Books, book, books

Let's talk about books.
I'm a big fan of reading. I find that I am transported to the world described in the story much more thoroughly than whilst watching films. I'm not reading the words on the page anymore, I'm actually there seeing everything happen. Until there is a typo. It feels like:

* * * TYPO * * *

Have you ever done that? Come across a spelling mistake in a book? I find it very jarring. I am yanked out of that world instantly and find myself looking a page. I wonder if that's why some people don't enjoy reading? Maybe it feels like hitting a typo... all... the ... time. If you never get into the flow I can see that reading a whole book would seem like a drag.

We've recently had a bit of a clear out. Our shelves were full, no, our whole house was full. of stuff. so we had to get rid of the things we weren't using and that meant a lot of books. Mainly books that we had read and probably wouldn't read again, or about things in which we are no longer interested.

It's sad parting with books. But many are hopefully finding new homes. We sent some to Amazon's trade-in programme and got some gift cards. Some went to charity and I gave a few to people at my work. The rest went to our local recycling centre where they will either be rescued or pulped to make more books.

Japan musings: Akihabara

Time for another post about Japan! This time Akihabara.

Akihabara was another place high on our list of places to visit. This part of town is known for its electronic shops and is without a doubt anime capital of the world. Our host laughed at us for wanted to go there as he thought it was pretty geeky and full of maid cafes. He was right. But we loved it anyway.

We wandered around the arcades playing on 'UFO catchers' and I had a go on Dance Dance Revolution. Then we hit up the anime shops. It's a while since we were super into the animes but we found plenty to look at and buy. I found a few pockets of Studio Ghibli merchandise which was nice since we didn't get to go to the museum (booo!).

We visited Manadrake which is generally seen as a bit of a mecca for the anime geeks. It has 7 floors! Though like a lot of places in Japan it was only a very small section of the building and the stair case was on the outside. There was a doll section with some extremely pricey specimens.

I bought my new 'polaroid' camera in one of the big electronics shops. It was probably the first time that I've ever been able to do tax-free shopping! In some of the big shops in London there are counters where you don't pay VAT  (or get the VAT back) if you are from outside the EU. It's only 5% in Japan but here in the UK its 20%.

We were given a lot of flyers for maid cafes, but we didn't go to any. Instead we settled on Mister Dount, they had Halloween x Hello Kitty doughnuts! Awesome.

As it got dark all the lights came on and it looked completely different to in the day. Less pastel and more neon, but still super cool.

Let's talk about Harajuku

Takeshita dori in the rain

I did say that I would tell you more about my trip to Japan. So today I thought I'd write about visiting Harajuku.

It was one of the things I really wanted to do in Tokyo. There are several reasons for this.
- Firstly, it's where all the 'kids' who dress up in crazy fashions and costumes are meant to hang out/shop.
- Secondly there is temple there, the largest in the city set in lots of trees.
- And (secretly) it was a also a bit of a pilgrimage for me from when I was really into Lolita/Japanese fashions.

We visited a couple of times. The first time is when I took the main picture here. It was raining when we came out of the station and I saw the sign for Takeshita dori. There was some building work going on to the left, but I still recognised the pedestrianised area heading down the hill into the street.

Noa cafe, that you can see on the right, serves delicious belgian waffles. I had apple and cinnamon with ice cream.

There is a little arcade nearby where they have Puri Kura (photo booth) machines. They seem to have progressed rather since last time I used one! I wanted to have a go whilst we were away so I got everyone in the cubicle and took some pictures.

Wow, it's a complicated business. The one I'd used previously took your picture, then you could add some stars and sparkles and that, then it printed it 16 times on a little sheet of stickers. This machine took full length portraits - so you could show off your outfit I presume. The main feature of all the machines seemed to be 'beautifying', things like, smoothing your skin and giving you bigger eyes. Our pictures were hilarious, but I liked the big eyes. Mine tend to disappear when I smile. The options afterwards when we got to 'edit' them where endless and there was a time limit so I didn't have time to look up what the instructions said. Haha. They printed out as two sheets of craziness and there were even QR codes to download them too. Great fun.

