Flickr Fun

Jack with Vivian
Originally uploaded by Viv Cheng

Found via Lifehacker (http://lifehacker.com/software/holidays/flickr-holiday-easter-egg-221387.php)

If you've got a Flickr account and you want to add a little 'festive' to it, add a note to a photo and type "ho ho ho hat" or "ho ho ho beard" and you'll get a Santa hat or beard added to your image that you can scale and place (unfortunately you can't rotate it though).

It's funny because it's true

While I am an industrial designer and dabble in graphic design and other such creative endevours, long before that I used to be a big lab geek (in applied biochemistry -- it's a weird mix of backgrounds, I agree).

I found Ph.D. comics through a friend of mine (hi Shona!) who's a grad student. This one strikes me as funny because it's true (click to see the larger original):



(I particularly like the little floating fume skulls). My hat's off to Jorge Cham for capturing this and many other academia life moments in his comic.

Font-loving

I get regular updates from Veer about their various product offerings. (While I like their design-geek merchandise, unfortunately their shipping costs to Canada are rather prohibitive to me actually ordering anything).

In any event, I get updated about their fonts, and each and every time I see their font selection, I'm always instantly in love with anything by Alejandro Paul. I think it has to do with the beautiful ligatures in his script fonts -- exampled by the "lf" of "Hybrid golf nights" and the double-ff in "My Affair" below.



I'm trying to justify the need to purchase these beautiful fonts ($395 for 5 typefaces), but have yet to find a project that needs them...

Bike riding with the wee one

We plan on spending our day today doing a bit of biking, since in Ottawa, the National Capital Commission has Sunday Bike Days, where the area's parkways are closed to motorized traffic.

As a means of introducing our son to the joys of biking, we bought a WeeRide bike seat (retails for about $80-$90 CAD).



We specifically sought out one of these seats since it means that Jack can ride where Eric can mostly keep an eye on him (as opposed to the regular kid's bike seat where he'd have the lovely view of Eric's back the whole time).




Interesting bit about the WeeRide seat is that it won the Canadian Manning Award for Innovation back in 2002 and was invented by an Ottawa-native.

The downside to the WeeRide is that it doesn't fit on a small-framed bike like I ride (but I have an exceptionally small bike for my 5' tall self). However, even on Eric's mountain-bike it's a tight fit. It also requires a slight alteration to the pedal stroke and cycling position since you have to widen your legs out to accommodate your passenger. Overall though, it's been a really great summer purchase since we can all enjoy a bike ride together! (And it makes for some nice father-son photo ops.)



Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there!

Alphabet soup

I bookmarked this video a while back (found originally via drawn.ca).

I have a love for beautiful scripty fonts and I love how effortlessly the elder Wouters seems to write his letters. Of course, the younger Wouters' lettering is oozing with charm and appeal :)

Summer sale

We're having a summer sale on our paper-inlay necklaces and pendants, and this includes the Brazilian marbled paper and Nepalese paper pendants that were just added to the store:






If you've subscribed to our newsletter, then this is old news -- newsletter subscribers are always the first ones to find out about our sales. We send out a newsletter about once a month and each one has a coupon code that you can use for extra savings (even during sales like this one). It's pretty painless really :)

Cheap Eats Ottawa, revisited

A few months ago, I wrote about Cheap Eats Ottawa. Since then, we did manage to try all the three restaurants that I had mentioned.



The Culinary Conspiracy was a little disappointing. To be fair, we did order take-out that required re-heating once we got home. I had a salmon dish and Eric had a stuffed chicken dish. For the price, I think we would have been better off ordering something that was heated for us, rather than have something mediocre. (I think they were something like $13 a dish, plus sides). On the up side though, their desserts were very good -- we sampled the brownie and a piece of baklava. Thumbs up to those.

The Blackburn Arms is a pub in Blackburn Hamlet; a 5-10 minute drive from our place. It's become our new favorite pub and we've been there three times in the last three months. I highly recommend the fish and chips and their burger is excellent. It's a nice local pub that has that homey sort of feel. We brought Jack with us once and he was quite happy to be in a pub with all its exciting attractions, like chairs! and lights! and beer signs! ;)

As for Oh Basil, (we went to their location in Orleans), that was again an "okay" experience, but probably not good enough for us to go again. For pho, I would rather make the trek to Chinatown. The prices were reasonable at least.

