Post archive

School's Out for Summer

Summer is here and between the cracks in the pavement nature is pushing up weeds and grasses in the most unlikely places. This set of three clay flower grenades give nature a helping hand by exploding a mix of wild flowers and compost into any unused patch of waste ground of your choice. Brighten the corners of your world! 

Tiger tip: Take a bottle of water for the seeds (and make sure that you have permission to brighten someone else's land).


All Work & No Play...

...makes Jack A Dull Boy. Jack Nicholson memorably tapped away at his typewriter in The Shining, and our new range of QWERTY stationery and gifts takes it's inspiration from old typewriter lettering to create a great look for 2010.

Choose from A5 & A6 journals, laptop bags, wallets and mugs, available now in store and online!

Life Is Beautiful!

It's an Edinburgh holiday, the sun is shining on this beautiful city, and this beautiful little sunshine yellow journal caught my eye as I was skipping around the beautiful Paper Tiger store this morning.

The first thing to know is that it's traveled all the way from South Korea, a nation of true stationery obsessives. The illustration is lavish, the quality of the paper is wonderful, you get some sheets of stickers to use (what's not to like about stickers?), plus the whole thing is wrapped in a very neat clear plastic sleeve. 

The pages are laid out in a 'week to view' style familiar to anyone who has used a pocket diary, so you could begin to record beautiful thoughts as soon as you get hold of a copy - available in store today, or shipped from our online shop to you within 48 hours of ordering. 

All Wrapped Up - Down the Stairs!

It's all change in the Paper Tiger store on Stafford Street. We have moved our gift wrapping department downstairs to give more choice from our great range of sheet wrap and gift bags, together with all our ribbons, tags and bows.


We have delicious new wraps from the Vivid range, from new designer Sanna Annuka and a great range of travel themed wraps to complement our travel stationery on the ground floor.

We now lots more room for our social stationery and occasion cards on the ground floor, so please pop along to check out our moves!
 

Traveling In Style

Oh dear. We introduced our travel stationery display at the very moment the decision was made to ban flights across Europe. The labels say "Par Avion" but they're at odds with reality. Briefly.

Amongst our team we have weddings at the weekend (with honeymoon flights to the Far East), home visits to The Czech Republic, and it seems that along with everyone else, we all have stories of stranded family and friends.  

Anyway, after this brief interlude it appears that the world will be on the move again after an extended weekend of clear skies. We are all so used to using our world "Par Avion" - the lovely labels on show below are produced by a company in San Francisco. The range includes wrap, tags, labels, note cards and journals.

These images recall a time when traveling was a little more glamorous...and a little less complicated.

On Safari

This handsome chap has every reason to be proud of himself, as he's just appeared in our new window display, and he will be on the new range of Paper Tiger tshirts due a little bit later on this month.

The lion is the work of illustrator Becky Carr, who began producing cards just last year and has been part of the Paper Tiger range ever since.

Watch this space for more t-shirts news in the next couple of weeks!

 

We're Counting Our Chickens

We have got flocks of chickens, broods of chicks,
and a warren worth of Easter Bunnies too. They're all on beautifully finished cards, in amongst a great selection of Easter designs to suit all ages and tastes.

There are also plenty of Easter gift ideas such as pretty little jars of sweets and a host of gorgeous new stationery for the imminent arrival of Spring.

We've just received brand new Moleskine Journals to record your exercise routines, musical tastes or record recipe - each journal has a fully embossed cover, 3 ribbon place markers and double expandable inner pocket.
 
They are really useful, and brilliantly laid out. For instance the recipe journal has food calendars, food facts, measurements and conversions, and there are six theme-based sections to fill in: appetizers, first courses, main dishes, side dishes, desserts, cocktails. There are also six tabbed sections to personalize and sixteen blank pages in which to unleash your creativity in the kitchen.



Freshly Unwrapped Stationery



I've just unwrapped a new Moleskine notebook; a simple act of sliding a thumbnail along the cellophane wrapper, the satisfying creak as the spine opens for the first time, the smell of the pages as I open them up for the first time. My current classic black lined journal sits its alongside the shiny new one, and has just a few pages left to be used up by the end of the week. The spine is broken, the page marker is frayed, the dented and scuffed cover has lost some of it's shine but none of it's allure.

This time around I've decided to go for a red journal. I've already added a little Paper Tiger sticker at the front to stake my claim on it's clean white surfaces; and later on today I will begin to scrawl some outline plans along the empty lines. I've just fished out the printable Moleskine templates that allow you to insert your own pages, and I will be copying over some bits & pieces onto them. I find it useful to have reminders of my fixed meetings and agendas at the front of each notebook, and so carefully spray mounting them into the opening pages is a statement of intent for the next few months.

