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GIVEAWAY!

With the Facebook page going strong... it's time to share the love with the PaperKrane website and of course, with you... the people!

This giveaway is to celebrate reaching 400 likers on Facebook. Thank you!

A pretty exciting and momentous occasion if you ask me! 

(more information below... keep reading!)

To show my appreciation I would like to give those of you who participate a chance to win a SWEET AS PaperKrane gift pack! Wowee!

In the pack will be one pair of Funkee Feet booties, a matching bandana style bib, a large PaperKrane mobile and a mini one to match! All will be posted to your door free of charge... by me! (Aren't I nice, he he!) There will be two winners! One will win the strawberry pack, and other other will win the robot pack. (Comment below if you have a preference)

All you need to do is...  be a fan of the PaperKrane page, and at least one of the following...

1. Sign up for the PaperKrane Blog - This will get you one entry into the draw. (The subscribe button can be found on most pages of the website and the blog is emailed to you once a week, on a Monday, or not - if I haven't written anything that week!) 

Or... 

2. Make a purchase from the store. This will get you two entries into the draw. 

If you happen to do both, then I'll enter your name into the draw four times. (That's right, FOUR times!)

And...

3. If you share this post on Facebook I'll put your name in the draw one more time!  (That's a possible 5 times into the draw!)

(IF YOU HAVE ALREADY SIGNED UP TO THE BLOG, THANK YOU, AND I WILL AUTOMATICALLY ENTER YOUR NAME INTO THE DRAW... FEEL FREE TO RAISE YOUR CHANCES BY TAKING PART IN THE OTHER OPTIONS!)

THE GIVEAWAY WILL RUN FROM TUESDAY JULY 17th UNTIL FRIDAY JULY 27th. That gives you one and a half (1.5) weeks to take part, and share it with your friends! GO FOR GOLD!

At the end of the time period I will put all of your names (entries) into a hat and have the winners drawn by a neutral party. Winners will be notified by email, and I will do a sneaky announcement on Facebook, even though they have so many rules about contests and giveaways! 

Remember, it doesn't matter if you have no babies of your own, re-gift the booties, keep the mobiles and wear the bandana bib yourself! (The bibs will also fit young children... so you have heaps of options!)

This giveaway is not in conjunction with Facebook in any way, it is a PaperKrane only event. Any information submitted will not be given to a third party, or used to send unsolicited material. If you sign up for the blog, you have the option to unsubscribe at any point... but hopefully I can write interesting enough articles to keep you entertained and reading!

Good luck!

 

ON THE HUNT

HOUSE HUNTING (if you can't see the pics... click on the heading)

I feel like I'm back at university again, when every year I would move flat and go through the process of looking through a whole bunch of new houses! 

This weekend Ken and I went house hunting around our area... Which means it's almost been 1 year since we moved to Melbourne! We've been renting a place which has its good and bad points. And now we're scouting around to see if we can find anything closer to the centre of our little town (that incorporates the best parts of the place we're in now). 

One of the good things about our current place is that it fits all of 'our' stuff in... and by that, I mean all of my stuff! Ken thinks that if we didn't have so much space to fill, we wouldn't have accumulated so much... and that leaves us with the problem of finding a new place that can hold it all! Not as easy as you'd think! Another good point is that the rent is great! Also not so easy to find a place as large, for as reasonable a price! But, for the good, there's the bad... we're on a corner 

block, with a busy road behind us - and a roundabout that hoons just love to take at top speed so they can hear their wheels skidding at 1am! We don't have an undercover outdoor area, and there's no ducted heating or aircon! (None of these things are really that bad... but they give us 

an excuse to look around!)

Anyway, we took a look at so many places yesterday some have started to blur together. The one with the huge laundry, and narrow stairs and the one with the small courtyard that smelt like a vet clinic... Was that one place? Or four different places?

Well... still no decision made on a place. We may just end up staying where we are if we can't find anything better!

It seems you never can win... and sometimes have to be satisfied with what you have... but that last place, I'm pushing to move there, even though it's $180 more a month than what we pay now! (About 5 min walk from the train station, similar distance to the main street... so close!)

RAINY DAYS AND MONDAYS...

Today just happened to be both! The thing is... it wasn't even Monday, it was Tuesday! 

Something strange has been happening since I started to work from home on my little crafty business! The days and dates are disappearing. And I don't just mean that time is whizzing by... which it is... I mean I just can't seem to keep track of time anymore! Can any of you relate to this? Is it strictly a 'working from home' thing? Or just me?  

I could've sworn that it was Monday today... it wasn't, same way I could've sworn last month was May... it wasn't!