Anyway, back out on the street, it reminded me a lot of Camden Town in London. There are lots of shops selling goth-y clothes and souvenirs. Also, tourists.

Then I saw Closet Child.
(Ignore this part if you aren't interested in Lolita fashion.)
Closet Child is one of the main secondhand shops for Lolita clothing. It was amazing. The clothing is in immaculate condition and so much cheaper than it would be new. I was fawning over a beautiful Baby the Stars Shine Bright winter coat that was about £100. Absolute bargain. Then I remembered I don't dress like that anymore and it wouldn't go with anything. I said a heartfelt goodbye and moved on. Le sigh. I'm kinda glad. I could have spent a fortune in there.
There are three floors, the first (upstairs) was all kinds of Lolita, the middle is goth/punk type brands.

-- As an aside, I saw Moi-même-moitié's Cathedral print in real life. The material is hideous! It was expensive too, even secondhand.--

The top floor is less flamboyant Jane Marple and mori style dresses. In fact there are a few shops selling that kind of fashion at Harajuku. Next up was bodyline. We didn't stay in there very long as it was very crowded. Possibly because they have a lot of costume stuffs and halloween was coming up and seemed to be pretty big.

I also went to La Foret and saw the little boutique areas for Alice and the Pirates, Angelic Pretty and a few others. I don't speak Japanese but I suspect that some of the stunningly dressed assistants might have been pointing out that I was too old/fat to fit in their clothes, but I just enjoyed it for my ex-lolita-self.

After I'd done looking at cute clothes, we stopped in at the Neon Genesis Evangelion shop and picked up a few bits. Evangelion is one of my Husband's favourite animes, so he was happy.

The weirdest thing I saw at Harajuku was Pet Paradise a shop just for dog clothes - as in clothes for real life little dogs. I'm not a big fan of dressing up animals, but it's a massive trend in Tokyo, I saw lots of people pushing their pups around in little carts and most of them had some kind of clothing on.

I didn't get a crepe though, so I'll just have to go back.

Berlin + travel scrapbook/journal

Fresh Jam Book.

I've been talking about Japan a lot recently, but a couple of weeks before that adventure, we visited Berlin.

Actually we had this weekend in Berlin planned for quite a while and thought it would be our only trip this year. We had a lot of fun there but it has been eclipsed some what by the awesomeness of JAPAN!

Anyway back to Berlin. We took a cheap budget flight and stayed a great hotel. I decided this would be a good occasion to try out one of my new notebooks 'in the field' so to speak, so I made a little travel journal, a bit as we went, but mainly when we got home.

Check out one of the first Jam Books in action:

Japan musings: fact or ficiton

Whenever you go on a trip somewhere, you do a bit of research right? I'd done plenty of reading up about 'how things are' in Japan and it was interesting to see which things turned out to be true and which a bit of an exaggeration.

Here are a few things I noticed:

Wi-fi
What I read: that there aren't many wi-fi hotspots, even in Tokyo
What I found: this is still the case. We hired a portable hotspot to keep in touch and be able to check online maps etc. We used this one PuPuRu.

Smoking
What I read: that everywhere was really really smokey
What I found: it was okay, less smokey than when you could smoke inside here. You can't smoke in the street in Tokyo either so, thats quite nice.

People
What I read: that people on the whole are very polite
What I found: that people were on the whole very considerate, though I don't speak Japanese so I don't know if anyone was rude to me verbally ;) It was noticeable in public places like food courts; if someone left something to 'save' a table, no one would move it or sit there. I saw people leave anything from  a scarf or their hand towel (a little towel for drying your hands since they don't have paper towels in public toilets) to a baby.

Prices
What I read: that it is really really expensive to buy anything; that apples are £20
What I found: Tokyo prices were similar to other capital cities I've been to. Yes there was mega expensive fruit. I don't think I really ate any fruit whilst I was there. Except those amazing strawberry sweets. They count right? I love Hi-Chews.

There are probably more things. I wrote a post about toilets - yes there are super hi-tech ones, but also super low-tech.