This shiny red Moleskine should see me through to mid/late August - at work it will help me through Mothers Day, Easter and Fathers Day, the Festivals, and all of our planning and preparation for Christmas. Two members of the Paper Tiger team will get married during the life span of this journal, and amongst a host of celebrations and anniversaries, my daughter Scarlett will celebrate her first birthday. She arrived shortly after I had started the current journal, and the entries in my working schedule at that moment reflect the changes in my life, the paperclipped photos in the front remind me of her when I'm at work.

Over the next few days the old journal will be strip mined for any nuggets of information, ideas and stalled plans, to be weighed up and added into the plans and schemes that will inform the first few pages of this shiny red journal of hopes and expectations. Then the old journal will be added to the stack in my office, measuring out time and progress in lined Moleskines.

Mothering Sunday

Mothers Day is just a couple of weeks away on the 14th March.

Paper Tiger has a great selection of distinctive cards for you to celebrate the day with your Mum this year, including this glorious rendering of a Liberty & Co classic cotton furnishing fabric. The pattern is called Field Flowers and was retailed by the iconic London department store in the early twentieth century. It's a look that has inspired scores of imitators over the years, but the original designs are true classics.

We also have a range of Liberty & Co patterned journals and notecards in Paper Tiger, so why not present your Mother with a fabulously floral tribute this year?

 

2010 - The Year Of The Tiger

  2010 is the Chinese Year Of The Tiger!

This fine looking fellow is the latest image from the Beast Wishes range of animal cards illustrated by Maria Livings of Lush Designs. There are several other creatures currently cavorting across the shelves, from foxes and geese through to saucer eyed lemurs. Our shops are currently glittering with an array of new designs and products for the year ahead, with fresh new cards, wraps and stationery designs arriving every day.

We have also extended our Make Your Own Cards section in Paper Tiger to supply you with a great selection of materials to unleash your own creativity. 

We're looking forward to (another) great Year Of The Tiger, come along and see why!

Gung Hay Fat Choy!  

A Valentine Message In A Bottle

This Valentines Day, why not send a message in a bottle to your Valentine?

This beautifully proportioned glass bottle with a cork stopper also includes three scrolls for passing messages to your loved one. 

Limited stocks still available in Paper Tiger stores!

Final Reductions!

The Paper Tiger January sale is drawing to a close, and we have taken up to 70% off remaining stocks of selected 2010 calendars and diaries. There are also limited ranges of cards, Christmas cards and stationery ranges still available in our offer section, but they are diminishing quickly! 

New Year Sale

Happy New Year to all of our customers! 


We're starting 2010 with a small sale - lots of beautiful things that we've reduce to make way for exciting and even more beautiful ranges for 2010! 

Our calendars and diaries are now reduced by 30% - stocks are running out quickly, so if you haven't got your dates organised for the new year be quick! 

Our sister store Studio One (next to us on Stafford Street) is also holding a January sale to make way for exciting new spring season treats for you and your home. 

Calendars & Diaries for 2010

The new year is just two weeks away! Make sure you're set for 2010 with a new diary from Paper Tiger. We have an extensive range that includes the classic Moleskine diaries in many sizes and sizes, contemporary designs for your bag or briefcase, fun desk top diaries or something discreet for your inside pocket. 


As usual we have a great range of wall calendars from around the world that includes charity calendars for Greenpeace, contemporary photography, design and architecture, as well as classic imagery from the great artists. 

Look out for our fun day per page desk top calendars - set yourself a daily sudoku challenge or enjoy a fresh, quote, puzzle or recipe to give your day a good start! 

Send Someone You Love to the Stars This Christmas


Richard Branson may have the VSS Enterprise, but here at Paper Tiger we're giving you the opportunity to launch an entire fleet of space craft this Christmas!

From the creator of Paper Pilot and Paper Captain, Paper Astronaut is a beautifully illustrated voyage into deep space, combining stunning archival photographs and colorful technical drawings with expertly designed die-cut models that readers can actually cut out and assemble. 

Published for the fortieth anniversary of the moon landing in 1969—and introduced by Buzz Aldrin—the book includes histories of twenty feats of aeronautic engineering drawn from half a century of space programs around the world, from Apollo 11 to the Soviet space station Mir and China’s Shenzou 7 capsule, and featuring the most iconic designs of fifty years of space exploration. 