We've also used the Cheap Eats book to find Rangoli. Now that is a good, plentiful and tasty cheap eat. I believe they may serve the best butter chicken we've ever tasted. We went there for the first time with our good friends Peter and Julie and it was excellent -- especially when you get a lot of different curries and dishes to share and try. Yesterday, we got take-out from Rangoli, and for $4.99 you can get a big chicken curry. I splurged the extra $1.49 for naan. Eric went for the chicken korma ($7.99) -- it came with the korma, an extra curry, and naan.

So good. So yeah, if you're in the East end of Ottawa, I so highly recommend it. And, if you're in Ottawa, or visiting, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Cheap Eats, for some, duh.. cheap eating.

Cool DIY pinhole cameras

I *think* I originally saw this on drawn.ca. (?)
Corbis (a source for images of all sorts) has a fun little site where you can download .pdfs of readymech pinhole cameras that you can make yourself. FOR FREE! Readymechs are *free* flatpack toys that you can download, print and build using a standard letter-sized page.



The downloads give you a full list of required materials (which includes an empty film canister and how to open one), and then you too can make your own pinhole camera.

Check out the site to see some of the images taken with a pinhole camera. I've always loved these simple cameras and how you can take an ordinary scene and produce these wonderfully surreal images with a box, a small hole and some film.

I'm looking forward to the day when our son is old enough to try out this sort of fun stuff with him.

Custom wedding invitations

We recently designed some custom wedding invitations for our friends Shona and Craig which turned out so nicely that I thought I'd show them off.

Shona and Craig aren't stuffy-wedding-nazi types and they wanted something on the modern side that didn't look like it was too sappy. They definitely didn't want anything that was 'stock' looking either, and coming up with a custom invite was one of the most fun design projects we've ever had.

When they mentioned that their ceremony would be in an arboretum, I started playing around with a stylized tree. Note the subtle hearts formed with the branches :)

They picked a beautiful pearl-metallic blue card stock of a nice snappy thickness. Into the laser-cutter it went! (We really like playing with our laser and seeing just how fine a resolution we can push it to).

The end result was this:


The invitation text was printed onto matte-white cardstock with the tree motif repeated inside:

Congrats to Shona and Craig! May your wedded life be blissful and full of unicorn-sappiness! ;)

New paper inlays

New: Brazilian hand-marbled paper inlay necklaces

The Brazilian paper is marbled by hand-mixing and manipulating inks to produce swirling and streaked patterns in rich palettes of colours. The patterns may be similar but are not exactly alike and thus produces a unique and stunning accessory.

Also new: Nepalese paper inlay necklaces

These paper inlays are made by Fair Trade village co-ops from all over Nepal using fibre from the bark of the LamaLi Lokta -- a native and environmentally-sustainable shrub.

Anytime you want to see the most recent additions to the shop, just click on the "New Products!" link on any of the shop pages.

1% for the Planet

Blend Creations is now a member of 1% for the Planet. This means that 1% of all of our sales from 2008 and onwards will be donated to an environmentally-conscious charity. In other words, for every $100 dollars spent at Blend Creations, $1 will go towards charity. This may not seem like much, but we're committed to doing this little bit at the very least.

You can read more about 1% for the Planet's mission, history, and how you too can get involved if you have your own business. You can also search the list of 850+ companies to see who else is part of this movement.

We're giving away a pair of earrings

Check out Rare Bird Finds today and follow the instructions to enter a contest.
The prize? A pair of earrings of your choice from us. :)



The winner will be drawn on May 11 by Rare Bird Finds. Good luck!

Be green(er)

Happy Earth Day!

It seems that everyone nowadays is trying their best to be a little bit greener. With Blend Creations, we try and use off-cut materials whenever possible, we recycle all of our scraps, and part of the reason we chose to work with stainless steel was because it is both a recycled and recyclable material.