Japanese toilets

I'll grant you it's a little bit odd to post a load of pictures of toilets, but I'm going to do it anyway.

Before we visited Japan I had heard about the electronic toilets, but encountering them everywhere was still amusing. It's one of those things that reminds you that places are still very different from each other as the world gets smaller.

They aren't really that difficult to work out, you just don't know what it's set to do automatically when you go in the cubicle! Sometimes the lid would open automatically, or sounds would play, or the seat would warm up. Some also had automatic flush functions, which seems like a really good idea, as long as it flushes at the time it's supposed too... otherwise...

They all had bidet type options, the symbols for those functions made it pretty obvious what would happen, but I didn't encounter any facilities that wanted to do it automatically, fortunately! Apparently a good tip if you do want to use them is to make sure you are sitting down before you press any of the buttons.

One of the toilets had a little basin on the top and the tap came on automatically after it had been flushed, that was quite a useful one.

On the other hand however I saw quite a few 'Japanese toilets', these remind me rather of old French toilets, but they have a slightly better design. The traditional Japanese loo is like a hole in the floor with a flush whereas the French one is more like a shower tray. Much easier to keep your feet dry with the Japanese version ;) Sometimes there would be lots of the old style toilet, then one labeled 'western style' which was usually a normal not-electronic loo. That was mainly at parks and temples, public areas.

I prefer the ones with all the buttons to the traditional style. I'm not sure having that many options on a toilet is necessary, but I rather miss the warm seat.

Japan travel journal/scrapbook

The last couple of times I've been away I've taken a few scrapbooking supplies along with the idea that I'll scrapbook things whilst I'm still there. This hasn't really worked if I'm honest. There's never any time to do it and I can only use photos that I take with my Instax camera.

What I have found is that I like having the book there. For one, it means that it has actually been to that country/place with me. It also provides a place for me to keep all the bits of ephemera I pick up and helps me be a bit more discerning about what to hold on to (I would keep everything ever: hoarder tendencies).

The other thing I've found useful is to do the writing whilst you are there. It's a lot more difficult to write about how you felt about something before you did it, when you've done it. Obviously there is room for reflection too, you can write about what you've learned etc when you are back home.

So lets get onto my Japan scrapbook. I wanted to make it ring bound so that I could add/move pages and a size that I could put 6x4 photos in. I made most of the pages from papers in the My Mind's Eye 'Spread your wings and fly' collection. The covers are sturdy book board and I had to use a crop-o-dile hole punch to get through it!  The overall size is about 5x7 inches.

This is what it looked like before we left:                    

Empty pages.

This is how it travelled:

I keep my books in these pouches from Muji.
I stick washi tape on the outside so I don't
have to take the whole roll with me :)

Here are some of the inside pages:

I like to have a title of some kind, but I tend to leave the front cover until I get home. Choosing a photo which symbolises the trip makes it more personal and although it won't tell the whole story it generally sets the tone for the rest of the book. I love this picture. It's not really of anything, but the colours and the light take me back there in an instant.

It's not finished of course. I rarely 100% finish a project. But I've enjoyed putting it together and it made me actually print some of my favourite photos. Plus I can continue to work on it when I want to look at Japanese things, so that's a win in my book.

New camera - Instax Neo Classic mini 90

Another reason I was excited about going to Japan was the release of this new Instax camera. I love my 'polaroid' camera. It's fun but it has extremely limited features. This new one has much more control. Just being able to turn the flash off it is real bonus. Plus it looks dead cool.

I don't think it'll be coming out in the US or the UK for a few months, so here are a few pictures if you are interested.

Here is the website: Instax Neo Classic mini 90
Now there is an English version too: Instax Neo Classic Mini 90

I took a few shots whilst we were on holiday and I got an extra pack of film for practising with. I've tried out a few some of it's great new features including:

Timer which is genius. Though it is fun getting strangers to take you picture. Everyone smiles when they see its an instant picture :)

Macro very pleased with this one. I like to take pictures of 'things' and being 60cm away was too far with my old instax. Very useful.

Party this is ace. Apart from a party is exactly where I want to take this kind of camera, the pictures come out better than the iphone. This is because the flash comes on 'later' in the photo - it means you don't get that super bright person in the foreground and a really dark background.

