The Spring Eco Design Fair is just around the corner on Saturday, April 14 from 10-5pm at the Waterhouse and Cool Docks.  It’s always exciting to connect with other eco-friendly businesses and meeting customers familiar with my paper or just discovering it.

Love this year’s poster which was designed by a British designer from the studio,  It Could Be Like This,  who is based in Shanghai.   I think they captured the fair’s theme of”Explore, Create & Grow”, quite nicely.

Hope to see you that day, and don’t forget to mark you calendars!

Thank you to Creative Hunt and editor Frances Arnold for a great article on Paper Tiger in this week’s issue.    Click here to read the full post.

January 23 is the start of the lunar new year of the Dragon and in China, begins an onslaught of firecrackers and fireworks to rival any military war zone.  With a brief respite in the daytime, firecrackers begin as the sun goes down to ‘chase evil spirits’ away and do not let up until the wee hours of the night.  For our family, the novelty of the fireworks wore off 7 years ago and really, after that first night.   This year we flee to the warm climate of Malaysia, where I’m hoping their celebrations are a little bit more controlled.

Chinese New Year is a time for most Chinese around the world to be reunited with family, no matter where you’re living or working, hence, the massive migration of the people in China during this time to return to their homes.   Living in a small Long Island suburb growing up—my cousins, aunts and uncles would ‘migrate’ from the city to our family’s house to celebrate together.  It was a time of eating a lot, folding paper money to be burned in our front yard for our ancestors, watching the adults playing endless hours of mahjong, and of course receiving ‘hong bao’s’ (red envelopes) filled with money and then gambling it playing dice games to try and double it.    I have such fond memories of those days.

I made some of my own ‘hong bao’s and fortune cookies from some left over paper I had from the holidays.  I took apart a real hong bao envelope and traced out a template using my paper.  For the fortune cookies you can follow these super easy steps from this link here. How are you celebrating Chinese New Year?

Thank you Sbanghai Talk for the Paper Tiger feature in your Green Gift Guide!

If you’re in Beijing on December 10 come out to the first Handmade Holiday Fair from 11am to 6pm at No. 32 Qianliang Hutong, Dongsi, Dongcheng District (tel: 6404-6297/13436702545)  featuring the very best in art, designs, home furnishings, clothing, plants and more.  Visit the Paper Tiger Shanghai table and say hi to Juliet!  Food and free mulled wine will be on hand to keep shoppers happy.   Map to the cafe below.

12月10号周六11点到晚6点 又到了为亲爱的人挑选礼物的季节。我们搜罗远近，找到最珍贵，最有个性的手工礼物。第一个纯手工礼物市集，艺术的，设计的，家居的，织物的，植物的，还有更多！ 欢迎早来参加抽奖。可口小食，圣诞热酒。温馨提示：只能接受现金。另外，胡同里不好停车，请乘坐地铁或公交，或者无惧严寒的你骑车来吧！ 地址：北京市东城区，东四北大街，钱粮胡同32号.  电话： 010 6404 6297 / 134 3670 2545

Quick, get this one into your calendar

We’re featured in the December issue of Time Out Shanghai’s Style File page.  Woohoo!  Here’s a sneak peek at a cropped version.  Make sure you pick up your December issue for great holiday gift ideas!  Thanks Time Out!

Time Out Shanghai/Dec issue/Style Files

A client contacted me recently to help her wrap up Christmas gifts for her fiance to take home to the US.  I love wrapping gifts whether they’re for my own friends or family or for people I’ve never met before.

Gift giving is usually filled with joy, expectation and surprise and I like being a part of that.  In China, giving gifts varies and can sometimes be loaded, depending on who is giving and receiving and what the occasion is.   Many households give and receive gifts casually in the form of fresh fruits, foods or plants/flowers and almost never wrapped in anything fancy (unless it’s for a patient who is sick and then you see traditional fruit baskets or flowers wrapped in cellophane and ribbon).

Having grown up in the US, my custom of course is anything that’s going to be given as a gift has to be  wrapped up.  Bagging it with a fancy bow  just doesn’t cut it.   Although I respect the practicality of the Chinese way of not going to too much trouble to wrap gifts,  it sure is nice getting a gift shrouded in paper and feeling the joy, expectation and surprise upon opening it—isn’t it?

A look at how my paper is printed in Shanghai:

First print run completed and getting the second print prepped for the reverse pattern; Checking colors

The printing machine:

The Lithrone S40 that prints out my paper. The paper goes through 4-5 different color printing stages.

I use 100% recycled paper, sourced from Hiap Moh paper company and the soy-based ink is Eco Pure by Sakata Inx.

Containers of soy-based ink (above) and the drying racks before delivery.

A sneak peek at my Fall Winter paper collection to be out in the next 2 weeks.

I recently designed two gift paper patterns for the Beijing Ullens Center for Contemporary Art’s (UCCA) museum store.   The store gave me free reign in designing the patterns, which had to incorporate UCCA’s iconic dinosaur images and logo.  The project was fun and gave me a little break from what I would normally create for my paper collections.    The paper is available now at UCCA Store in Beijing.  What do you think of it?