I think having a child makes you want to be a better environmentalist, if for no other reason than when they're an angry teenager, you can honestly say, "hey, we tried to do what we could!".

Ever since Jack was a wee little baby, he's been at least part-time in cloth diapers -- we use Fuzzi Bunz on him and they've worked quite well.

I got to thinking how if Jack was in cloth diapers, that perhaps I should try and do a little bit more myself in terms of the female equivalent of over-used paper-products. (Guys, I can understand if you want to skip a post about menstrual products).

I'd seen LunaPads before in Bitch magazine, and after being reminded of them again at Arbour (an environmental shop here in Ottawa), I decided to give them a try and I ordered the Deluxe kit in the mixed light fabrics. My first thought when I received them in the mail? "Oooh they're pretty."



And normally, who thinks that about menstrual products?

The "extra" work with these reusable pads is minimal -- just a cold rinse before putting them in the wash, which isn't really "extra" work if you're already used to washing cloth diapers. The LunaPads FAQ is here. I wholeheartedly give them my thumbs-up and it's nice that they're a Canadian company too!

Want $5 to spend at Blend Creations?

Right now, we're asking people to fill out our survey so that we can hopefully learn what it is we're doing right, what it is we're doing wrong, and what we should be doing.

If you'd like to take a few minutes to fill out our survey, we'll send you a $5 Blend Creations gift certificate as a thanks for your time and input. Simple as that.

Oh, and if you fill it out before April 29, we'll be drawing for a $100 gift certificate amongst all those who've responded. The winner will be announced in our next newsletter.

So go, go now and answer a few little questions for us. Please? :)

Itching for some home improvement

It is with fond farewell that I bid adieu to the 7 FOOT HIGH snow banks that lived in our little courtyard for so long. There is no longer any trace of snow around any piece of property that's 'ours'.

Of course, in its place are neglected patches of (crab) grass and we're itching to do a little home improvement, both outdoors and in. As inspiration, I recently found "This Young House".

I love old 50s era houses (in their post-war mass-produced housing kind of way), and seeing what people do to them to make them right for today. Our house is a 70s era townhouse, so it's a little younger, but still needing some help in the updating department.

I've already wasted a good 20 minutes looking through their Flickr photos. (I'm really liking what they did to their master bedroom). Might as well share the procrastination ;)

Better get to work!

Big heart, little heart

From the time I could hold a crayon, I've always made my own cards. The very first ones were just folded sheets of lined paper with a drawing and a simple message written inside with a shaky hand. As I got older, the cards have gotten more sophisticated, and even more so when we acquired a laser-cutter to enable us to do tiny, intricate cuts that would be a challenge to the steadiest and most patient hand.

Today we're going to kick it old school so that anyone can make their own hand-cut card just in time for Mother's Day-- no laser required! (And moms always appreciate handmade stuff).

The card design is called "big heart, little heart", and it's free for you to download the templates: This one is for the card itself, and this one is for the envelope so that you can make your own version of this:

(Of course, producing this design commercially as yours, would be pretty wrong, so please don't do that).

You'll need:
- A printer to print out the templates
- One letter-sized (8.5" x 11") sheet of printable paper for the card. Regular printer paper will do, although in the example, I've used printable card stock that's about a 65 lb weight.
- Another letter-sized (8.5" x 11") sheet of printable paper for the envelope, preferably in a contrasting colour, although white will do.
- One sheet of contrasting paper that's at least 4.25" x 5.5" (You can cut down a letter-sized sheet of paper).
- A good cutting knife. Retractable is nice because you can always have a nice, sharp blade.
- A cutting mat so that you don't damage your table. If you don't have one, cardboard or an old magazine will do.
- A ruler for straight cuts (metal is better since it'll hold up to getting nicked).
- A bit of glue. Glue stick works very well for thin paper.
- A pen for signing your work and writing a heart-felt message inside.

And here we go:
1. Print out your templates and assemble your tools.