Bulb fun for taking light pictures but you can't hold it down very long.

Lighter/darker is difficult to judge before you've taken a picture and often you don't get a second chance!

Double exposure fun but can easily be over exposed.

Landscape okay, I've not tried this one yet.


And
It's about 100 times quieter. Switching my old instax camera on in public is a little embarrassing. haha

I also got a pack of Halloween themed film which, although I'm not sure we're going anywhere special this year, I couldn't resist.

I've just been to Japan.

Akihabara at night

Yes, in real life.

I've spent many hours dreaming of visiting Japan. Probably starting about ten years ago when I was watching a lot of anime. Then a few years later when I got interested in Japanese fashions. More recently I've been excited about the craft and stationery coming from there.

I always had a fond idea that we might go for our honeymoon. Until I actually started planning a wedding realised how much it costs! (I have no idea how people pay for a 'holiday of a lifetime' and a wedding in the same year.) As it turned out, that was the year of the awful earthquake/tsunami and following nuclear disaster at Fukushima. Not the ideal time for a visit.

So how did we end up going to Japan? We had an opportunity to stay with someone who is living out there and off we went! We booked the flights and a month later, on our 2nd wedding anniversary, we set off. I'm glad we had a bit of time plan, but not too long to wait.

It was a fantastic trip. We got to see some awesome things first hand, both traditional and pop culture. Our adventures covered parts of Yokohama, Shibuya, Harajuku, Ginza, Odiba, Akihabara and Takao mountain. Tokyo is the coolest place I've ever been. Before this trip it was New York, which is a pretty amazing city in itself.

Stay tuned to hear more about our trip. Including what it was like at Harajuku and my favourite sushi place of all time.




 

Jam books

I love paper.

I love it as a crafter, as a graphic designer and as someone who buys lots of notebooks and stationery.
For a long long time now I've been threatening to open a little online shop to sell some of my designs. Maybe.

I'm mainly planning on making paper products, and possibly some digital things you can print out at home.

This is my first 'product', I'm still perfecting it, but this is the first one I've been happy with. It's a small notebook/sketchbook with different papers inside. I call it a Jam book because you can just jam stuff in them. But also it helps 'preserve' your ideas. Get it? Preserve? Well I thought it was funny.

I really like notebooks with dots or squares instead of lines so I've made one like that. And I like books that have different pages in the same book, so I've tried that too.


I'll let you know if I ever get to, you know, actually putting them in a shop.

Project Life

Way back in the spring I ordered some Project Life supplies. When I ordered it was quite difficult to get in the UK and only one place was importing them. Since then Becky Higgins has partnered with American Crafts so the distribution is way better and you can buy it all over.

I pre-ordered the Midnight edition 'core kit' and a huge 12x12in binder. I won't lie, I was a little disappointed when it arrived. The cards are more like paper, some of the pockets were too small to fit cards in and there were even typos in the printed materials! The company I ordered with did send me replacement pocket pages which was good, but so many people were talking about, I thought it would be top quality. 

I decided to start using it anyway. I don't think there is anything wrong with it, I was just expecting something a bit different. It's odd when you don't see things before you order them. You get an idea in your head of what it will be like. Especially when they seem really expensive.

It's actually a good system. I like how it looks and the flexibility. I get that the cards have to be thin or you wouldn't be able to lift the album. 

And I love the yellow.

Here are a some of my recent 'spreads'. I just fill as many pockets as I like rather than filling two pages per week. Sometimes I do lots and sometimes not so much, but there is always food.

Now I am concerned that if I keep going I'll fill this album, and then what? If I fill one every six months, where would I put them?

A rare visit to the flea market

There are lots of blogs about vintage 'finds' these days. People seem to find all kinds of great things at markets and fairs which are stacked with stunning stuff.

There is a flea market in my town every week on a Thursday. Not one of those cool, hipster, look at all the great vintage stuff, type flea markets. Just the type where people sell old stuff on market stalls. I used to go quite regularly when I was younger. There was a stall just selling old buttons off uniforms. Once I bought some shockingly awful furry green curtains... but that's another story. 

