HAPPY DOODLING!

UPDATE – 8.45 SUNDAY 30TH MAY

WE HAVE A WINNER – MrsTracey!

We know how many of you love your cats…so we thought we’d run a little cat competition!  The prize is the rather fabulous Cat Companion Journal, pictured here.

To enter, just tweet a photo of your furry feline friend (or friends) to @papernation, with a few cute details.  The winner will be chosen at the end of today (Saturday).

Here are the entries so far…

UPDATE – 29 MAY – 9.25PM

THE WINNER HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED – GIZMO!

As it’s Bank Holiday, we thought we’d go a little wild all weekend, with deals, special discounts and competitions. The excitement in the air at Papernation HQ is palpable.  Really.

Anyway, the first offer we have is FREE delivery on all UK orders throughout the Bank Holiday weekend.

Second offer:  10% off all sticky notes and memos.

More offers and competitions will be announced throughout the weekend!

Everyone who reviews one of our products online this weekend will be entered into a prize draw to win a £25 voucher to spend at Papernation! Just go the item’s main page, find the ‘Write Review’ button at the bottom, and tell us what you think!  Please add your email address to your review so that we can contact you in the event that you win the prize draw.   We’ll remove the email address from the review before it’s released for publication on our site, and we’ll keep the email address only until the competition is over.  That’s all there is to it, couldn’t be easier…

I think my heading of print show is a bit of an understatement.  Ipex is actually a showcase of the most cutting edge printing machines in the world and it made my eyes boggle and my head spin.  The show, held at the NEC in Birmingham, is on for a week finishing tomorrow, and comes to the UK every four years.  Some of the larger stands are enormous and must take thousands of square feet of floor space.  Heidelberg had one of the largest stands along with Canon and Kodak (who incidently were giving away a very stylish kodak yellow bag which I shall now use for my shopping).

I liked this large screen printing machine.  I’ve had a go at screenprinting and this made it look much easier – just press a button and away you go.

I also liked these enormous spools of wire which make the wire binding on notebooks.

My final photo is of the machine I deemed to look most like a Wallace and Gromit contraption.  Its purpose is to put inserts into envelopes and it probably costs hundreds of thousands of pounds – I hope the inventor won’t be too offended.

As you can see everything at this show was big, but surprisingly quiet.  It was very busy and there seemed to be lots of sold signs on the machines which can only be a good thing.  It’s probably only worth going if you have some interest in printing as there are no pocket money purchasing opportunities, monopoly money only.  If you’ve  missed it this time around I think you’ll have to go to Asia next year.

We’ve just got back from the National Stationery Show in New York,  one of the world’s biggest trade shows dedicated to stationery for home use.

We flew out from London last Friday and arrived in New York to be met with gloriously hot and sunny weather.  Our hotel was on the west side of Manhattan in a neighbourhood buzzing with loads of great bars and restaurants and a short walk from some great shops.

 We had Saturday to saunter around the city, before we had two days at the show, passing a fabulous farmer’s market in Soho which was full of fresh local produce – wine, cheese,  juices, fruit vegetables.  Everything looked so tasty …

We also came across the Bedford Barrow Commerce street fair which had stalls and music and food which was great fun.  New York seems to be full of different fairs throughout the spring and summer and so there’s always something to see.

On Sunday and Monday we spent our time at the stationery show looking at lots of fabulous stuff  – letterpress cards, notebooks, writing paper, notecards, the list goes on.   It was also a chance to say hello to some of our existing suppliers which visitors to our site will already recognise – Cavallini, Galison, Hello Lucky, Chronicle Books …

 We’ve come away with lots of  cool ideas and new products which will be added to our site over the next few months and so be sure to keep checking back.

Here at Papernation we sell a lot of travel journals to people who are jetting off to faraway places and to people who may be going camping in Devon for the weekend. Each will have great memories, unless of course you’ve picked the camping option and there’s torrential rain for the weekend, and then the memories perhaps aren’t so great – believe me.  

Anyway, as I had a great holiday in San Francisco at the end of last year I decided that I would have a go at creating my own travel journal. It’s still a work in progress but I thought that I’d give you a preview. It’s great fun cutting and sticking,  and it’s good to do something away from work, and it’s surprisingly relaxing.

Here are some of my first pages -  they might get a bit more sophisticated as I get more practised.

I cut some letters out of the  Sunday papers to make the words and I’m using  the travel album from our range. I had a desk easel calendar from Cavallini last year and it was full of vintage images of San Francisco so  I cut those out too – some of them mirror the photos that I took which is quite fun. I also had some butterfly stickers  which I used  to act as photo corners which brighten up the pages.  The photos of my album would have looked a bit dull on my desk and so I thought I’d use some world map gift wrap from Cavallini to act as the backdrop.  I think it’s set the photos off a real treat.