I am getting lots done with my time though! Today I completed two custom bunting orders, and 11 pairs of booties. What I didn't have was any time for myself, my dog, or my husband. (Although he had a long day at work as well I think the novelty of having the sewing machine in the living room (where the heater is) is wearing off!) 

Tomorrow, Wednesday right(?), I will be taking some pics of the booties I made today, editing them, posting them to Facebook and website... which in itself takes an amazing amount of time! And by the time I finish I'll probably be convinced that it's Friday... Anyway here's to a week that feels short, and a weekend that lasts forever! 

PS - Here's our yorkie Bruce, who wishes we paid constant attention to him! What a cutie! (He came all the way from Korea with me.)

ONE WEEK IN

WEEK ONE: (Way back when) When I first started making booties, and getting orders and things were a lot more simple! I realised things that seemed simple to me may not seem so simple to others... especially one of the most important parts of a PaperKrane pair of booties... The origami box that I hand cut and fold for each pair. 

It seemed simple to me because it was something I learnt to make when I was seven, from the very creative primary school teacher I had at the time. I used to fold this box - which doesn't require anything sticky to hold it together - and give it as a gift to family members along with a 'K8's cards' card. The box of course rarely ever held a gift inside (not until my teenage years)... but what was I gonna do? I was a child with no money of my own! 

Anyway, I digress... This box is a part of my life, and has now become a part of PaperKrane, and I needed to show people how to open it. So I made this little video to demonstrate how to do so... This way, if you get a pair of PaperKrane booties, you can keep them in the box after your bub grows out of them, or save yourself the hassle of wrapping them as a gift for another! 

(At the time there was a popular silent film winning all the oscars! I may have borrowed a few elements from that movie for my own vid!)  :) 

WEEK ONE: (PaperKrane goes live) Now it's further down the track and things are not so simple... and one week ago (June 29th, 2012) I launched this website! Which has quietly gotten off to a nice little start! And...kept me very busy indeed!

It's a big learning curve for someone like me, this whole - being online, writing a blog, keeping up with Facebook, craft markets on the weekends, custom orders being placed via email, and shopping for materials - thing! Oh, and folding more and more origami boxes!  

When I say 'someone like me' I mean a kooky, creative brain that is not so good at thinking 'business' - that's what the husband's for - but better at jumping quickly from idea to idea! The next challenge for me will be to actively write a lot more down (ideas, sales, materials I need, market dates, ...etc) so I don't lose track of what's happening around me, as it's happening very fast right now. 

But, I am loving it, all of it! Especially the weekend markets and meeting all of the new people, both online and the stallholders and customers at market. (But I'll leave that for next week's blog!) So stay tuned... There's big things brewing!

Here's a few pics of my fav boxes... 

SHOE LURVE

HEART AND SOLE!

Ask most people who know me... They can probably tell you that I have a slight shoe - as my husband likes to call it - problem! 

I think of it less as a problem and more as a desire to put a little bit of something cool into my life each day... I'm not or never have been thought of as fashion savvy, or even close to fashionable (even though I think I have my own unique style?) but I do love to use my shoes to make my own fashion statement. (I get this from my dad, who has always had a thing for unique shoes, and plenty of them - "Don't tell your mother that I bought these... $280 later!") 

With the whole PaperKrane idea I thought why not add something to the mix that I am truly passionate about! SHOES. And that's how my little booties were born. The look of them is inspired by a pair (or two) of shoes that I got while in Korea... They are that style known as 'Kungfu' (popular back in the early 90's when everyone thought they could walk up walls in their Bata Bullets!) they're easy to slip on and off, which is what you want in Korea as you need to remove your shoes when entering a building, or home.

Here are my shoes... my inspiration! 

Do you have a special something that has inspired a choice in your life? I'd love to hear about it!

HANDMADE WEDDING iii

STYLE ME... PRETTY?

It's a rainy Sunday here in Melbourne and I'm thinking back to January of this year, and to part of the puzzle that helped me put PaperKrane together... I'm also watching Louis CK so I'm finding it hard to concentrate on writing this and to not snort my drink out through my nose.

Doodley doo doodley doo doodley doo (that's flashback music for those of you that have seen Wayne's World)...So I'm back in New Zealand (after my first Christmas in Australia) and there's about 20 days till the wedding FARK ... 

Time to hit the gym! (And the scrapbooking store which just happened to be across from the gym)

I didn't manage to drop a whole lot of weight before the wedding, (even though I was hitting the gym  and walking every day) though most girls dream of being incredibly skinny for just that one day. (I didn't want to end up with wedding pics that didn't really resemble me at any point in my life! In my mind that would just lead to my future children asking... Mummy, who is that lady in the pictures with daddy? Oh who am I kidding... I wanted to be skinny!) But, I did manage to get a heck of a lot of other things done before the big day... 

