年賀状 (Nengajō - New Year Cards)
Hello Sandwiches!
I hope you had a gorgeous Christmas. My first Tokyo Christmas was lots of fun and we even had a little Christmas party at Hello Sandwich HQ. Lots of food, mulled wine, Christmas carols, and no Tokyo Christmas would be complete without a tacky Christmas Cake. (Okay I caved in after last minute Christmas shopping in Shinjuku on Christmas eve listening to 'クリースマスケーキいかがでしょうか？’at every corner!). But now it's on to the next big exciting day - New Years Day.
Japan has so many lovely New Year traditions. I'm a little late (they are meant to be in the post before 25th December to arrive by 01/01) but I've just finished designing my (year of the rabbit) 年賀状 (New Year Cards). This year I used a super cute MdN mook to design the cards.
The mook came complete with a CD-rom of all the cute elements any Japanese-wanna-be girl (Hello Sandwich) would ever need to create a card that looks like it just stepped out of a puri kura print club machine! Think tapes, ribbons, bows and cute handwriting style fonts. This mook is worth every cent.
For the time poor, or those who are not as comfortable using the computer, the mook also comes complete with a large range of pre-made cards to simply print out.
There are lots of free printables online (for example here and here) that you could crop and play around with to make your card. Or you could stock up on a collection of BNN pattern books. Either way, I'm sure you will have a lot of fun making your own 年賀状.
Love Love
Hello Sandwich
xoxo
A Handwritten Letter to Everyone
You may have already seen this but I couldn't help but post about Mysterious Letters!
Mysterious Letters is a collaboration between artists Lenka Clayton and Michael Crowe who sent a personal, handwritten letter to each of the 467 households in the small Irish seaside town of Cushendall. The letters were positive in spirit, and differed greatly in form and content. The artists hoped that these beautiful unsolicited letters will prompt neighbourly discussion that would spread across the town, promoting community curiosity. When compared between neighbours, no two would be the same.
The art work consists solely of the discussion between the recipients about what on Earth these letters are, who sent them and why, etc. On the day the letters were sent it was announced in the national press.
This was the first chapter in an ongoing project. The artists eventual aim is to write a personal, hand-written letter to every household in the world! How gorgeous! I can't wait to receive mine!
You can read all of the letters here.
Isn't there just something so lovely about a hand written letter!
Hope this puts a smile on your face! Have a lovely Wednesday lovelies!
Love Love
Hello Sandwich
xxx