Each spacecraft is accompanied by amazing stories, fascinating facts and statistics about the universe around them, and mesmerizing photographs of the vessels in space. Sixty-four pages of the book are devoted to finely crafted die-cut paper models of the featured rockets, presented with clear instructions for assembly and helpful advice for deploying your galactic fleet. And you can buy Paper Astronaut and Paper Pilot in our online shop! 

Christmas Posting Dates

A few key dates for posting your Christmas Cards to UK addresses:

Special Delivery Royal Mail - 23rd December
First Class Royal Mail - 21st December
Second Class Royal Mail - 18th December

More details for overseas and other services at the Royal Mail website.

A New Look Website and an Online Shop!

Looking Up


Things are looking up for the many Paper Tiger customers who can't always get to Edinburgh. We know that there are thousands of you out there who have shopped with us when you have visited the city, and there are many of you who have lived in the city and now live elsewhere.   

We're delighted to announce the arrival of our new Paper Tiger website which (we know, at last) features an online shop. Our initial offering is a tiny wee taster of our range, although we plan to continually add items throughout the year. 

If there is a particular card or stationery item that you have seen in the shop that is not available in the shop then please use the contact form and we will endeavour to process your request via email. 

You can also use the form to tell us what you think - we're keen to hear from you!

The rest of the website has also had a redesign and has a fresh look. The eagle eyed amongst you may notice that the website has a secondary URL - www.shoppapertiger.com  - but we will continue to use our existing website address (www.papertiger.ltd.uk). Happy Shopping!

A Musical Ruler - more kit for your Stationery Band!

Available Now in our Online Store!


If you're currently enjoying the delights of the Drumstick Pencils, why not add the musical ruler to your stationery rock band?

The ruler is the standard 30cm/12" ruler, so it's carefully calibrated to do all of the basic ruler activities such as measuring anything you like (in new and old money), and it also provides a straight edge for underlining important things, crossing out less important things, and drawing boxes and other such geometric elements that require a straight line.

It's also manufactured from fine quality plastic to provide adequate tone and depth to your performance. The ruler comes with a handy playing guide to get you started, but the simplicity of the instrument means you can play along with almost anything straightaway.

My daughter is currently learning to play a musical instrument. Although she can master a tune on her trombone, she can't use it to draw a straight line, and for that reason alone the musical ruler beats any instrument in the orchestra.

Stationery Based Therapy for OCD Sufferers Everywhere

The Stuff Box designers describe it rather prosaically as a shoebox organiser. I've done shoebox organising all of my life, boxes full of old photos and negatives, boxes with important mementoes in them, boxed up years of my life, the years of the lives of my children, and the some really dull shoeboxes full of obsolete cables for vintage mobile phones and dead technologies. 

From the outside, this box looks like a standard sneaker store box, but when you lift open the flap a world of wonder opens up before your astonished eyes. The top of the box is a ring bound set of lovely manilla sleeves with exciting cut out slots for attaching things like business cards or CD Roms. I was especially delighted by the sheet of enclosed stickers, simply because there's nothing quite like organising your life through sticker based technology. 

Below the filing, the storage. A very neat A4 sized lift out tray sits snugly on top of a set of compartments for keeping important things in safe little places. The illustration above shows a very basic set up for all of your car documents; and having just taxed, MoT'd and renewed the insurance on my car, I'm now looking forward to filing them all neatly in one place so that I can avoid the paper hunt that I endured earlier in the month. 

Of course you can have a whole lot more fun than that - the stuff box could provide a safe haven for all of your wedding souvenirs, the cards and paraphernalia that herald the arrival of a new baby, the memories of a graduation, a christening, or just a great family Christmas. Shoeboxes stack up, and the stuff box gives you plenty of stacking options! 


Rock Out with our Drumstick Pencils


Available now in our Online Shop! 

These career changing musical drumstick pencils are just about perfect for the aspiring rock star amongst your friends and family this Christmas. 

Each drumstick pencil is perfectly weighted for your inner rock god to thrash out a tattoo on any available surface. If you're at home, then why not use a set of biscuit tins and storage jars for your "kit", as these should provide a tuneful domestic composing space. I have found that a baking tray can act effectively as a cymbal. 

And of course whilst at work you can use your desk, mug, keyboard and monitor stand to make sweet music all day long; hold the space bar down on your keyboard to create a fast paced metronomic beat. Just imagine the delight amongst your colleagues! 

And of course you can scribble the lyrics to your next pop classic with the pencil end. We have some lovely notebooks that you could use for that too.

