Sarah from The Small Object wrote an excellent post about being a maker.

“When you buy handmade directly from an individual, you are investing in me. And not just in me, but in my products, in my ideas and in my own well-being. When you buy something from me, you just gave me a double high five. We just connected and shook hands like mad.”

I love Sarah’s site because every piece she makes has such a clear sense of her own style. Every time you see something new you know it couldn’t have come from anyone else. If you haven’t visited The Small Object before, or recently, I would highly recommend it :)

I really love displays of colours – artist’s palettes, embroidery threads, eyeshadows, paint charts at the hardware store, websites like Colour Lovers – so I made a few palettes from some of my illustrations while I ate lunch today.

From Cosy Barnyard

From Wash ‘n’ Dry

From Orchard Snacktime

From Pencil Nibbler

From Burpy Bear

I didn’t realise how often I use “spring” colours until I saw these all together!

I’m going to wrap up my posts on Tokyo by sharing some of our favourite pieces from the Pixiv Festa exhibition we ran into in the Design Festa galleries in Tokyo! I’m copying and pasting the artist’s names, and linking to their profiles on the Pixiv website, which I hope is sufficient attribution :)

「もふもふカプチーノ」/しぶぞー	「心強い僕の友達」/tomape
「送電線鉄塔越え」ー飛ぶ犬ーより」 /[perro perra]	「カンニバルリンゴ」/まみな

You can see all of the pieces on the Pixiv Festa website. Lots of anime inspiration, and so much precise execution!

I love the Organized Collection group on flickr. It’s like looking into hundreds of precisely arranged shadowboxes. Here are a few photos that have caught my eye from their pool:

Photos from:
(Top) loosetooth, irtroit, anaventura
(Middle) completely_cactus, bibbif, aviewto
(Bottom) knitalatte11, oliveonline, rosa.rot