Thursday, April 28, 2016

Mona Lisa's smile took time!

Dear paper lovers,

Our very first and brand new paper collection is in its final stages before the big launch. You will only be able to buy it, once the price is loaded in the shop. This will happen soon.


As it is with all things art and creative, it has its own time. The process of design is a back and forth of deciding on just the right color and sourcing the exact right paper for the design. What we learn in this process is valuable and shapes what we will keep doing in the future. For us, quality and doing it right, is just as important as the creative art behind it all. Excellence is our motto!

But it requires on big thing: PATIENCE! Oh, and don't we all just struggle with this concept. I know I do. In my nature I want to make art that is current and new and quick so I can see immediate results, but true art takes time and this pushes my limits so I can grow and I am perfectly fine with it.

The other day I watched a National Geographic show on DSTV about Leonardo Davinci's process painting the Mona Lisa. Wow, what a painstakingly detailed process that required immense patience. He would add a little pigment of color to oil and layer it on to her, one layer at a time. A very clever Frenchman recently designed a special camera to be able to capture all these layers to show us just what this process looked like. Davinci is known for this process and this is his outstanding accomplishment. No one has ever been able to really duplicate it. So, it is all worth it.


What I took from this is, is be true to your own self and the process you feel you need to follow when creating something that is unique to you. In the end, that adds diversity to the world out there. People want what is new and fresh, but I also think they want the story behind it and they want it to be different. To get to different, we need to keep on keeping on. Do the work, Follow trends and create your own trend. Bring different to the table. Well, this may just take some time. So, in order for us to bring you our new paper collection, a truly South African product, locally produced, we need to put in the work it will take and that is exactly what we are doing.

So, maybe we wont be able to launch it just yet, but we are close, so very close.

We have a couple of things in the making, that we hope you fellow paper lovers out there will like and be able to use in your own art journey.

In the meantime, while you await our reveals, you are welcome to write to us and share your wish list in terms of what you feel is lacking in our local artsy and paper/memory-keeping/scrapbooking market. What is it that we wished we could get our hands on locally? I personally don't want the stuff I see online that come from other countries. I want what is local and will represent my culture and kind. So, let us know what it is you would like to see in terms of paper design and products to accompany it. We may just work it into our own design process and give you the products you dream of.

PS: if you view our paper collection online on our website, you may later notice that we are moving towards a more pinkish/blueish color-scheme than the orange/greenish colors you may see in the current images we shared online. The process of getting what you see on your computer screen to come out exactly in the printing of the final product, is causing us to tinker with it a little more to get it closer to the intended color-scheme. We plan to update the images as soon as we are ready. 

In the next post, I will share with you more about the color-scheme and where and when you can place orders for this collection.

Also look out for our post on Archival friendly Paper for your memory-keeping.