Letter Writing Challenge

Happy 2019, dear readers! If you are wondering how we are almost at the end of January already, I’m shaking my head right beside you in disbelief. At least we are a few days away from February, which starts off “International Correspondence Writing Month” (InCoWriMo). The concept involves putting pen to paper and writing a letter a day for each day of February, resulting in 28 letters or postcards in total. I’ve signed up for my second year of this challenge and you can still sign up until January 31st right here.

For a stationery lover like me, I look forward to not only revisiting my own handwriting style, but also sending out cute stickers, postcards and illustrations along with my letters. While there are many different ways to choose your 28 recipients, I’m treating this as a way to make friends in countries that I love and virtually travel to my favourite cites. I hope you can join me in this InCoWriMo challenge for a much needed step away from technology and back to traditional ways of corresponding.

Best Moments of 2017

This year was quite memorable and eventful for me. From holidays to concerts, leisurely bike rides to reading and writing long hand-written letters to friends, I’ve truly enjoyed most of what came my way this year. It’s almost time to welcome in the New Year, but before that let’s take a look at my favourite memories from 2017!

In January/February, I returned to my favourite city of Barcelona for a month-long visit! During this time Montserrat and Cadaques were also covered on day trips and overall this holiday was everything I could have ever wished for!

In March the superstar that is Adele came to town for an unforgettable summer’s night of raw emotion and a powerhouse vocal.

In July, I was fortunate enough to attend the concert of one of my favourite singers – Gavin DeGraw. Meeting him after the show was such an honour and his show was truly something special.

That same month one of my favourite musicals “My Fair Lady” was also playing in town at the Princess Theatre. I absolutely loved it!

Taking a bike ride along Port Melbourne’s foreshore never ceases to impress me.

I’ve absolutely loved making new friends through the art of handwritten letters and re-connecting with old friends.

This year I launched our “Cute Parcels” concept and recently was a market vendor at Carols by Kingston! Thank you to everyone that has supported us over the years!

This year I also took the time to engage with nature more, practise my photography and spend more time with the ones I love.

Just this month I was in the company of two more “One Tree Hill” alumni when Tyler Hilton and Kate Voegele came to Thornbury. They brought the house down!

So thanks 2017! You’ve been a pretty great year.

Bring on 2018!

Christmas Events

Sorry for the lack of updates on here, dear friends. Somehow time just got the better of me.

I’m excited to share that this month, the very last in 2017, we’ll be at two Christmas events in Melbourne where you can buy our products. The first is happening this Sunday December 10th, at Sir William Fry Reserve in Highett. The event is called Carols by Kingston and for the first time we’ll be selling from inside a marquee!

We’ve been super busy getting everything ready for what promises to be a very exciting night filled with handmade goodies, gourmet food, cheerful carols and celebrity appearances. Please come along if you can! We’ll be there from 6.30pm until 10pm.

These are just a handful of products that you could expect to find when you shop at our stall. Your support means the world to us and we always get such a kick from interactive directly with our customers.

The second event this month is happening at Clarinda Community Centre on Friday 15th of December from 5pm – 9pm as a twilight Christmas market. We’re just as excited to be part of this smaller event.

Hope to see you at one of these great events soon! Have a lovely weekend!

Naira

Guest Post – Mishka Mail by Graceful Avenue

Presenting our Q and A with Zara from Zaracreates Blog…

zaracreates

Today I’d like to introduce you to Naira, founder of creative stationery business, Graceful Avenue. She’s here to talk about her label’s monthly subscription box service called Mishka Mail, which started in August 2016 and will end with the July issue next month.

So pour yourself a cup of tea and escape for a few minutes into the world of Graceful Avenue and Naira’s passion for all things stationery.