I learnt how to make tissue paper flowers, I strung a lot of my paper kranes (conveniently shipped from Korea months before) into the mobile form that you see today, made place cards, table setting thingees, and a guest book in my very first(possibly last) attempt at doing what people call 'scrapbooking'? Although there was no book, just a box covered in funky patterned paper... I think I did a pretty good job at getting the entire event put together. 

I couldn't have done it without the help of Sue at the Jetty Cafe (http://jettycafe.co.nz/ our venue) who let me sleep in on the morning of the wedding and assured me she would set it all up for me! (we had a run through setting up one table the afternoon before - little OCD of me, but that's just me!) Initially I had planned on taking myself + bridesmaids to the Jetty Cafe and setting up the place myself/ourselves. Very glad I didn't in the end as it allowed me to drink a few more glasses of bubbly for breakfast! 

Anyway.... wedding blah blah blah... here are some pics of the projects I undertook and completed for the wedding.

 I can't forget to mention Jenn Hadley who took our beautiful photos (http://jennhadleyphotography.co.nz/portraits.html) and my wonderful girls Lucy Corleison (maid of honour and little sis) Jody Cherrington and Natasha Fitzpatrick who got me through the whole thing!

HANDMADE WEDDING ii

FAVOURITE FLAVOURED FAVOURS!

With the invites in the wind it was time to set about the next task... favours and little consumables for the guests.

After much research and experiments with folding, sticking, and printing we decided to make some little glassine pouches with funky labels to hand out to the guests as they arrived at the venue. 

So I got back on Illustrator to work it all out!

To continue with the handmade idea I cut out and made the pouches myself and came up with a couple of ideas of things to put in the pouches! (We originally wanted to have two different pouches... the first would have some little Korean chocolates in it for guests to nibble on in the summer heat while waiting for the wedding ceremony to start, and the other would contain rice - to throw at us after the ceremony! At the last minute we had to 'throw' away the idea of having the rice as the summer heat didn't eventuate and a Southerly breeze brought the wedding inside!)  Here's what our little parcels looked like <3

Continuing with the idea of yummy little things for our guests we went with a very simple wedding favour. One that the guests could collect as they came in to take a look at the seating charts. This is where the 'Favourite flavoured favour' idea came in... Ken and I thought about our favourite lollies from childhood and put together little packs that contained a couple of each of our favourite lollies. Then guests could take one as they came in. (mmm fruit sticks, milk bottles, minties, and a fruity little green plum number from Korea!)

A HANDMADE WEDDING

INVITATIONS

Once the decision was made to make 1000 paper kranes for the wedding the rest of the ideas flowed (sometimes) freely!

  

A KRANE IS BORN

    She was only two years old when the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.  As she grew up, Sadako was a strong, courageous and athletic girl. In 1954, at age eleven, she became dizzy and fell to the ground. Sadako was diagnosed with leukemia, the "atom bomb disease".

    Sadako's best friend Chizuko, came to visit her and brought with her some origami (folding paper). She told Sadako the legend of the crane. It is Japanese legend that folding 1000 paper cranes (senzaburu) so pleases the gods that the folder is granted a wish. Sadako wished to get well. So, after hearing the legend, Sadako decided to fold 1,000 cranes.    

    After she folded 500 cranes she felt better and the doctors said she could go home for a short time, but by the end of the first week back home the dizziness and fatigue returned and she had to return to the hospital. Sadako continued to fold cranes. Even though she was in great pain, she tried to be cheerful and hopeful. Not long afterwards, with her family standing by her bed, Sadako went to sleep peacefully, never to wake up again. She had folded a total of 644 paper cranes.

    Sadako's story had a profound impact on her friends and classmates. They completed her thousand cranes and continued to raise money from school children all over Japan to build a statue to honor Sadako and all the children affected by the bomb. 

This story was/is so inspiring, and folding 1000 paper cranes is a great way to honour her memory and courage. 

Of course before Sadako, the practice of folding 1000 paper cranes was something Japanese couples would do before marrying, to show their patience for each other, and to earn their one wish - for a successful marriage. I liked the idea of both of these stories so much that I decided to fold 1000 paper cranes for my own wedding. Which in turn led to me making and styling the entire event! (Not sure I want to go through that again without the proper help!) And that is what led me to where I am today... Still folding origami in front of the tele, and creating my own (no doubt Asian inspired) booties etc!