2. Cut just outside of the black lines of the card (so that they're not visible when you're done).


3. Once you've got all the bits cut out, fold the card in half so that the shorter sides meet up. Then fold it again so that your card is 1/4 the size of a letter-sized sheet of paper. It helps to crease the edges with a pen so that you get a nice, sharp fold.


4. Your card should looks something like the picture below. It looks pretty contemporary as just a tone-on-tone card. You could pretty much give it like this if you'd like.


5. Sign the back as your own, since this ain't no Hallmark card.


6. Write a lovely message inside. If you sign it with "XOXO" you might get some affection headed your way ;)


7. If you want to add some punch, this is when you use whatever contrasting coloured paper you've got. In this case, I've got letter-sized bond-weight printable paper that just happens to be bright blue. You could also use wrapping paper so that it'll match the gift you'll be giving.
If it's letter-sized, fold the paper in quarters (like you did with the card).


8. Taking your ruler, trim the paper so that it's slightly smaller than a quarter of a page. This way, none of the contrasting paper will stick out of the card.


9. Tuck the paper into your folded card and voila! you're done. (The fold will keep the contrasting paper in, but if you're paranoid, a dab of glue works too).


If you'd like a custom envelope to go with your card:
1. Print out this template and using your ruler, cut out the perimeter of the envelope shape. Ignore the rounded corners for now and just extended your cuts beyond where you need to go.


2. Round the corners freehand with your knife.


3. Fold along the dotted lines and apply a little glue to the side flaps.


4. Fold up the bottom (larger) flap and stick it to the side flaps. Insert your card. You can either seal it with some more glue... and you're done!


Now go and make this your own!

You can easily make this in about 15-20 minutes -- which is great if you're stuck without a card and all you've got is your printer and some regular paper. As I said, you can contrast it with gift-wrap, or if you're reading this, and it's Mother's Day, and you oh, forgot to buy your wife a card, you can do a collaboration with your kid. The grown-up should do the cutting and the child can do a drawing on a quarter of a page and just tuck in their masterpiece in place of the contrasting paper. Alternatively, you can skip the cutting altogether, and just have your child colour the card and learn all about negative space ;)

Our little monster is a bit young yet to contribute his art, but here's a quick example with some pink highlighter scribbles:


The envelope template is also very handy for any cards that are just letter-sized sheets of paper folded down. So you can always go draw your own card and stick it in your own little hand-made envelope. Have fun!

Experiencing technical difficulties :/

Things have gone rather pear-shaped with our web host.
For a while, the site was completely down, and now there seem to be a few glitches appearing. We're in the process of upgrading servers.

Please bear with us!

By the way...

We've lowered the regular price on our earrings from $120 to $89. This means that if you've got a promo code, you'll get even more savings.

So in case you were eyeing them before, take another look.
(We were able to lower the price due to some much better metal supplier prices, so we're reflecting that in the pricing of the earrings. Yay!)

A wee post

Inspiration comes from so many sources, and as a designer, I can truthfully say that sometimes, what I've done I've thought to be original and mine, but in essence borrows so much from what I've seen that it has seeped into my unconscious mind. If the ideas are too similar to someone else's, then it gets shelved until something can be done to actually make it "mine" -- through an improvement or my own interpretation.

It is also quite possible that an idea is so great that many people can simultaneously hit a very similar "Eureka!" point independently. With our products, we try very much to make sure that the things we produce don't infringe on anyone else's creative rights and it pains me when others do not share the same sort of respect.

Today, I was reading wee wonderfuls and my 'creative' side aches for Hillary Lang, because no one who has ever put in the time, thought, energy and most importantly heart into any sort of creative endeavour wants to see someone else take that creation and claim it, un-rightfully, as their own.



To be fair to the company that has produced the dolls, I know nothing about why/how they came to be. To an outside observer though, it just seems that the dolls shown just look remarkably similar to the patterns that were produced by Hillary Lang, that were never meant to be produced commercially without her consent.

I can only hope that that company will do what's right.

Spring Sale at Blend Creations!

Here in Ottawa, Canada it's a far cry from spring in terms of weather (we still have snow banks that are more than six feet high). But, the calendar says it's spring on March 20, so in hopeful celebration, we're having a spring sale starting today and lasting until March 27.

