by Amber on January 7, 2010
Way back when I was 6-years-old, I received this Babar The Elephant diary as a gift. An any year diary, it appears that I have been waiting almost 20 years to find the perfect one. There’s not even a single pen mark in the book! I guess it goes to show I have always had the fear of ‘ruining’ beautiful notebooks with silly scribbles.
The character Babar the elephant was created by French writer and painter Jean de Brunhoff in 1931. The basic premise is thus: Babar loses his mother to a hunter, wanders into the city of Paris, gets adopted by a little old lady and procures a new wardrobe, becomes the hit of high society, wanders back to the jungle and is crowned King of the Elephants.
While I want-want-wanted a pack of 12 colourful Moleskines, I can’t really justify spending that much on stationery when I have so many blank books lying around the house – plus Babar is mighty cute.
Any year? Now is good!
This sums up my aim for 2010 – more conscious consumerism, more reuse/recycling and of course, more charm. It’s important that we all think about how we can impact the world less, by reexamining discarded objects and previously loved good, but at the same time BRING THE CUTE.
Here’s some more sweet Korean stationery for you all to lust over. Millimeter/Milligram aka MM-MG makes cards, card holders, bags, pen and other lifestyle accessories, all with quirky, sunny messages.
There are a lot of products to choose from on the site (and ooh yes, they ship internationally, but I managed to narrow it down to a few favourites:
- Sticker sets – salp them on your laptop, your notebooks, your nose… the colour wheels are awesome!
- Matryoshka cards – write a darling note – they’re for all occasions, including Christmas.
- Business card holders – a smart secretary in your pocket? Well okay then – as long as it’s got a happy cup and a sun on it.
As they say: “We create the good quality of product, which has beautiful stories”. It’s everyday sunshine!
While browsing at my local magazine store recently, I came across these lovely notebooks from o-check (from what I gather, they are a Korean design house):
Cloth bound journals with nice porous pages for your inky thoughts. You can buy these journals and a whole range of delicious stationery from their (poetically named) online store – and spring. Blank pages full of promise – perfect for fresh starts, new seasons.
by Amber on October 30, 2008
Ahh, such gorgeous hairy men! There is something to be said for well kept facial hair. It denotes that the wearer (beard farmer, mo owner?) is a conscientious sort of chap with the right attitude towards style.
If you need a few tips on getting your own facial forest up to scratch, the commenters at Life Hacker generally advise: shaving with hot water, using a proper shaving soap and soothing your skin with aloe-vera afterward.
A trip to the barbers for a proper wet shave will never go astray either; I have heard reports of scruffy boys going in, then coming out feeling and looking a million dollars!
It’s a serious subject – so important in fact that international whisker competitions are held regularly (the thought made me giggle)! Check out this gallery of the best in the beard games at National Geographic.
For those of us lacking in this department or lacking in creativity, I present five moustache pencils: Salvador, Zorro, Burt, Django and Clark – as seen in the flesh above. A cheap Halloween outfit? Movember on the fly? Oh, the endless possibilities!