Autumn Printmakers


We've been busy with autumnal hunting and gathering for the stores over the last few weeks. It's been hard work for us; but it's been immensely rewarding to see our community of contemporary designers and graphics artists rise to the challenges of global recession and produce such high quality work.


We are really delighted with the treats that we will have in store for you in the weeks ahead, and we're looking forward to having our finest and most extensive Christmas ranges on display in the shops next month. This year we're going to work with the seasons, and hold out for Christmas until the first frost, (or close to it)!

In the meantime we have selected some brand new autumn delights from one of our most consistent suppliers, Art Angels. Their printmakers work began with St Judes Gallery which has produced consistently strong work from Angie Lewin and Mark Hearld; and also with local artists to us such as Linda Farquharson and Hilke MacIntyre.

The image above is "Almost There" by Andrew Pavitt. We have stocked Andrew's designs for a number of years in Paper Tiger, and they are now beautifully printed by Art Angels on a really lovely card stock. There are four new autumn designs in the range, and they all say 'September' in the most stylish fashion.

Edinburgh's Twittering Classes

We twit too (send your owl jokes on a very stylish postcard).

2010 - We demand hover shoes, jet packs, and shiny new diaries!



Our range of 2010 calendars and diaries in almost complete, and we're really proud of the range of styles and the quality of the images that we have sourced for 2010. The two diary designs illustrated here are by Campbell Laird, a successful Australian artist and designer who now enjoys the good fortune of being based in New York City. We have featured his work before on journal covers, and we really like the retro-futurist look of the work.

It echoes the design styles of the late fifties and early sixties, when 2010 really was the future and personal hover shoes seemed to be a realistic prospect. Instead of jet packs, Edinburgh is reinventing 19th century tram technology...who knows, maybe that will be running by the time we get to the 2050's...

Another Scottish Summer!



The weather is outrageous. The sunshine we have briefly enjoyed has been welcome relief between the showers. The forecast looks a little better, which is just as well as we have some great new t-shirts that deserve a proper summer outing before autumn shuffles into view!

We featured the work of Yoshitomo Nara a few weeks ago, and now - as promised - we have a selection of t-shirts in the Paper Tiger stores that feature his work, including the one to the right. Yoshitomo has been illustrating since the late 1980's, and his work reflects an eclectic mix of Japanese manga and western pop culture, informed by a fine arts education.

These limited edition t-shirts have been produced by the ultra stylish 2K company, and we have a great selection available right now in the stores.

We are also pleased to have designs by Adrian Johnson, who's strong visual style works really well on t-shirts. Adrian's work has featured across a multitude of different media, from The Guardian to Comic Relief, and now t-shirts at Paper Tiger.

Moleskine MSK - Printing for your Moleskine



Apologies for yet another post extolling the virtues of all things Moleskine, but my deep seated and long standing obsession with the little black books has been enhanced this week by the discovery of this neat little piece of software.

Now you can custom print documents, online address books and page formats on your PC or Mac, and paste the directly into your Moleskine. Over the last few months I've been doing a free style version of this by cutting up pages of information that I need, and then spray mounting them into my Moleskine, so having the custom sizes simplifies my retentive tendencies!

The events scheduler works with the Apple Mac iCal so that you can even print out your diary in a Moleskine style and have all your events and appointments synchronised in lovely practical papery Moleskine format.

The more meaningful question might be to ask 'why bother'? In my personal experience, using a Moleskine for on the go notes, meeting notes, ideas and providing a creative surface for sketches and plans does not have an electronic equivalent. My to do lists and diary events that I maintain electronically are a distillation of projects and ideas and plans that began with a pen and a Moleskine.

The MSK software simply provides another platform for me to integrate my Moleskine universe with my laptop galaxy. And indulge a stationery obsession!

New Moleskins!

The good people at Moleskine continue to develop new and more covetable ways for us to indulge our addiction to the their little black books.

They've done it again, this time by making big black books.

The new A3 & A4 range of notebooks include some really useful addictions to the Moleskine Universe. There are plain A4 notebooks that would look especially stylish tucked under your sleeve at any important meeting and this new size neatly fills a hole in the Moleskine range.

The new A4 and A3 sizes of Watercolour Books are something that Paper Tiger customers have asked for repeatedly over the years, and we're delighted to have such a beautifully finished piece of stationery in our stores.

I'm personally very taken by the A3 size folio for documents and things that need to be organised.

Take a look at this - it's amazing what you can fit into it!

New Paper Tiger Shop!

Welcome to the new Paper Tiger online shop, where you can purchase special items from the comfort of your own home. We'll be updating the shop soon to include deals and events for the upcoming season, so stay tuned!

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