Stationery inspiration

Yes, that's stationery as in paper, rather than un-moving*. Shopping today with boyfriend (combined with long walk - very healthy!) and I dragged him into Paperchase because I just love stationery and was looking for 'inspiration'. It may seem a little odd to have one's creative juices flowing just as the sight of a floral notebook, but I never claimed to be entirely sane! He can't quite understand my fascination. Maybe it is a girl thing or a writer's peccadillo, but there's something quite special about notebooks, especially new ones and in particular those with interesting covers and bits of ribbon to tie them closed**. A boring old plain red or grey cover doesn't do it for me in the same way. Once again regressing to my childhood (must be because I turned 39 this week?), I used to love a notebook. They were always full of my drawings and stories. I kept some of them for years... in fact ...goes upstairs to see if she can find any and returns clutching an early teens example with a sequel to Return of the Jedi planned out in meticulous detail and also, somewhat mysteriously, a piece of petrified wood which was also found in the 'treasures I can't bear to part with' box).

And it's not just notebooks, I love wrapping paper too. In my poor student days I used to use sheets of it as arty (cheap) posters.

Just sneaked on the Paperchase website to 'borrow' a photo to suitably depict my posting and found a print called Lisa! Then, googled the print name and looky what I found... a blog that "celebrates the world of surface pattern design" aka another stationery fan! Well, that's two of us and seeing as she has had over 56,000 views of her profile there must be more in this obsession than I had first thought. Is there perhaps a medical terminology for this addiction? Just take a look and check out some of these cool patterns. Hmm, I'm definitely inspired now!

Finally got my printer working, but unfortunately not on my pc :(

* if you can't remember which is which 'statione/ary ' - paper has an 'e' for envelope. Many thanks to Hazel Peto for teaching me this useful memory jogger.
** thank you Lindsay - they are both coming in very useful!