Paperless Post - beautiful illustrations for customisable online stationery

I'm really into illustration work, each week I pore over my Pinterest boards looking at watercolour and vector designs, then I look at designers showcasing their work on both You Tube and Instagram. It's interesting to see trends like the unicorn craze still ongoing and geometric and botanical patterns. These designs are great for inspiring party invitations, wedding invites and all kinds of cards but where can you find such current on-trend work to use for your own stationery requirements? Also, with everything being so much online, the ability to create invites and send them out by easily is solved by the customisable stationery company Paperless Post.

You can create a personal element with Paperless Post's categories that enable you to quickly and easily have invites sent out for a party or send a cool greeting card to say thank you or Happy Birthday or just I'm thinking of you...... All you do is purchase digital coins and then use them to go create, you even can choose the most perfect online envelope design complete with stamp.

Every step of the way is full of choices with Paperless Post. You can select the font type, add your own photos to some designs and choose the background colour to your invite/card. I love this one for my son's birthday party with cheery colourful animals. 

Paperless Post has partnered with several world-famous designers and lifestyle brands, including kate spade new york, Oscar de la Renta, Jonathan Adler, and Rifle Paper Co to provide you with beautiful designs that you will be spoilt for choice over. As well as designing an invite for my son's birthday, I looked at a card for moving address (eeeek!)  and as you know I love Halloween so I was really excited to see some exciting cards for me to send later this year to my fellow pumpkin loving enthusiasts. Doesn't this one look cute with the candy corn design and really striking against the black and yellow envelope. 

Paperless Post has delivered over 85 million cards to date and what a environmentally friendly way to send cards and invites. The process is an easy one that you choose all the elements that you like and then select the recipient(s) and off it goes..... There is a simple RSVP service too to make organising events super easy.

The illustrations are very very varied and current with that cool independent vibe. To help with the design process you can run through a test sending of the card - a very smart user interface indeed.
Great thing is that the reply card option offers an RSVP tool to manage replies, has an attendee list and a comment wall for their replies. It's a great way to assist with your events.  I like the service from Paperless Post very much and I have to admit that I hate sending actual cards quite bothersome so this suits me completely and the designs were a big hit for me in comparison with what I see in card shops, much more design led and exciting.

I received credits for the purpose of the review, opinions are my own honest experience and thoughts.

Little coastal cottage

 Coastal cottage charm - turquoise painted wooden chairs and a spotty oil cloth tablecloth with a welcoming lemon drizzle cake. Fun artwork of dogs on their seaside holiday and vintage lolly signs.   Lots of lovely seaside details like the whale chalkboard and fish decorations, cool look grey wood panelling as splashbacks and a cosy feel in the living space. Vintage granny blankets for cosying with a book and bookshelves filled with holiday reading material.   Fishy prints in the book nook and nautical details like a ship in a bottle and lighthouses - trinkets you can find in holiday gift shops and charity shops. Blue and turquoise are the main colour theme throughout the cottage, blue patterned curtains and sea blue accents in the bedrooms. 
 I love a coastal cottage as they give so much inspiration and whilst on holiday I picked up some new home items to take the theme home, a bargain wooden seagull was my best buy from the tourist information shop. Hurricane lanterns for the salty nights with a tea light flickering. Finally, not coastal but I love the bright, cheerful bird mugs that I've seen for sale in a garden centre. They looked great on the dresser in the cottage and given that the garden was full of birds everyday, it was a nice touch to this cosy place we stayed.

Styling my new PegBoard

I have seen these PegBoards floating around the blogosphere on trendy types walls for a while and I'd been thinking that I must get one of those. So I was super happy to find one at Red Candy who sell a whole host of colourful items for the home. 

Elsa Beskow - pretty little books

Elsa Beskow, born Elsa Maartman was a Swedish children's author born in 1874 with a distinct style of artwork in her books. I first came across them last year when looking into Waldorf education which again I had only just discovered through Pinterest. Oh what that site is responsible for! Elsa was born in Stockholm and was one of six children. She loved fairy stories and started to create her own to tell to her siblings and would also spend her free time drawing the natural world. The untimely death of her father meant that the family had to move in with extended family - her two aunts and an uncle. The Swedish women's movement was prominent at this point in time and this heavily influenced Elsa's attitude and is reflected in some of her books. Elsa studied art at University and it was here that she both met her husband to be, Nathanial Beskow and started her children's illustrations. After marrying they had six children and Elsa started to have her books published. Her first book was The Tale of the Little, Little Old Woman in 1897 but her first real success was in 1901 with Peter in Blueberry Land.  The children in her books are modelled on her own children and she drew using their wonderful home and garden near Stockholm as inspiration. Her style of drawing is unmistakeable with nature, fairies, pixies and wildlife. Beautiful drawings that make these books a real treasure to snuggle up with your little ones and look through. Her drawings heavily reflect the seasons and one of my favourites is 'Around the Year' with a poem for each month.Elsa continued to write books until a year before her death at aged 79 in 1953. I thoroughly recommend her books and they are reasonably inexpensive to buy although I've never seen them in a bookshop but most of them are available through Amazon. I'd like to collect them all and have them on a bookshelf of their own as their pictures are so wonderful and would make a nice display for our snug room.

Have you heard of Elsa Beskow before and do you have any of her books?

Crayons

We attempted to do some toddler art.

I demonstrated some scribbling.

Instead Little Bird created a new game of Roll-a-Crayon.

Have you ever heard of crayon muffins?  I hadn't but Lucinda has been making these at

  Bakes, Books And My Boys - have a look at her Top Ten Boredom Busters for the school holidays.