Paul Annett

My wife has been busy crafting in the lead-up to Christmas, making all sorts of goodies as gifts - she’s really amazingly talented and creative!

One idea which has become a bit of a hit this year are the vintage Ladybird books which she’s been rescuing from charity shops, dissecting, and binding with notepaper to create these unique retro Ladybird book notebooks. As well as a handy place to write your thoughts, the note paper is inter-leaved with the original Ladybird book pages for added nostalgia.

Each one is painstakingly handmade from the original second-hand Ladybird book, and finished with an appropriately coloured length of elastic to hold it shut and keep your secrets safe inside.

These Ladybird book notebooks make ideal Christmas presents, and best of all they’re available today from stupidgorgeous.co.uk!

Update: Even Vintage Ladybird books themselves are fans! They added Relly as a friend when she posted pictures of the notebooks to the Vintage Ladybird Books Flickr group.

Last week I knocked up a quick’n'dirty animation from Jeremy’s An Event Apart photoset, just to include in his Flickr comments. Little did I realise how popular it’d become!

Links from the likes of Jeffery Zeldman and Eric Meyer have prompted me to give it its own blog entry. After all, if it weren’t for those guys’ books, I wouldn’t have the pleasure to be working with Jeremy at Clearleft, so this animation wouldn’t exist! Besides, if it doesn’t have it’s own blog post, there’s nowhere for me to give Jeremy his CC attribution for the original.

So, here it is… (click to biggify)

Paul and I are clearly in agreement - while many of our contemporaries are at SXSW in Texas, staying behind for Dave and Amy’s birthday is far more important! Check out the photos of a great evening, from Dave and The Mark.

And on the way home, the excitement of a failing alternator and a lift home with a nice man from the AA. Lucky us!

2.5 Annett-Bakers (and Pauly).
Originally uploaded by Dave Smith.