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Hi everyone! A big thanks to Zara for featuring me on her blog today. Throughout this post you’ll be seeing photographs of Mishka Mail’s February kit with the theme “Wonders of Travel”. Over these last 11 issues I approached my fellow bloggers to review Mishka Mail for every single month and very soon all the reviews from our past kits will be posted on our website for you to read. For now you can just Google the term: “Mishka Mail”

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Studio News

Where has this year gone? We’re almost at the end of 2016 and yet it doesn’t seem real somehow. Soon we’ll be decorating the Christmas tree again, singing carols by candlelight and making new year’s resolutions. It’s really hard to comprehend how quickly this year has passed by. Who else agrees?

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This month we’ll ship our fourth Mishka Mail parcel with a quirky Christmas theme. There will be plenty of cute greeting cards, gift tags and stickers to get you into the festive spirit, as well as a few surprises! Subscriptions are open until next Sunday, 20th of November and you can buy one here.

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Our October Mishka Mail kit was themed “Slow down, Take it easy”. We included various stationery items celebrating all the ways we can lead a simple, healthy lifestyle.

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This year we published our first advertisement in a cool Canadian magazine called Uppercase. We appear in their special 30th issue.

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Our studio had a little makeover with new artwork on the walls and a few changes to things here and there. We love how it’s turned out!

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Lastly, we’ll be exhibiting at a fantastic new pop-up market at the Caribbean Gardens (1280 Ferntree Gully Road, Scoresby) this Sunday, 20th of November. Make sure you come along if you’re in Melbourne as there will be tonnes of fun attractions and awesome craft stalls from 8.30am – 4.30pm. More info can be found here.

All these items of stationery will be available to purchase as part of our Mishka Mail kits, while stocks last:

Have a great week, everyone!

September’s Mishka Mail Revealed

*SPOILER ALERT* September’s Mishka Mail Kit is Revealed Below *SPOILER ALERT*

Time is flying by and we’ve already sent out our second monthly stationery kit for Mishka Mail. For September’s shipment the theme was “Bringing Snail-Mail Back” and there were lots of paper goodies included that you could send out to friends and penpals telling them how special they are to you.

 

Included in September’s kit were:

• 4 x “Mishka Collection” Greeting Cards
• 2 x Postcards
• 2 x Stickers
• 2 x Gift Tags
• 2 x “Mini Collection” Cards

October sign-ups are now OPEN until the 16th of this month. The theme will be “Slow down, Take it easy” and for the first time we’ll include a wall print in our kit! You don’t want to miss out on this one!

Visit the link below to join our Mishka Mail club today!

http://www.gracefulavenue.com.au

My Japanese Adventure

It has long been a dream of mine to visit the “Land of the Rising Sun”. I remember always being fascinated about Japanese minimalism in relation to architecture whilst studying interior design at university. I always found Japan to be a great source of inspiration and have always been interested in their way of life and their unique culture. I have always wanted to enter a Japanese shop where everything is cute and character-driven.

A couple of months ago, right at the beginning of their cherry blossom season, I finally made it to this intriguing and fascinating island known as Japan. It was an eye-opening experience from start to finish and was the first time I ever holidayed in Asia. My sister and I spent 12 days travelling in Japan, starting in Tokyo and visiting Osaka and Kyoto.

For this post I simply want to showcase my photos to you because there are so many websites and books in the marketplace where you can gain information, make itineraries, and map out your day from morning till night (admittedly as a person who loves to plan everything out, I used a very helpful little app called Tripomatic to help me bring all my research together into one helpful daily organiser!). Of course I recommend that you do your research, by all means, but I also learned that it’s alright to simply have no plan for the day and see where life takes you. I wish we had more time to explore these three beautiful cities without time limits and without maps and itineraries as this would allow us to relax more and truly feel what it’s like to be in Japan. On my next trip there that’s what I plan to do for sure but understandably for the first trip somewhere I always seem to want to pack in as much to see and do as I possibly can!

