Lie down I love you too

This is my beautiful new Lie Down I Think I Love You bag. It's a rich chocolate brown leather and comes with its own unique, hand-sourced vintage scarf. I've had the grey version, which I still love, for a year or so. It's really quite worn now though and stained with pink felt tip pen, oops. I promise I'll take better care of this one.

Mattijs van bergen, ruffles & cake

I've had the earrings pictured for a few months and I've been wearing them to death. So I was especially happy to see that, according to Vogue.com's oracle 2008, the fashion detail for 2008 is The Ruff. Illustrating the point is a delicious design from Mattijs Van Bergen's Central Saint Martins MA graduate collection. According to his website, the collection is based on the 'colours and layers of cakes and ice cream', no surprise then that I love it.

M.I.A. coming back with power power!

I was really lucky to see M.I.A. perform the other night. The show was a brilliant mix of her music (grime, hip-hop, ragga, dancehall and electro) and her crazy, powerful visuals. Take a look at her site if you haven't seen it but be warned, it's pretty intense!

Red Beret

When I was little, about six years old, when all my friends had nice little Bobble hats, I had a Beret. I had two actually, a white one and a red one, my mum had somehow convinced me to wear them. So, needless to say, I'd hated them ever since.

Dispite that, the new trend for wearing Berets pulled down, rather than the jaunty french style my mum showed me, I do like. And I've seen some in Topshop. Where's my credit card...?

Wrapped up

Every Christmas I like to have a different theme for wrapping presents. Last year I used wood grain paper and made paper holly leaves, with berries as decoration. This year I'm a bit short on inspiration. I really like the look of these presents wrapped in newspaper with doilies and ribbon but I can imagine in real life they won't look quite so stylish... oh and I must remember to get Sellotape!

Coping with clients

I'm realising the better I get at my job, the harder it is to take client criticism and requests. I thought it would be something I would learn to cope with, not so. I feel more justified in my decisions and opinions with some years of experience behind me. Hmmmm, does that mean I'm actually getting worse at my job then?

I'm going to read How to be a graphic designer without using your soul by Adrian Shaughnessy... and the Stupid Client Quotes on Clientcopia to cheer me up. It's not just me, honest, some clients really are twats.

Tumblelogs

I've just finished customising my new tumblelog, White Words at Tumblr. Tumblelogs are stripped down blogs, a collection of links, quotes and photographs. Kottke describes them as 'a quick and dirty stream of consciousness'. I'm using mine as a scrapbook for thoughts and interesting things I find. I'm hoping it will be a good way to collect things I can elaborate on here. I've intergrated my del.icio.us and twitter feeds too.

Christmas mini-muffins

We popped into Habitat today and I found these sweet little silicone mini-muffin cases. So I made some Christmas cranberry and white chocolate muffins. Mr Brown ate 6 in a row!

This is for me

Yesterday Mr Brown gave me a copy of Rob Ryan's beautiful book, This is for you to celebrate our two years together. It's a collection of his exquisite paper cuts, telling the tale of his longing for someone to love.

See more of Rob's work at [misterrob.co.uk] including his work with Paul Smith and album cover art for Erasure.

Penguin Covers

These beautiful Penguin and Pelican covers are from Joe Kral's extensive collection. This style of cover, from the 60s and & 70s, is designed on the Marber Grid, which unifies the Penguin Books from that era.