Originally it was going to be an "anything green" sale, but we decided to take that further and put over 200 items on sale.

In other news, we've added some new products to the store. Engraved wood earrings to match our engraved wood necklaces and pendants.


Also, some new foliage necklaces:


All of the foliage necklaces, all washi jewelry and all earrings are on sale until the 27th.

Happy shopping!

Cheap Eats Ottawa

We recently ordered (and finally received!) our copy of Cheap Eats Ottawa (v2).


This little book is "Ottawa's guide to good inexpensive restaurants" and lists over 200 eateries which all must meet the following criteria: Is it good? Is it cheap? Does it have at least one seat?

We have yet to specifically try any of the establishments based on the guide's recommendations, but we have already tried many, many of the places mentioned. As expected, there are many Asian restaurants in the guide since on the whole, Asian cuisine is a pretty good deal! Some of our favourites are Ben Ben for noodles and the "rice with two-treasure sauce" (aka "Ying-Yang fried rice) :9, and the New Mee Fung (on Booth St.) for Pho and the crazy multi-layered drink with the coconut milk and the beans (the name of which escapes me) -- it sounds a little odd, but it's so good! If, just talking about food doesn't do it for you, there's a Flickr group dedicated to gratuitous cheap eats food photos.

We like having our little eating adventures about town whenever possible, so using the Cheap Eats book as a guide should be fun, and by all accounts, pretty cheap. On the shortlist of places we'll be trying are: Culinary Conspiracy, the Blackburn Arms Pub, and Oh Basil.

At a glance though, the book is certainly a good comprehensive guide for out-of-towners who want to eat like locals. You can buy one on the Cheap Eats site for $12.95CAD. If you're in or going to Toronto, there's also a Cheap Eats Toronto available.

Habitrails for all sizes

A Habitrail for those of you that never got the opportunity to look after the class mascot in grade school, is a really cool system of cages, tunnels, observation areas etc. designed to keep your little hamster/gerbil/mouse active and happy. As a kid, I envied the fun that the hamster must be having!

Well, now I can envy fish too.

Octopus Studios has these Habitrail-esque aquariums that look so amazing. The company is based in France, but they ship worldwide -- though, prices start at $3400. And then there's that small problem of cleaning... (Found via Gizmodo)

Thankfully, we've recently found human-sized Habitrails locally.

If you're in Ottawa, and you have kids, I highly recommend checking out Cosmic Adventures. It's a little on the pricey side if you're going for a single visit, but since we live fairly close, we opted for the super-deluxe annual membership, where we've already broken even with 8 visits in 6 weeks. Since our son is still young enough to require constant supervision, we've made the sacrifice and gone up to the upper eschelons on the play structure with him ;)

My inner child is quite happy there.

"Make my logo bigger!" cream

This will probably only be really funny to the designer-types out there. Though, it might also strike a little too close to home for anyone who has ever had a client who has hired them for their expertise, only to have said client request the opposite of what you've recommended (you know, as the "expert").



The folks over at Agency Fusion created a (very long) parody infomercial for a bunch of products: "Make my logo bigger!" cream, "White space eliminator" spray, "Starburst" dust, "Fluorescencesizer", and "Emotionator".

"Now that's what I call stand-out advertising!"

For just three easy payments of $29.95, you could get all of them above! The video on this site is long, but it's worth the chuckle.

OooOooh earrings!

At long last, I'm pleased to say that we've finally got brushed stainless steel earrings in the store!
For now we've got various washi patterns to match our different washi necklaces and pendants (By the way, if you haven't visited the store recently, we've also added washi pendants in long and small too!).


In the next little while, we will be adding earrings to match our other necklaces and pendants in natural mother of pearl, engraved wood, bamboo, and more! Stay tuned!

Happy New Year!

Happy Chinese New Year!
It's the year 4706 according to the (lunar) Chinese calendar, and it's the year of the Rat.


