thankyou brisbane

What an amazing, crazy, wonderful weekend we had at the Finders Keepers Markets. We are so full of thanks! So please do excuse our Oscars thankyou speech below...

First of all thankyou to YOU. Thankyou for all your support, everyone who stopped by and said hello, new shoppers finding us for the first time, and old shoppers popping back to buy again. Lovely blog friends we love you. Thankyou.

To lovely friends and students current and past who to stopped by - its always so lovely to see you. And to those extra special friends who jumped behind our stall and helped us sell - you are too wonderful.

To my beautiful friend and amazing assistant Louise - thankyou for the gorgeous and amazing flowers - you are the sweetest friend - thankyou!

To Mr H - you amazing man, you make a wonderful shop boy - thankyou for running the fort while I socialise. Thankyou for all the heavy lifting and help you volunteer to other designers - you are so precious.

And finally to the two girls who I am so in awe of - Sarah & Brooke, your vision, your passion and your commitment makes finders keepers an amazing community I am so proud to work with. Thankyou ladies - you are simply amazing!

Phew. Time to catch my breath. But thankyou, thankyou, thankyou. xox

oh my.

Its been a busy busy week here in the studio - a new print, our very own movie and ontop of all that we have been busy busy little bees preparing lots of gorgeous letterpress goodies for this weekends finders keepers. Make sure you pop buy and say hello, let us know your a blog reader... we might just have a surprise or two!

xox

p.s a very big thankyou for all your gorgeous email, tweets and comments about both our ampersand print and movie - many hugs for you all!

bespoke letterpress - the movie

We are so excited to today be sharing with you a short movie from here in our studio... we hope that you enjoy!

xox

p.s make sure you turn the volume up. To view in a larger size click here.

ampersand print now in store!

We are very excited to announce that today we have a new limited edition print in our online store! Our ampersand study print is a study in our all time favourite character in the alphabet - the ampersand - other wise known as the "&" character. We love ampersands - fat ones, small ones, decorative ones and pretty ones so we are very excited to have designed and printed our very own illustration of the ampersand.

Available for $45, each print is a limited edition numbered run of 50 and have been handprinted on Charlie our 1893 printing press. The print measures 8.5x11” and has been designed to suit frame made for a 8x10” photograph.

To celebrate the launch of this new print, we are having an online sale and you will find lots of goodies marked down in our online store!

a day out and about

We took a very rare day out and about yesterday. Life here at the house and studio has been very busy with lots of orders, finders keepers preparations and never ending renovations, so we stole our escape and headed out and went exploring for the day.

We went for a Sunday drive up to Mt Glorious, Jollys Lookout and Mt Nebo. We did a touch of antique exploring, a tad of shopping and as always some wonderful eating. While driving through the winding roads of Mt Nebo we spotted the Cafe Boombana, with signage for the best scones in the world - how could we not resist?

And I must admit, it was the highlight of our trip. Sitting out under the rainforest bush, with our huge scones and excellent coffee we had an audience of 5 kookaburras most envious of our treat - delicious indeed!

behind the scenes

Lovely friends, we wish you a beautiful weekend - we will be busy in the studio printing for next weekends Brisbane Finders Keepers market, but today we wanted to give you a sneak peak into all the action from the studio whilst we printed wedding stationery for the adorable Rebecca & Casey.

See you again next week!

xA

in the kitchen - banana & mars bar cake

My mum is an amazing baker - she makes and bakes and creates all sorts of yummy and amazing treats. So when she emails me through a recipe she has found - I know she is onto a good thing!

I've made this recipe twice now - and let me tell you its a real winner. The first bake was the cake as above and the second time was for birthday cupcakes with mars bar pieces hidden inside the cupcakes and a drizzle of chocolate on the top. Oh my. I promise, you wont be disappointed.

INGREDIENTS

150g butter

1/2 cup (100g) brown sugar

2 eggs

3 bananas, mashed

2 cups (300g) self-raising flour

3 x 60g Mars Bars, chopped - the more the better!

1/2 cup (125ml) milk

METHOD

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Line a 7 x 11 x 21cm loaf pan with non-stick baking paper. Beat butter and brown sugar until pale and creamy. Beat in eggs and mashed bananas.

2. Combine flour and Mars Bars. Fold into the butter mixture with milk. Spoon into pan. Bake for 50-55 minutes. Set aside to cool, then cut and enjoy!!

3. Once cold, Microwave for 15 seconds before eating for gooey yummy chocolatey goodness.

brisbane finders keepers market

Here at Bespoke we are getting giddy with excitement as the Finders Keepers is headed back to Brisbane and we are so exciting to be taking part again!

Join us next Saturday and Sunday for an amazing line up of local and interstate designers, live music and a fabulous cafe & bar. We will be there with lots of new letterpress goodies not yet available online - so do make sure you pop by and say hello!

FREE ENTRY

Saturday, 26 June 2010 at 11:00am to 6.00pm

Sunday, 27 June 2010 at 11:00am to 6.00pm

The Old Museum

Cnr Bowen Bridge Road & Gregory Terrace, Fortitude Valley

All day Parking available at RNA showgrounds for $10

weekend love from ruby

Have a lovely weekend sweet blog readers. Its a three day weekend here so I'm hoping to get out of the studio, go for long walks along the beach and maybe even go for a car ride or two.

Love always, Ruby Tuesday xox

a letterpress lesson

Have we ever shown you a chase before? Ours is an original off our press - circa 1893. Inside you lock up a base with bits of timber and metal furniture, pop in some quoins and tighten it all up with a quoin key. I love this process, so old and beautiful, and reminds me all just a little bit of tetris. It must be strong and solid to withstand the turning and churning of the press.

Oh and we don't recommend every dropping a chase, especially near your toes... we did once, it wasn't pretty.

richelle & andrew wedding stationery

Todays wedding set is a gorgeous letterpress suite that we created for Richelle & Andrew. They were after a highly textural letterpressed wedding invitation for their September wedding at Hamilton Island. Their invitation was to evoke an air of elegance and sophistication, and also combine a little vintagesque styling with modern and contemporary design.

We designed their wedding set with a combination of a classic pinstripe design, coupled with a vintage decorative frame and a strong contrast in typography with a classic serif feature text and a modern uppercase sans serif to create the vintage meets modern fusion.

Printed in light ivory and black ink on our 100% cotton rag paper stocks, Richelle & Andrews wedding set included invitations, printed envelopes, reply cards + envelopes, gift registry cards as well as the sweetest little swing tags to use at their reception.

We adore this wedding set, and it was such a joy to work with this lovely couple! Richelle has already started to receive little reply packs back in the mail and we share her excitement as their is indeed nothing more lovely then finding beautiful stationery waiting for you in the mailbox.

Thankyou Richelle & Andrew - it was such a pleasure to work with you!

being missed

Hello friends! We are back in the studio after our quick little trip. Mr H had a few days in Bali for work so we made it a little adventure and had a lovely time.

Meanwhile, back here in the studio Little Miss Ruby Tuesday held down the fort. She definitely missed us and hasn't left my side since we returned. Sitting here at our studio desk she sits right on my foot and stares at me with her happiest little face. Such a happy little muffin.