merry merry merry

my desk has become rather impractical and wonderfully colourful. strips of bright paper, bakers twine, sticky tape, and the mess of a year coming to an end. i am full of thanks for this mess. I am thankful for you. thanks for writing notes to family and friends, for choosing to celebrate a birthday with a poppies gift- you have given sara and i work to do and we are ever grateful and continually surprised that this is the life we get to live- dreaming, drawing and making. we wish you joy and laughter and time spent in the sunshine this christmas. my hope is that the love shared will cause us all to dream bigger, live better and continually figure out what it is to be truly human. i'll be sitting with toes dipped in sisters pool reading the chronicles of narnia again, my yearly ritual. xx ( photo is little boy lucas and his well loved bunny- can you believe i get to see those cheeks and chubby fingers every day)

a year planned out

Sara and I have big ideas for our new studio- all incredibly organised and pretty, no more piles of paper and chaos.
we're grown ups after all (found my first grey hair last week- then sara pointed out a second the next day)
in the spirt of all things organised our wall planners will be on sale for one week starting today. hooray for neat

i's and e's

oops- spelt poppies wrong in the email address- it is all fixed now, thanks for letting me know so quickly.
email alana@poppiesforgrace.com for the magnolia square secret word. x

magnolia square+poppies+lots of other pretty things

we will be setting up camp at magnolia square for four days of christmas fun- starting this thursday at 5pm. If you are a melbournite do stop by-it just happens to be one of the prettiest of market places. we have a secret word hidden up our sleeves, and if you whisper it to us (when you spend $30 on the stand) you will be carrying home a 2011 wall planner free of charge. If you'd like to know the word email alana@poppiesforgrace.com hehehehe- we are a little over excited by this bit of silliness. I'm rather impressed by my word choice. hope to see you there. with joy, alana & sara

a christmas time sale

up to 30% off selected gift items. woohoo. all you need to do is go to the sale section of our website from the 17th of November-30th of November. we think things like desk sets and sticky notes make pretty nifty teacher gifts, so of course these are included in the sale. woohoo again. now off to make a merry cup of tea xx alana

amy oliver photography

its always a delight to find photos in an email. here are a few treats from a recent email from sweet melbourne photographer amy oliver. i adore her style, the lighting is just dreamy. thanks amy for sharing these with us, its made our day.

wedding photos

we adore our photographer Armel- she takes our slightly clumsy ideas and makes magic out of them. click here and you will see her beautiful work. happiness. We are thinking that we had such fun that perhaps we should dabble in a bit of event styling in the future.

abc

my brother in law is one of those guys who likes to email beautiful, odd and silly photographs, or a link to a birthday invite to an exclusive destination and you can't clink on the 'yes' will attend button. ha ha phil, very funny. well today's email was about pencil carving. It took me by surprise. Worn, chewed pencils turned delightful. ah to be human, fingers covered in black, hours spent. xx

market to market

it's been forever since we last set up a trestle, this weekend poppies will have a stall at Christchurch Hawthorn, Denham Street Hawthorn. The market is a fundraiser for heal africa and along with the stand fee we will be donating 25% of all sales. There is a polling booth next door, so why not vote and wander over and say hello to Sara's sister Raechel. Everything will be at market prices, and hopefully you can buy homemade pickles and jams too. xxx

if poppies were a classroom

trade shows are always delightful. bright colourful things all around. sweet friends, long cups of tea and conversations about small, perfect moments. as always our dear friend rachel worked her styling magic and turned our 3 by 3 into a little poppies school room. in it we placed all our new things, including our christmas offerings. Another dear friend, artist Emma Morgan has designed a pigeon card series, sun shower invitation and a bashful donkey and lamb for christmas. heavenly. She will be popping prints of her work up in her etsy store soon. I'm bursting to get a print of the sun shower for lucas' room.

swallowed up

I did find just the right spot on the photo, as my creativity has been bursting out of me these last weeks.
there is a bird madly flapping about outside my window, very busy. I feel like we could be friends.
we are getting ready for our next show. my dear uncle left two boxes of christmas decorations I grew up with at my door- I have grand plans of putting them with our christmas things on the stand. the jolly round santa is even greater than i remembered. my little room is filling with smells of the past. makes happiness jump out.
i will be back with photos of santa and our school themed stand late next week.

