The Paperie Blog

Bold prints,

Floral designs,

And pattern galore.

Orla’s work we do adore.

**********************

With vellum sheets,

Printed endpapers,

The craftsmanship’s plain to see.

It’s the small details that make Orla’s work super classy.

**********************

From notebooks,

And writing sets,

To memo blocks.

We’ve got a wonderful collection,

And some exciting new stock.

*********************

Writing,

Remembering,

Recording and more,

Put pen to paper

With a little Orla Amour!

See our lovely new for Summer 2012 collection right here

Can you hear a gentle thud…? It’s come to that enviable time of the year where teachers across the land spontaneously break into a Grease-style flash dance and gleefully leave the double doors swinging closed behind them as they skip into a well deserved summer sabbatical (provided they did their homework during term-time). Ah, the heady thought of adventurous days and balmy evenings spent somewhere totally new. Holidays.

And whilst the teachers amongst us are heading off, it seems the rest of the world are heading our way for the Olympics with every nation you could ever possibly want to visit camped in our very own capital. Exciting times ahead for Victoria P, Jessica and the rest of Team GB. Go, Go, GO!

Travel (and gold medals) seems to be the hot topic of the moment so we thought it prudent to point you all in the direction of our finest selection of paper travel companions. We’ve got all sorts, from the oh-so-clever K Two Travel Journals, Cavallini City Guides (a Paris one for Cavendish) and Leuchtturm1917 London Skyline Notebooks, so whether travelling to far-flung places or just to East London is on the cards, grab one of these.

For more details, just click here and remember as always we have FREE UK delivery when you spend £5.00 or more!

We’ve been busy, as ever, sourcing exciting new notebooks, diaries, papers and pens so there’s a host of gorgeous new stationery delights waiting in the wings for your perusal. Wooo hooo, we hear you cry.

BUT before we do anything about re-stocking, we are having a wee Spring clean; SALE TIME! We’ve had some fantastic Paperie product hit our shelves recently and, oh, how we would dearly love to keep the last few pieces for ourselves.  Alas, eventually we would end up like one of those hoarders you see on the telly documentaries and before you know it, we’d be accessing HQ via the chimney and sleeping on Orla Kiely notebooks.

So, a sale it is. And here’s the best bit, we have 150 items reduced by up to 50%.

Roll up, roll up. Lovely greetings cards, Moleskin notebooks (yes indeedy) and things-you-just-can’t-live-without all must go…

(BTW – sign-up (customercare@thepaperie.co.uk) to our newsletter for the latest Paperie low-down each week and find out about this stuff first. It’s the list everyone wants to be on, don’t you know.)

A dear friend of mine has a talent for envisioning life in the future; spotting planning problems, anticipating the pitfalls and forecasting the evitable hiccups that can crop up in even the best of the best-laid plans. He is organised within an inch of his life, like some sort of Admin Jedi. We have come to affectionately call this skill ‘thinking through time’. Others are not so blessed and the task of organising life more than a few days ahead is a challenge.

The answer, it turns out, is all in UBER- ORGANISATION (you heard it here first). And an 18 month diary. Imagine being able to liberally spread your days, weeks and months ahead with all the relevant information to keep family, work and social life organised and ship shape well into the future. And have the info to hand at any given moment.

Here are our best Lifesabres of Organisation.

“A good book transports the reader to another time or place; both real and imaginary. Such magical novels make it possible to board a bus in the heart of the city and be carried away to a remote desert island, the moon or back to 1885. Books, much like buses, are there for everyone.”

Show your love of good literature with this unusual new range of A5 notebooks and matching mugs from Wild & Wolf. The design of each cover or mug is based on the destination boards on classic London Buses and lists the key locations in the featured novels. Choose from designs celebrating classic novels including Pride & Prejudice, Lord of the Flies, Frankenstein and Oliver Twist.

To find out more about this great collection, please click here and remember as always we have FREE UK delivery when you spend £5.00 or more!

Win a matching mug and notebook! To be in with a chance of winning a matching mug and notebook from the Literary Transport collection just click the Facebook button on this page and ‘Like’ us before Sunday 8th July at midnight – we’ll pick a winner from everybody who ‘Likes’ us at random and announce it on our Facebook page on Monday.

Inspired by Roderick Field’s Literary Transport series (new to the Paperie here), which references London bus signs and titles of classic novels, we thought we’d  bring you some top notch tips on novel writing.

Having shaped the words of publications such as The Times, The Observer, Grazia, Stylist and the Huffington Post, journalist and writer, Anna Hart is now turning her hand to the creation of a novel. Here is what she had to say on getting started.

So, we’ve sharpened our pencils, what next?

The best place to start a novel is with a person. You should be on very familiar terms with at least one character before you put pen to paper. They don’t need to be the main character, but they need to be worth knowing, and you need to know them through and through.

Sounds good. How do you go about doing that?

I take this process of familiarisation to an extreme (why the hell not?) and sit with cut-outs from magazines, felt-tip pens and a scrapbook, until I’ve established what clothes are in this character’s wardrobe, what music is on their iPod and how they smell. You don’t need to put any of this information into the book, but you need to know it. The work pays off, because suddenly the character will start speaking to you; you’ll hear their response to events when you watch the news at ten, like an invisible flatmate. You’ll need their voice to guide you through the book.

What if there are too many voices all chatting at once?

I recommend going on a ‘reading diet’. Pick five or six titles which deal with similar themes to those you want to explore, or written in a style you admire and are hoping to emulate. Don’t read anything else. Generally speaking I’m a very broad reader, but I’ve learned that reading an author with a very different style to my own blows me off course whilst I’m writing a novel. Exposing yourself to a mishmash of influences is a bit like putting far too many ingredients in a stew. You need to keep your intentions clear and simple.

Thanks so much Anna, we’re inspired and ready to WRITE….

@AnnaDotHart