Since I now have to travel a bit further for my job, I can't even visit on a lunchtime so it's rare that I get to have a trawl round the stalls. Today I happened to be off work and in town so I couldn't resist having a look. 

Check out what I found. It's a double-decker test tube rack. I'm not sure it's particularly old or anything. Maybe it's from a chemistry set? It has three rows of glass test tubes, two on the front and one on the back. The row on the back are all different shapes and stored upside down. 

I cleaned it up a bit and put a single rose in each tube. It would probably be nicer with some more delicate looking flowers, but roses were available, so I tried them first. Pretty, no?

Making rubber stamps

Remember my nearly totally free stamps I made before? Well this is a bit of a step up. You have to buy the rubber to cut them from. But they are still pretty simple to do.

My friend Em was really awesome and organised a crafty gathering at her house. Just in case you are thinking, that sounds really great ... well, it was! This is pretty new for me, I've not known a lot of people who are into the crafts before so I was excited to meet some new folks and give this one a go together.

It seems like its best to go for a simple design and to use a scalpel/craft knife to cut away the excess rubber. We tried it with lino cutting tools too, but the lines came out really wobbly :( The rubber is like a high quality eraser in a big flat sheet. A little softer maybe. You can cut it down with scissors.

I made a new set of 'flags' since I miss the cardboard ones I made before. They have a high-easiness-to- impressiveness factor. By that I mean they are easy to cut but look way cool. I also made a cloud that was a bit more difficult (curves!) and a cute little camera for when I get round to some more scrapbooking.

Em has written something a bit more like a tutorial if you are interested. Check it out on her blog.

Comic Relief macarons and cupcakes

This year for Red Nose Day a group of people from my work decided to participate in the Comic Relief Bake Off.

It wasn't a competition or anything, we just arranged to each take a day and bring in some treats. We put out a donation box and raised some cash for a good cause.

I made these vanilla cupcakes with a cherry on top and bright red macarons with a white chocolate ganache filling.

I was concerned that folks might not fancy them being that RED but they disappeared very quickly, in fact only crumbs remained by 11am. You gotta move fast at my work when macarons are on offer!

Chalkboard art - my first attempts

I'm not usually one for going with a trend, but this one has tickled my fancy. It's 'chalkboard art'. We always called them blackboards when I was at school, but now its all interactive whiteboards.

Anyway, I've made a Pinterest board with a few of favourites so far on it. Some of the best examples around at the moment are by Dana Tanamachi  an artist/designer based in Brooklyn.
 
I'm not great at drawing generally, but I do a lot of typography, so I thought I'd have a go myself. I actually drew this in pencil and used a little photoshop magic to get the effect, but I might get round to using actual chalk after a bit more practice. This photoshop tutorial is very helpful for getting the effect.

I'm quite pleased with it for a first attempt. What do you reckon?

Italy travel mini-album scrapbook

I put together some pages about our trip to Italy. It seems a very long time ago now, but I wanted to show you some of the pages since I talked about what supplies I was going to use here.

I've been trying out different page shapes for scrapbooking. I've only actually put together one 12x12 page which is the main page size nowadays. For this book I choose 12x6 inches. It's very wide!

I've not finished the covers for it yet, but here are some of the pages:

Making a tiny 'project life' style album

I have seen a lot about the Project Life scrapbooking system and wanted to try the idea out for myself without investing in a lot of expensive stuff. So I made this smaller version.

I used this folder which is available from Paperchase. It's the same one I used for my December Daily which you can see here. You can also get a range of pages and some plastic pockets from Paperchase too. They have a full page pocket and one for two 6x4 photos. It's a three ring binder, which we don't use a lot here, but I just use a single hole punch to get the holes in the right places where I used paper pages.

I enjoyed having a go at this so I think I will go ahead and pre-order one of the new editions which are coming out this year.