we are on SALE
up to 70% off on all products.
Sale starts Monday 7th June until 30th June.
Limited stock available
xx

inspired to run

i saw this photo on a friends facebook page this morning and wanted to get in it. like another friends little girl who is forever trying to get into the books she loves (she stands on them, hoping they may swallow her up) i need to run through this field. i feel so completely uninspired to draw. i feel lazy and pulled in too many directions. maybe if i built a little hut on this field and took a week to myself i'd find passion returning to me easily. i know it would. now if i could only find the right spot so it would swallow me up xx

a little 2010 sale

our pretty little desk calendars and wall planners are now on sale on the poppies website. yay

trading

what a wild adventure i've just returned from. It started with long term parking at melbourne airport- a baby on the front, a bag on the back, a bag in the left and a stroller in the right. Turns out that my high school back pack etiquette memories have faded- i hit a business man in the head TWISE with it while he was helping us get on the bus!
Sydney was a delight- we stayed in paddington and watched sail boat on the water, ate icecream, ate pizza and ate the best friend rice in the world. It was an extra treat to have 5 days with kate (she is based in sydney). Unfortunately teething, an over stimulated 8 week old and a cold made things trickier than we hoped. thank goodness all the beautiful stores we are in are mainly owned by women- who understand this great task we have- the juggling of being mummy and worker of stationery. there was nothing but kindness as lucas projectile vomited at their feet, finley cried and they had to fill in their own order sheets.
sooooooo good to be home.
xx

babes

'the challenge for business leaders in the 21st century is to assume the mantle of spiritual elder for their cultures, so that life doesn't become trivial and grey for all the people who spend most of their life at work' - jim channon
certainly no dull moments at poppies.

mummy look at my wegs

new chairs for the studio= delight in a box for charlie and tilly.

this is perfect

I look at these flowers, and i must must must make something with those colours. maybe some writing paper or a spring card. jill thomas again. xx

the orchard

we moved out of our orchard house almost a year ago now. i dreamt i still lived there for months and months. I saw these photos yesterday and it made me think of home. it also made me think of inspiration- and what inspires me- what I steal from! I thought i'd share the pics, and i'll keep sharing. I have a folder on my computer that I drop things into to look at when I am starting a new project. do you do that? it works rather well to open it up and look at what you've collected over the weeks. Certain things always stand out to me, like a colour that links everything together. It reminds me of going hunting as a child- collecting all sorts of treasure- coloured feathers and discarded things. so here is my treasure for the day. When I look at the picture of the table I can't help but imagine what I'd add to it-and thus the process has begun.The wonderful photographer is called Jill Thomas

when three became four

forgot to mention sara had her little babe in december- sweet finely. how funny that we all have boys, I was so certain of girls. girls like pictures of flowers and birdies. charlie likes me to draw him bikes and trains. he also likes to be incredibly loud and 'crash' all day long. ohh the love.

life is no brief candle but a splendid torch

soooo the book i'm reading. i take notes. thats how much it is shaping me. it is wonderfully empowering. it is full of quotes like this: 'it is high time the ideal of success should be replaced with the ideal of service'- Albert Einstein. to serve- what a word for this day, when it is so easy to be all about me. I will aspire to get there. to live a good life. here are a few sentences i scribbled out madly- 'to actively do good'. 'work that fulfills us'. 'building communities based on interdependence and co-operation'. 'nurturing relationships that breathe passion into our lives'. 'compassion count as much as cashflow'. 'life is no brief candle. but a splendid torch'. 'everything we do matters'. everything we do matters makes my heart beat faster, we can live big lives- pouring ourselves out for the greater good. for community, for an end to poverty and we can do it in a way that is truly us. listen to this:
'any idea you have is like an extension of your personality and any company that you build yourself has your thumbprint on it. It's an extension of yourself. It is your alter ego'- Anita Roddick how enlivening is that! shy lani can make pretty stationery and it be full of the things that make me me. and it may just become large and successful and i can choose to continue to be me in that- by actively doing good and standing up for things that matter. like women. like small businesses, communities and creativity. like children, mothers and the importance of education and a full tummy. I feel very much alive today.

truth

Ended up clicking on a tweet from design tavern to this quote: "Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery- celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from- it's where you take them to"". - Jim Jarmusch.
Sometimes I worry that the wonderful people that read this blog or buy our things think we have made it in a way they could not, Its just not true- it is the new year- if this is the year you desire to start something creative, start it. Sometimes I wake up and sit down to work and feel like a fraud, I am not one who can sit with a pencil in hand and draw you something beautiful. it takes days or weeks for things to come alive for me. I own a lot of erasers and tracing paper. I am not brilliant, I am not gifted, I stumble on, because poppies makes me happy, I like to make things, do you?
I'm spending my nights reading business as unusual. the body shop story. get ready for some quotes out of the book- it has brought me to tears over and over and breathed hope into me.
looking forward to getting back to work.