White before Christmas

So it turned out not to be a White Christmas after all in London. After the madness I faced because of the snow I'm glad that it didn't snow again. This year was a very quiet holiday for us, just relaxing and watching loads of bad bad TV. I decided that with all the meat eating frenzy everywhere I'll give balance it out with not eating meat this year. And even though fish for me is technically meat I had a very fishy Christmas! Just the thought of no prawns or sushi was too much to handle.

Merry Christmas

Hope everyone has a wonderful time!

Postcard Teas

My never ending obsession for Postcards recently led me to the Postcard Tea Shop in the heart of London just off Oxford Street. They source out teas from small scale producers from India, Sri Lanka, Japan, China. The store not only sells amazing teas, hand made ceramics and other tea accessories but has a tea school where they have regular events & tastings. You can try any of their teas before you buy them.




But the icing on the cake for me is that you can actually post the different varieties of teas in a postcard shaped pouch to anywhere in the world!

Lizzie Allen hand printed wallpapers

When I come across products like Lizzie Allen's hand screen-printed wallpapers, I soo wish I wasn't living in a rented flat. Another one gets added to the wish list. *Sigh*

Vintage Treasure Chests

I came across these beautiful beautiful treasure bags and chests by Lisa Tilley at Origin earlier this year. All the bags & boxes are completely handmade with vintage and found objects combined with her designs.

Monster Monday @ Cuteable

Yay! The Pink Monster "My Cuppa" mug got featured on Cuteable!

The Londonereas Series

I came across these beautiful hand-printed silkscreen prints of original villages around the London area showing their shops & highstreet by illustrator VicLee. I really want the Clifton Road print as that's my neck of the woods.

FREE Worldwide Shipping

Yup from 26th - 30th Nov 2009. I'm offering FREE Worldwide shipping on all purchases from my Etsy Shop. Take advantage of this offer and you could have your very own limited edition hand-printed "My Cuppa" Mug.

Have a very Crafty Christmas

I was checking my google calender and realized that I've saved loads of Indie crafts fairs that I'm attending for my Christmas shopping. So I decided I'll share it and hopefully everyone can have a fun Crafty Christmas and have no excuse for buying crappy Christmas presents this year! :)

In no particular order:

1. Christmas Wednesdays on Columbia Road

This December All shops in Columbia Road will be opening for late-night shopping on Wednesday evenings.
Where: Columbia Road, EC2 When: Wednesdays 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd December, 5pm - 9pm

2. East London Design Show

Admission Fee: £4 but if you register they have a of 2 for 1 offer so you can go with mates & share the cost.
Where: Shoreditch Town Hall, 380 Old Street, London
When: 3rd to 6th December, 10am - 6pm

3. All I want for Xmas at The Old Truman Brewery

All the unique shopping experience kicks starts with a Thursday 26th Nov Late night shopping.
Admission Fee: Free
Where: Ely’s Yard, 15 Hanbury Street and 81 Brick Lane
When: Week 1: 26th - 29th November
Week 2: 3rd - 6th December
Week 3: 10th - 13th December
Week 4: 17th - 20th December

4. We Make London

Admission Fee: Free
Where: Chelsea Old Town Hall, Kings Road, London, SW3 5EE
When: Saturday 5th December, 11.00am- 5pm


5. Bust Craftacular London

Bust magazine bring around round of Craftacular. I came across Craftcular this summer but had already missed it out, so really looking forward to this one.
Admission Fee: £2
Where:York Hall, 5-15 Old Ford Road, London E2
When: Saturday 12th December, 12pm – 7pm

6. Craft Guerrilla Christmas Market


And if you are looking to try your hand at some crafting too, head to Craft Guerrilla's Christmas Market at Walthomstow
Admission Fee: Free
Where:William Morris Gallery, Lloyd Park, Forest Road, Walthamstow E17 4PP
When: Sunday 6th December, 11am to 4pm

I've created a map for all the fairs for easy directions.

Robochef is a cuppa too!

Here are a few pictures of the Robochef who happily agreed with me that he wanted to be a cuppa. My Etsy shop is up and running and is housing 10 limited additions Robochef 'My Cuppa' mugs.

It's finally here: My Etsy Shop

It's been a long winding road... with computer break downs & an almost full time job, I thought I'll never see the day but here it is... My brand new sparkling Etsy shop with my series of "My Cuppa" mugs. It's tiny at the moment but I have loads of ideas & plans for it, so hopefully in the next few weeks I'll have lots more stuff on it. So keep checking.

Project J&P

Last year around this time Mr.S & I were eagerly anticipating for our trip to New Zealand to visit Mr.S's family. And were especially looking forward to seeing our 8 year old nephew Joshua who we hadn't seen since he was 2. As a kid I was never allowed to touch my dad's camera and I as I guessed it, it was the same for J too. As I'm obsessed with photography, I decided that it was high time J had his own camera too. So for Christmas he got one from Santa.
All throughout our trip we went for many walks and took loads of pictures. I've been really missing our creative photography outing and decided to start Project J&P as a way to mutually inspiring each other. Each week I'll upload one picture each, of a topic decided before hand. I can wait to see what we comes up with? Hopefully both he and I will have loads of fun doing this.

How many cameras are too many?

Mr. S is usually very sweet and doesn't really say anything about my camera obsession but every now and then he'll frown about it if the fridge is filling up with all my different films and there's no place to keep food! But after looking at the amazing collection of cameras by photographer & camera collector Romuald Swieconek (more than 500 & counting) I don't feel as guilty of my humble number of 8. Check out his flickr photostream & camera collections here.

Vivian Maier - An extraordinary photographer

Self Portrait

I recently came across the extraordinary story & blog of Vivian Maier's photographs and it totally blew my mind. She died early this year and all her negatives (about 40,000) were bought by John Maloof in an auction in Chicago. Once he started scanning through all her negatives he got more & more intrigued & interested in finding out about her life. The blog is a dedication and is daily updated with her amazing medium format b&w photos of the streets of Chicago from the 50s to the 70s. Her photographs are a true inspiration to me, but it's so ironic that she'll never know that all her work is now being seen & admired by so many people.