I welcome all gift guides at this time of year. The Blog and Buy Sale's wish lists always offer awesome independent designer suggestions for those gifts that require all your levels of thoughtfulness. As well as generally being the best gift the special people in your life will receive at a time when the gifts under the tree will be littered with gift sets.
Frilly Pick
We have a few items in the Christmas gift list. My favourite of our 3 is our 'Down the Rabbit Hole' Alice in Wonderland Brooch, layers of hand painted, laser etched wood create a psychedelic tunnel into wonderland as she chases the white rabbit. Its a great statement brooch for those with bold, illustrative or literary sensibilities.
Alice Falling Brooch
There is so much loveliness in the wish list this Christmas that both Adrienne and I have chosen 7 items we are coveting. Adrienne's list will be next week, she takes longer than I do in narrowing down her choices to only 7.
Pick Number 1 - 'HOT STUFF!' coasters by Jenny Haytch
We've had debates about who buys coasters and when, is it just for gifts and why do you only ever end up with generic tableware sets from big brand store. This year we seem to have spotted lots of coasters we love, from classy typographic land and sea sets to these risque, quirky numbers that are right up our street.
Celebrating chicken legs, bum fluff and apple bottoms.
Pick 2 - Origami Cotton Table Napkins by Lollipop Designs
Our love for origami is pretty evident from our origami range but these napkins make it easy to have a fancy but fun looking table setting with only a few simple folds. Its better than wasting time watching tutorials to fold your napkins into standing fancy swans and fans.
What do you get if you fold a mouse, an owl and a watermelon? A good looking table setting that's what.
Pick 3 - Brushed Wooden Vinyl Wrapped Chair by Kute
Sadly I don't have the room in my cluttered terraced home for this chair but if I did it would make the perfect accompaniment to my 50's G-Plan dresser, seat height pending of course. These bold brushstrokes make me think of Adrienne's tattoo and our board painting for our balls of wool range.
Big and Bold
Pick 4 - 'All The Friends' Tote Bag by Lola Polooza
As a vinyl head it was a hard choice between this fab bag and the matching badge but as a tote bag junkie this item won out. You have to keep the vinyl dry when you visit your local independent record store (mine's Ignite Records FYI).
Pick your favourite colour
Pick Number 5 - Dilophosaurus Risograph Print by Maisie Platts
This print is adorably cute as the dino costume wearing human looks back furtively. I'm also a bit of a sucker for Risographs which is why it was so hard to choose between Maisie's dino prints, at only £8 each why not buy them all?
Caught in the act
Pick 6 - 90s Toys Enamel Lapel Pin Badge Set by Hand Over Your Fairy Cakes
'Hand Over Your Fairy Cakes' has an array of fun pop culture jewellery items to melt your brains. I desperately want to be a part of their mix tape club but this set of 3 tipped the nostalgia scales for me. Roller Skates, tick, Super Soaker, tick, Tamagotchi, tick. Admittedly I was massively frustrated by my Tamagotchi but roller discos and whole street water fights initiated by my big brother sadly take me back to the 80s rather 90s. Daaamn just showed my age.
80s Toys - 2, 90s Toys - 1
Pick 7 - 'A – Z of lesser known animals' by Hannah Broadway
I couldn't resist this print with it's air of the work of 50's illustrators Charley Harper and Gorden Cullen. There are lots of A-Z prints out there so why not go for the lesser known instead and stand out from the crowd.
How many do you know?
There are lots of other shiny things in the Blog and Buy wish list by some awesome makers but our favourite pieces by them aren't in the list this time. I'm secretly hoping Santa brings me some paint by numbers Finest Imaginary.