Etsy Pick: Why are you so naughty?

Add a little joie de vivre to your life with this illustrated tile from London-based Etsy designer Robert Ryan. The tile measures 15cm and costs $36 USD, which is just about naughty enough.

Etsy Pick: Ice Cottage by sanfran67

Manchester-based artist Helen Musselwhite creates these wonderful original hand cut, layered paper sculptures made from coloured card and paper. Then she frames them in a tiny white box frame:


These look fantastic on a wall - like a little doorway into Narnia (for grown-ups) - woodland scenes with owls and deer, and lions and bunnies.


This particular picture is my favourite - it's called Ice Cottage - and is currently sold out. But you can order a custom picture from her shop, and it'll only set you back around $42 USD.

That's not exorbitant for a gateway into another world, is it?

Bird pegs from Kitty & Dude

I really can't think of a reason why I might need a ceramic bird on a peg (not to mention ceramic cupcakes and mugs with bird wings). But I want one. Actually two, because wouldn't one bird get lonely?

Kitty & Dude bird pegs, £14.99 from Velvet Boutique.

Etsy pick: Mermaid necklace; seahorse earrings

I have a bit of a thing about mermaids. When I was little I thought I was one (I also thought I was a vampire and, at one point, a puppy).

This sterling silver mermaid pendant ($49 USD) from London-based jeweller AngelSilver is almost as good as being one, though. And you could accessorise it with these silver seahorse earrings ($18 USD).


Actually, that would be overkill, wouldn't it? Unless you are actually a mermaid, in which case that's totally fine and really quite patriotic if you think about it. Which, clearly, I have spent far too long doing.

A bird in the hand?

I'm sorry, but a bird in the hand isn't worth two in a bush. What if you need your hands free for, say, cocktail-stirring or cupcake baking? And two birds in a bush is just unhygienic.

Two birds on a pretty T-shirt, though? For only £14.99 at Republic? Why yes. That sounds about right.

Design porn (literally): Linzie Hunter's Spam One-Liners

You know how some people take lemons and make lemonade? Well, artist Linzie Hunter takes spam and makes ART:


Taken out of their context and prettified, Linzie's one-liners work as personal mantras rather than evil mass-selling tools, and are quite, quite lovely.


You can buy her spam one-liner prints at Thumbtack Press - they're about 30USD which, depending on when you're reading this, works out at about £21 or THE COST OF YOUR HOUSE. You can also buy all 30 of her typographical spam projects in a handy little book.

Window shopping at Republic online

Now, I don't wear dresses. When I wear dresses, terrible things happen. I'm not exaggerating. Last time I wore a dress, I fell out of a helicopter.

But if I was to wear a dress, I might wear this large-spotted cocktail dress from Republic. It's fluffy. It's froufy. It's everything I'm not. It's also only £29.99, and would be perfectly accessorised with a life jacket and a personal alarm.

Like I said, when I wear dresses, terrible things happen. So safety first.

Perfect for Easter: Belle de Jour Christmas Truffles (yes, really)

My little brown balls of goodness have come a long way.

I first blogged the recipe back in 2004. Then one Belle de Jour made them and was so enamoured that she mentioned them in one book, and printed the recipe in another (along with a very nice dedication to the cook).

Since then the recipe has been spotted all over the shop - most recently in a copy of The Big Issue.

So now I'm 'slutting them up' and including them here - because they're perfect for Easter, in a devised-by-an-atheist-for-Christmas-then-adopted-by-a-Jewish-call-girl-and-media-sensation sort of way. Like I said, perfect for Easter!

These truffles are very, very, very easy to make (after all, I can manage it), and very, erm, tactile. If you don't dig the whole slow-melt vibe, just zap the chocolate in the microwave for a few minutes.

INGREDIENTS
150g (5 oz) dark chocolate
2 tablespoons of dark rum
150ml (¼ pint) double cream
24g (1 oz) butter
The peel from 1 orange
2 cloves

2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon of plain flour
1 tablespoon of cocoa powder
toasted nuts (optional)

1. Break up the chocolate and melt in a saucepan on a low heat, along with the cream and butter, and the cloves.

2. Grate the orange peel directly into the saucepan using a cheese grater; add a squeeze of juice if you like. After a few minutes, stir in the rum and add 1 teaspoon of cinnamon.

3. Keep stirring for about 3 minutes, then pick out the cloves and transfer the mixture to a bowl, and place this in the fridge overnight.

4. The next day, dust a wooden board with the flour, and sprinkle some cocoa powder and the remaining cinnamon over it too. If you're using toasted nuts, keep them on a plate nearby.

5. Take heaped teaspoons of the chilled truffle mixture and roll into small balls with your hands. Roll these in the flour/cocoa/cinnamon mixture (and then in the nuts if you like) and plop into petit-four cases.

Chill until ready to serve.

You may also want to try these with, or just add a bit of, melted white chocolate. DO NOT take them to the ballet to snack on. When the house lights come up, you WILL look like an interrupted coprophagiac. You'll smell like a gingerbread house, however. Mange!

Image by Paul Carvill, Flickr.

Profligate Moleskinery: Notebook Lust

My name is Robyn and am a Moleskine slut. I love notebooks the way other women love shoes.

I imagine myself sipping espresso on the Rive Gauche with a notebook balanced delicately on one knee as I sketch a bird while composing a poem to the glory of the morning sun on a red clay roof, and scribble down the opening refrain of a new symphony.

In reality I use my notebooks for shopping lists,
hastily-scrawled notes to myself ("MILK on Tuesdays!") or the phone numbers of people I will never call.

But now that can all change, thanks to Scatterbox Originals' El Bandido customised notebooks!

El Bandido, infamous cat burglar, scoundrel, cad and trickster, likes to have little notebooks to keep track of his adventures. This one is adorned with his own portrait (he is a little vain, after all) but all the pages have been left untouched for your very own plans and schemes.

I think I'm in love.

The El Bandido notebooks only cost £6.85 from Etsy, and you can also buy this Moleskine organising pouch from Angharad, so not only do you have somewhere to put your plans and schemes, you can keep them warm and pretty at the same time.