Japan is a country which leaves visitors with their own distinct impressions, as long as you’re open to the possibility of discovering, learning and experiencing life from outside your comfort zone. Yes, there were lots of people everywhere and at times we did find ourselves on packed train carriages, feeling a little bit out of place, but even then I was eager to turn unfamiliar corners and see what’s out there. Japan really pushed my sense of adventure to the max and even though I couldn’t speak the language, its beautiful people always made me feel at ease. This trip was one of those “pinch me, am I really here?” moments and I cannot recommend Japan enough for anyone who is interested in history, architecture and religion. If you’re fortunate enough not to have any time constraints in Japan, then you’re probably the luckiest person in the world because there’s so much to see and so many places with the wow factor that will definitely leave you feeling speechless.

 

Australian Open 2016

For as long as we’ve lived in Australia, we’ve never been to the Australian Open tennis except for Charity Matches or Kids’ Tennis Days. Luckily last Sunday we decided it was about time to experience the real atmosphere of a highly popular and entertaining tournament that brings visitors to Melbourne from all around the world. As a tennis fan and lover of the great game, getting a Ground Pass for the day made me really excited.

It was a rainy start to the day that made the practice courts outside wet and dangerous. Other fans and us waited for Novak Djokovic to begin practicing on one of the exterior courts, but after a while we saw Spanish tennis player, David Ferrer arrive for training. With his athletic looks and on-court charisma, it made the long one-hour wait by Court 17 really worth it. He graciously signed autographs for fans and posed for selfies afterwards.

It’s one thing to see the matches on TV and a completely different experience to actually be at the Australian Open. We’d catch celebrities everywhere we looked, even finding tennis champion turned commentator, Jim Courier, near the entrance to one of the major courts. My sister and I split up in order to see more and find our favourite players. I managed to come across my childhood idol, Martina Hingis posing with trophies, while my sister found her idol Mark Philippoussis.

Luckily by the afternoon many of the practice courts were being used and we could also catch Australian Bernard Tomic practicing, as well as second seed Andy Murray hitting shots with his coach Amélie Mauresmo. We were once again made to wait over an hour in the hopes of seeing the legend Roger Federer, but a last minute court change made us all run to a much larger practice court where the atmosphere was much less personal and made getting an autograph from the champion a lot more difficult!

Other matches we got to see were men’s doubles between Cuevas/Granollers and Dodig/Melo on Hisense Arena and Australian Stosur/Peers playing against Rodionova/Reid in the mixed doubles on Showcourt 2 as the sun started to set across the Melbourne skyline.

All in all, I highly recommend a visit to this tournament as it’s one-of-a-kind and really shows off the true Australian sporting culture we’ve all grown to know and love.

Congratulations to Angelique Kerber for beating Serena Williams last night in the Women’s finals and good luck to Djokovic and Murray in the Men’s finals tonight. I know that we’re in for a great night of tennis, even if this time I’ll be watching it on the television with a cool strawberry smoothie I always prepare for finals of the Australian Open.

Makers Market 2015

Last Saturday I tested out my brand new market display at the Makers Market in Moorabbin Junction. My mum and I spent much of the last few months constructing it all by ourselves. We were lucky enough to come across a very helpful assistant called Ralph at Masters, Oakleigh South. He looked at my sketch and took me around the aisles suggesting ways in which I could build my display. I had never worked with a power drill before and had never done anything to this scale. The idea of challenging myself to build something true to my brand really appealed to me and the presentation of my products on it, all made it worth the time invested in its construction.

I’d like to thank all our customers on the night. It was such a pleasure meeting all of you and hearing about how you plan on using the products you bought and getting positive feedback. The whole reason I got into the business of designing classy gifts was to bring smiles to people and it was so lovely to connect with all of you face-to-face once more. It definitely brought back memories of my shop in Watford and I can’t wait to return to this market again next year. Cheers!

Meet Mishka!

We are so excited to present to you our Mishka as a 3D model! What started out as a drawing on a piece of paper then became our greeting card and gift tag products, and now we have our very own business card holding Mishka model, perfect for trade shows, events and markets! We simply can’t wait to showcase him somewhere in Melbourne soon!

You can purchase greeting cards with our Mishka on them from our Online Etsy Shop here.