New project: Italy scrapbook

If you've been reading a while you may know that I got married a couple of years ago. My new Husband and I went on a trip to Italy for our honeymoon and had a fab time. We travelled by train a lot and saved lots of tickets, maps and other bits and pieces. Unsurprisingly we also took hundreds of photos! We've never printed out any of the pictures. I'd like to get a nice photo book done but in the mean time, I'm going to choose a few and make a scrapbook.

Since January is generally a bit of a ... frugal month, I've spent a lot of time picking the right supplies for this new project. I want to use some things I've already got but also add a few bits to bring it all together. In the end I chose some papers and tabs from Pink Paislee's Portfolio collection and a great stamp made by Kaisercraft. I really like yellow at the moment so I've gone for a yellow, grey and turquoise colour scheme. Hopefully it will work well with the pictures and stories I want to tell.

Book list 2012

Last year I recorded all the books I read for fun. I wondered how many I'd get through and whether they would be new to me or mainly old favourites. Here is the full list from 2012. I've copied it from my 'Books tab' so that I can start filling that with 2013's list.

So assuming I remembered to write them all down I got through 35 novels, nowhere near my target of 50 (seems like I really slowed down in the second half of the year). 22 were new to me and 12 were re-reads. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline was one of my favourites and will probably appear in my re-reads list next year. 

What was your favourite from last year?

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What have you been reading? At the beginning of 2012 I decided that I would keep a list of all the books I read during the year. I wonder how many I'll get through? I'd like to find a book club too so hopefully I'll be reading some books I wouldn't normally pick up.

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It's August now and I've read 26 books this year. I think 50 would be a good target. I've joined and left a book club. I was reading books I didn't like, what's the point of that? Maybe I'll find another I like more.

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(r) means that I'm re-reading a book from my bookcase
(book club) means someone else chose it


The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (r)
Virtual Light by William Gibson (r)
Idoru by William Gibson (r)
All Tomorrow's Parties by William Gibson (r)
The Dark Tower: Gunslinger by Stephen King
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (r)
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (book club)
Kraken by China Miéville
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (book club)
The Door into Summer by Robert Heinlein (r)
How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Márquez (book club)
Lightborn by Tricia Sullivan
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (r)
The Technician by Neil Asher
The Traveller by John Twelve Hawks 
Death of an Expert Witness by P.D. James
Pure by Julianna Baggott 
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline 
Mockingbird by Walter Tevis
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Burton and Swinburne in the Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder
Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne  (r)
Original Sin by P.D.James
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens  (r)  not all the Christmas books - the others are rubbish
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer  (r)
New Moon by Stephenie Meyer  (r)
Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer  (r)
Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer  (r)

December Daily

Have you ever made a rule for yourself that was totally arbitrary?

I decided that the next thing I would put up here on my blog would be my December Daily album. Turns out that was not such a great idea. It's taken a little longer than expected and I've missed posting lots of other Christmas stuff in the mean time using my stupid rule as an excuse. Maybe I'll add some of those things in later (my blog, my rules, right?).

Anyway, let's back up a bit. Last year I started getting interested in Scrapbooking. Ali Edwards (who I've talked about before) does a project every Christmas called December Daily. It records a story a day from the 1st to the 25th or the 31st of December. You can choose what ever format you like, so there's nothing to buy, which is handy and I love Christmas so I thought I'd have a go myself.

I used a 6x8 inch folder from Paperchase and started making some pages to fit inside in November. It's still not quite finished. I knew I wouldn't have time to do each page on the day, there's lots going on in December, which I suppose is part of the point?

Here are a few pages from my album. It was really fun putting it together, just playing with paper without any pressure for it to be perfect. I tried not to buy lots of extra stuff either, I bought one 6x6 paper pad and some wooden embellishments. The rest is things I already had or picked up along the way. I got all the photos printed at Boots every four or five days, they are mostly 4x3 inches. I arranged two pictures per 6x4 'photo' and just got them printed normally.

December Daily cover

Title page - I'm going to put my name on that tag and finish the
inside cover at some point

December 1st was pretty busy

December 2nd

December 4th - not so exciting

December 16th - THe Muppet Christmas Carol at the cinema

December 20th - the bottom right bit is not finished, but I love the rest,
so I thought I'd include it :)