Here are two great competitions that encourage children to improve their reading and writing skills.

First is The Times Spelling Bee - this is the UK’s first national spelling bee and it’s bound to be wildly popular.  Schools will compete in local knockout rounds before reaching a national final in June next year.  There’s still plenty of time to enter your school, so check out the Spelling Bee info page now!

The second competition is Off By Heart - it’s a poetry recital competition for children aged from 7 - 11.  The later stages of this national competition will be shown on BBC TV, and the final will be compered by Jeremy Paxman.  There’s plenty of information on how to enter at the BBC’s Off By Heart competition page.  Closing date is 19th December 2008.

Even today, more than 30 years later, I can still recite the poem I learned by heart for a primary school review. There’s something about learning poetry by heart that’s amazingly satisfying, and there’s something about young children that means they are usually exceptionally good at it.

We’ve been very quiet on our blog over the past couple of months. Silent, in fact.  That’s because we’ve been busy relocating to Bristol.  

We’re now fully installed in a new warehouse here in Bristol, and we’re loving life and work in the city.  Expect more blog posts detailing the fabulous sights and sounds, culture, people and places that make Bristol such a great place to be!

Normal blog service is now resumed!

Maybe you have to be a certain kind of typography geek to enjoy this video, but it makes me laugh so much….

We all know that recycled paper is used paper that has been reprocessed into fresh new paper, but what about rescued paper?  

Put simply, rescued paper is paper that has had one life but is retrieved and re-used without being processed into new paper.  If you use a scrap of used paper to take a phone message on the clean side, then you’ve rescued that paper and squeezed an extra use out of it before it goes into the recycling!

Sukie are pioneers of rescued paper stationery - their clever rescued paper notebooks are made in India using all sorts of discarded paper - office paper, envelopes, packaging papers etc.  The paper sheets are folded double so that any printed area is hidden, leaving blank paper pages to write on.

Recycled paper is obviously a great thing, but if we can squeeze an extra use out of used paper before it goes for recycling, then even better!

Anyone can rescue paper - from the smallest scrap to huge quantities.  We’ve recently rescued literally a tonne of paper from a local printing firm which was closing down - they were planning to dump their entire paper stocks before we offered to take it!   We’ve got lots of plans on what to do with all that lovely paper (watch this space…), and we’ve already given some of it away via Freecycle, to be used in children’s activity projects in our local area.

One of our favourite suppliers, Hello! Lucky were recently interviewed for US craft site, craftzine.com.  It’s a great video describing how founder Eunice Moyle got into the letterpress business, and detailing what their typical day is like - letterpress printing their gorgeous stationery, creating new designs and apparently having lots of fun doing it!

Just a very quick post to say that we’re thrilled to announce the arrival of the absolutely fabulous Cavallini calendars and diaries for 2009. 

This year, we’re stocking every design in both the wall calendars and the easel calendars, as well as every colour of the super-chic Moderno diaries.

It might seem hard to believe, but these calendars and diaries are already selling - even though it’s only early August.  They are so sought-after, we expect that we’ll sell them all well before the end of the year - if last year is anything to go by.  So if there’s a particular design that’s your absolute favourite, be sure to buy early.

When they’re gone, they’re gone!

View all Cavallini Calendars

View all Cavallini Diaries

I imagine that this little poem won’t appeal to all, but for those who like words here’s something that has stayed in mind years after I heard it for the first time.

I lately lost a preposition
It hid, I thought, beneath my chair
And angrily I cried, “Perdition!
Up from out of in under there.”

Correctness is my vade mecum,
And straggling phrases I abhor,
And yet I wondered, “What should he come
Up from out of in under for?”

Morris Bishop, New Yorker, 1947

Travel journals are a great way to store memories from your trips and holidays. But it can be quite daunting to start a travel journal from that first blank page. Here are some tips to get you started:

1.  Decide whether your travel journal will be a personal one or something that you’ll show to friends and family when you get back - if it’s always going to be a personal journal, you can write freely and let your writing go wherever it wants.

2.  Try to write something every day, whilst on your trip. Get into the routine of writing daily, and don’t leave it until five minutes before you want to go to bed!

3.  Add physical things to your journal - tickets, photos, postcards, leaves - anything that makes an impression on you or that will evoke a vibrant memory later on.

4.  Try to avoid a list-based approach that merely states where you went on which day…instead, describe how things made you feel,  snatches of overheard conversations, people you met, smells and sounds.

5.  If you’re short of inspiration at any time, pick a theme for that day.  Ideas might include food, wildlife, people you see, shopping, local news - anything that takes your fancy!

6. Don’t worry unduly about whether your writing style is perfect or your spelling is impeccable - just enjoy your trip and write about it as it happens and as it feels to you.

Sometimes children can find writing boring - it’s associated with school and homework and exams, after all.  But with some encouragement, and some real reasons to write, kids can see writing as something fun and enjoyable.

Here are five ideas to get your own kids enthusiastic about writing:

1. Kid’s Book List - kids love lists, and this book will help them track and write reports on the books they read
2. Thank You Cards - teach good old-fashioned manners by helping them to write thank you cards to friends and family after birthdays, Christmas and any other treat or gift occasion
3. Themed Writing Paper - this always helps with kids’ enthusiasm!  Our Charlie and Lola kits have stickers too, to embellish those letters to Grandma.
4. Autograph Books - I’m sure all kids go through that phase of wanting to collect autographs of famous (and not-so-famous) people
5. Travel Journals - not just for the grown-ups!  Guide your kids into doing something creative on holiday - it might even keep them quiet for a while!

Well, this is just a quick post to say hello and welcome to Papernation’s shiny new blog.

We’ll be chatting about all things paper and stationery, as well as providing helpful hints and tips, special offers, sneak  previews of new products and lots more.

Need to know more about paper sizes? Want help on how to word your thank you notes? Not sure about the pros and cons of hardback versus softback journals?  Well, we’ll be giving our humble opinions along the way to hopefully help and guide you through all of these and more.