Things in the Paperleaf household are getting ever more hectic as we prepare for our move to NYC! Only 2 months until I go now (Mr Paperleaf is going a little sooner than me) so we’re in the middle of organizing and packing… We’re being quite strict in sorting stuff out and getting rid of junk we’ve accumulated – it’s been a great opportunity to get rid of stuff! Now there’s just that small thing called my thesis to finish, hmmm.

Lots has been happening recently, and I have a few things to share. For starters, here’s something super exciting – my gift tags were in The Times a couple of weeks ago! I got an email from the lovely Fiona at notmassproduced.com to say she’d done a bit of PR and here it is! I’ve been on the site for a couple of months now and no sales as yet, but hopefully if their publicity continues like this it will become a great site to rival the more established craft marketplaces.

I had a great holiday in Wales with Mr Paperleaf and my gran. She’s pretty cool for an 80-something year old, and we had lots of fun in our caravan, including watching Britain’s Got Talent every night and pottering around little Welsh villages during the days, with plenty of stops for scones and tea of course. Here’s a nice picture of us at Portmeirion, a weird and wonderful place! More photos at Flickr…

The next few weeks are going to be no less busy, with Handm@de Winchester just a couple of weeks away – in case you missed it, I was interviewed over there a couple of weeks ago!

Phew! I won’t leave it so long next time… What has everyone else been up to while I’ve been away?!

My gift tags have been getting around a bit lately… Here they are in a lovely treasury created by smokingdrum, who just happens to be the husband of Alice who is organizing Handm@de Winchester!

Finally, if you’re in Oxford, I’ll be at the Ladyfest crafternoon tomorrow, along with some other fab local crafsters. There’ll be talks and demos, and cake! Come and say hello if you’re there!

I’m off on a little holiday next week with my gran, so see you when I get back!

Myra has also used a photo of me on her fantastic new website, which is really cool in a semi-embarrassing way… Check me out! If you’re in need of a custom wedding accessory, visit Myra’s website and Etsy shop and check out the prettiness, but be sure to get in early – she’s hugely popular and gets booked up months ahead. I especially love her boutonnieres – if there is one thing I would have done differently for our wedding it would be to have got some of these for our guys – these below would have gone perfectly with our yellow and brown polka dot theme! Ah well, next time maybe

In other news after weeks of ebay stalking I finally nabbed a 50mm f/1.8 Nikon lens on ebay last night for the bargain price of £24! Even the old ones have been going for around £50 so I’m quite pleased. It’s pretty old so only has manual focus and it’s also non-metering but that just adds to the retro fun in my opinion One of my reasons for going for the Nikon over a Canon was to be able to use super cheap old lenses that are just as good as the expensive modern versions, and the 50mm f/1.8 is a classic is often recommended as a good second lens to get. Here’s an interesting article on it.