Fall Imagery | Pheasants

I noticed this pillow the other day in a new catalogue that came to my door. It sure reminded me of one of our best selling Autumn cards. Growing up in Scotland I certainly saw my fair share of pheasants at this time of the year. There seems to be lots of them in thanksgiving decor this year. 

Inspiration | Pier 1

Colourful, inexpensive, cheery gift items from Pier 1. Love the elephant door mat.

Window Shopping | Deadly Squire Getaway bag

Super cute, though a tad expensive, bag from Deadly Squire via Peek Keep.

Inspiration | Casamidy

I found myself at Casamidy yesterday via Bohemian Funk . I was so inspired by their work and the incredible images on their site. It took me ages to pick out the samples that i wanted to feature here this morning. And even now I have more that i need to post about next week. This folk arty metal work is so cool and the design icons and elements are ancient - but current. This must be why I got so charged up by their work yesterday. Hope you love it too.

Casamidy is based in Mexico. Hope you have time to check out their work soon.

Inspiration | Amy Chin

Brilliant styling by the very talented Amy Chin via  Oficina de Pintura. Great link, thank you very much. Nice pink knickers too.

Cartolina Open House

{Just bumping this up} We are having a fun little OPEN HOUSE at the studio on Sunday afternoon between 2pm and 5pm. We'd love to see you all there (but have a feeling that it might be a long trip for most of you! ) I do know I have quite a lot of local readers so if any of you would like to come we'd love to see you. Lots of great deals on product and a great excuse to socialize! You'll even get a sneak peek at all our new cards and notebooks that we will be releasing in a couple of weeks (and I'll be posting about here, next week.) If you need directions, or any more details, just email me. See you then!

Random Objects | Lithophane tea cups

I had coffee with my friend Linda yesterday and she commented on the photographs of the hand painted signs that I posted here on Monday. She too has stopped many times in Greenwood on her way to Vancouver and admired the old store signage. She told me a story about a small treasure she had found in Greenwood a few years ago. There are a couple of junk stores in Greenwood and like any good junk collector she can't drive past without stopping for a quick visit. This one time she purchased a sweet little Japanese tea cup, got back in her car and headed off to the coast. It wasn't until she had got home and unwrapped her tea cup that she realized that she had found something special - a lithophane!

See the beautiful image of the woman in the bottom of the cup? It's only visible when you hold the cup up to the light!

Linda did some research and found that these cups are quite rare but you can find them now and then on Ebay. The image on the base of the cups is made by embedding a 3 dimensional porcelain carving into the smooth, fine finished porcelain cup. You can't tell the image is there at all until you hold the cup to the light. Though you might like to see this today - I had never even heard of a Lithophane until now - had you? Now I am going to hold every tea cup up to the light to see if there's something hiding in there.

A few fun things from Free People

I really like this cool sweater belt from Free People, it's so pretty and comfortable. haven't seen anything else like it. Here are a few other things that caught my eye. That gift-giving time of the year in fast approaching folks!

More fabby tights from Free People too ( the last ones I posted here were a big hit ). I check out their site quite often, always really like the energy over there. They have such a genuine, hippy trippy, boho vibe going on (and of course I live in the MOST hippy trippy place so I recognize it when I see it!)

Blogger with a camera | My Nottinghill

I was happily trolling through my usual morning blog roll when I came across these fabulous photographs by Michele at My Nottinghill. Michele had gone to Shore Haus in Delaware and taken these great shots. The first one is absolutely perfect don't you think? Whoever is doing the styling in this store deserves a big blue ribbon for their work - maybe Cafe Cartolina will have to start dishing out the ribbons to all those talented display artists that inspire us to be constantly shuffling things around our living rooms..

I went to Shore Haus's web site on a mouse-clicking frenzy and found some other great design sites such as this one above at Oly Studio in Berkely CA.

Random Objects | Rubber boots.

I was checking out one of our newest retailers in Brooklyn and I found some very cool things including this perfect pair of rubber wellies for this perfectly wet season. From Neda  - 2 locations in Brooklyn, where it's probably raining.

Random Objects | Seda France

I had sort of forgotten how beautiful the packaging is on Seda France products until I saw them on my little getaway last week. I was given one of their candles as a gift a number of years ago and I still have the pagoda box because I love it so much. The candle was pretty nice too!

A few days away | Wine Country

So we took a few days off last week to celebrate that we had finished designing all our new products. Everything is off to the printer and most of our big Xmas orders are shipped to retailers all ready - phew, it has been a very busy 6 weeks!

We headed to wine country which is about a 4 hour drive from here in the Okanagan valley. Its a great drive and we stayed at a little, lakeside, boutique hotel that we love called the Eldorado. Here is a picture of the original Eldorado and then, the modern Eldorado. It is very stylishly vintage inside with lots of great old furnishings and pictures combined with modern comfort and luxuries.

This is the breakfast room, above, with the original rowing boats on the ceiling(they even have the shoes in them!) The windows on the left look out to the lake. The walls and ceiling are original wainscotting and the floors are reclaimed fir. It's a lovely spot to have breakfast.

We took a great trip out to the Quails' Gate Winery and had a superb meal(and wine!) at the gorgeous, new, post and beam Old Vines restaurant looking over vineyard. We had read a great review of the restaurant in the Wine Spectator and the New York Times so we were excited to go - and it didn't disappoint. It was perfect! They also have a great little store at the winery in this cute, original log cabin. All the views are to the Lake, it's just lovely! Can't wait to visit again in the summer.

Inspiration | Vintage Signage

When we were driving back from wine country in the Okanagan Valley yesterday we stopped in the quiet little village of Greenwood on our way back to Nelson. Most people just stop for a coffee at the Copper Eagle and keep going on their way west. We took a wander with our coffee and the camera and took a few pictures of some great hand painted store signage on the main street. There's not much going on in Greenwood these days - it used to be wealthy little silver mining town in the 1890s and there's not much left now. But the signs are GREAT!

Peterson's Grocery is all boarded up and I don't think anyone has been in there for a long time. I managed to catch a glimpse of some great old original store counters in a wonderful robin's egg blue with rusty old hinges and drawer pulls . . . boy I'd like to have those!  Everything's covered in a layer of dust and I betcha no ones been in there for years.