In celebration of the occasion, you can use "RAT2008" in the coupon code, and save 15% off any orders of $100 or more (before shipping). The coupon code expires at midnight tonight, so take advantage of it! ;)

Seeing red

Just a heads up: we're having a two-day sale starting tonight, at midnight (CST), and ending at the stroke of midnight on the 19th. (And weirdly enough, the times start at CST even though we're in EST because of the time setting on the shopping cart system...)

What'll be on sale, you ask?
Well, see here. We've got a selection of products in varying shades of red.

Just in time for this sale, we've also added a couple of new red designs:

Red bamboo pendants


Red abalone shell


Red because of Valentine's Day (February 14th), and also for Chinese New Year (February 7th this year). While red for Valentine's day has meanings of love, for the Chinese, it's symbolic of luck and good fortune. (And for this same occasion, we'll also have the Chinese zodiac pendants on sale too).

So yup, if you'd like to get a deal and you like red, come see the shop tomorrow and Friday.

A new year :) and the top 7 highlights of the 2007 holidays!

We're now officially back from our little holiday hiatus. I'd love to say that we travelled to exotic locales and experienced warm tropical climes, but that's quite the opposite of what happened.

We stayed home, happy to take a break from work ;) (though again, thank you all for your orders and giving us enough work from which to take a break!), and experienced a few snowstorms. So what did we do with our couple of weeks off?
Here are the top seven highlights of Christmas 2007:

1) We.. er.. Jack, received the Encyclopedia Prehistorica collection of pop-up books.

Jack received these from one of his uncles and hopefully in time, he'll come to appreciate the art that is paper engineering. These books are recommended for ages 5+, but we'll probably wait until he's about 6 or 7 before handing them over. You can get them at Amazon for under $18 each, which is a bargain, considering just how much work must go into each one.

2) We watched a lot Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.

If you've only experienced the show from what's seen on Fox, then I highly suggest you watch the UK version. We'd seen the UK version first on the Food Network, and then watched the US version, and it's not nearly the same show. The UK version is loads better and makes Gordon Ramsay seem less like an arse.

3) We made some presents.
Along with some of the jewelry we gave various members of the family, we also made these pretty things for our friend Julie (who is a personal chef):

They're cutlery-themed 'snowflake' ornaments. They were fun to make and we may even consider making some Christmas ornaments to sell on the site next year! :)

4) We ate a lot: we found quite a few good recipes on the interweb.

One of them was this curried carrot soup recipe, that I found after we inadvertantly bought 5 lbs of carrots before Christmas dinner and unsure about what to do with them. We like this soup so much, we've made it three times in the last 2 weeks, and Jack (who is beyond picky) enjoys it too (just leave out the cayenne pepper for the little ones).

5) We ate a lot: we went to the Urban Pear for a special night out (my birthday!)

Eric took me to the Urban Pear for my birthday meal. It's been the subject of a few rave reviews locally, and we try to make our (rare) nights out something special.

Overall, the food was 'okay', which is a little disappointing for those rare nights out. The antipasti plate was good, and reminded us how much we enjoy roasted garlic and brie :9, the olives were a little too vinegar-y though. We both had the duck breast which was very good, but the accompanying french toast that was a little too heavy for my liking. We also had the crème brulée which was disappointing since there wasn't enough crust on it for my liking, which made it a little too much like a pretentious vanilla pudding :(

Our next big night out will be at Beckta since we received a gift certificate (thanks Ray!) (Beckta is another local restaurant that's had quite a few rave reviews too).

6) We ate a lot: we got this series of cookbooks, which is a collection of the most requested Milk Calendar recipes from the last 25 years.

Every year the Canadian dairy board puts out a calendar with recipes using dairy products. You can find some of the more recent recipes here. They're usually pretty simple dishes that are made with things you've already got in your kitchen. Out of these books, we've made a really good mushroom and leek soup, apple custard crisp and lots and lots and lots of blueberry muffins. Yum.

7) We ate so much that now we're going to try and eat a little less and exercise a little more :)
In the past we've tried following the Body for life regimen of eating small meals and exercising regularly and it worked rather well. So we'll try that again!

Hope you all had a good holiday!