Posted on Leave a comment

Indoors Festive Market this Saturday & NEW Haberdashery Range

Poster: Saturday 30th November Indoors Festive Market

Our new haberdashery range will launch at the Festive Market this Saturday! It’s not online yet, but in the meantime you can order some of these lush books to give you some inspiration, beginners tips & easy patterns so you know what you want to get on Saturday!

We’ll be cosy indoors on Saturday, at The Yard Theatre in Hulme, from 11am-4pm. And we won’t be alone!

We’ll be joined by the very talented people below, as well as a huge range of vintage clothes from a collection that has been building for over 30 years.

And you’ll be supporting a good cause as well as local business people & makers, as all proceeds from stall fees go to Nice Time Arts, making art accessible to all.

Click here to view the Facebook Event : https://www.facebook.com/events/551964005556961/

Pen Fight – queer & feminist books, zines & badges

Bell’s Herbals – top class home-made herbal teas, lotions and potions and – luckily for us – Donna will also be providing hot drinks (80p) and cakes (50p)!

Purple Octopus

Green Jay Crafts

Posted on Leave a comment

Giftwrap Heaven

Yes, that’s right, we’ve got reams and reams and reams of BEAUTIFUL, ethically produced and high quality wrapping paper, ready just in time for the festive season. All from our beloved Ohh Deer.

Check out our giftwrap range, and make the most of our offer which will only last one fortnight! Enter ‘giftwrapmunchies’ at checkout to get 3 different papers for £5 and – as usual – for free P&P for collection in Chorlton also add ‘sillychorlton’.

They, of course, make beautiful gift-wrap, but also make beautiful collage materials for the more artistic and DIY of you!

We’ve got everything to suit:

The Dog Lover

Typical But Classy Christmas Person

Person Who Hates Christmas Person

Abstract Artist

Sausage Dog Fanatic

Cat Lover

Posted on Leave a comment

The Journal-Planner Lottery – Lies, Possibilities and How to Get it Right.

With the rise in popularity of journals, diaries, planners and specifically – yup – bullet journalling, the stationery market has seen a mega-boom in sales of notebooks that fit a certain Instagram-lead criteria. The format for this ‘perfect journal’ usually goes something like this:

  • dotted pages
  • hardback – or soft-hardback – cover
  • super petty exterior
  • perhaps a box at the top of each page for labelling the date and other things

The only problem with this format, is that it conceptualises what is essentially a blank notebook as a beautiful, detailed, immaculate #bulletjournal waiting to happen, and sells it to you as though it will make you, your life, your mind, your hand-lettering & illustration skills all suddenly become sleek and shiny, soapy clean, smelling of flowers, and perfectly organised as well as perfectly beautiful. A bit like perfume ads, really.

If, like most people, you don’t have the patience of a saint, a fine art degree and a spare 8 hours a day to dedicate to your journal-in-waiting, then you are likely disappointed with your purchase upon the realisation that you have to watch online calligraphy classes, buy loads of new pens, get rid of your essential tremor and learn an entirely new hobby just to make it look ‘right’ and fill in the blank pages. By the time you have finished attempting to meticulously copy a Pinterest #perfectspread (no, it’s not even Nutella) you’ve forgotten to set your alarm to go to work, do the laundry, phone that friend you’ve been meaning to catch up with, collect your meds and write a to-do list for the week ahead. These things are why you wanted to get into the habit of ‘journalling’ in the first place.

So what’s to do?

There are load of different types of ‘journalling’, diary-keeping, to-do lists, other list-making, CBT self-awareness-homework-style thought diaries, ‘creative journals’, weighing up decisions lists, ‘Art Therapy Journals’ etc. I believe personally – as an experienced stationery-hoarder and journal-attempter – that there are two important things at play in terms of why the #bujo appeals to so many, and why it always disappoints.

The first comes from the desirable luxury to have one’s own safe-space. Think of how we refer to metaphoric ‘nest-making’ when people feather up their surroundings – usually a house or flat – to make it pretty, nice, safe, cosy and personal to them. In reality, not everyone has the financial or social or practical situation that makes this type of luxury ‘nest-making’ an option, however this general feeling of creating one’s own safe space can indeed be put to good practice within the much more accessible confines of a notebook, sketchbook or journal of some sort.

So that is one part: personalised, aesthetically pleasing, fun to colour in and play with, nice, creative, bit arty, yours.

The other half of the bullet journalling craze that draws us in is its seemingly organic ability to organise the mundanities of life in a way that we’d never dreamed of being able to ourselves. Scrolling through Insta-perfect examples, every aspect of life to the minutest detail has been analysed, separated, compartmentalised and broken into manageable chunks of time and ‘to-dos’.

The bullet journal method was created not for aesthetic purposes, but as a simple method of organisation. It doesn’t actually have to be that time consuming. I’m not going into the history of bullet journalling, nor am I going to develop my own how-to guide. Instead, I am going to straight away recommend this book, How to Bullet Plan, which breaks everything into the simplest steps, with guides and photo examples. The example pictures don’t look like works of art, they look like planners, or boring diaries, because that’s what ‘bullet journalling’ should be: a way of helping yourself to detangle life’s various stresses and complicators, NOT a way of making yourself feel guilty every day you forgot to log how many times you drank a cup of coffee or an hourly record of how many times you did or didn’t pick your nose.

So what do I do?

Getting both these things out of one journalling practice is impractical, nearly impossible, and the nature of the freedom of creative or art journalling sort of inherently contradicts the stricter, work-minded organisation of the bullet method.

The answer? Buy two notebooks.

1 – The Art Journal. Get yourself a nice, fat sketchbook with thick pages in which you can scribble, write, try every art material under the sun. This can be next to your bed, left at home, and be just for you; your fluffy nest. For inspiration, if you still want the weird pleasure of scrolling through thousands of images of attractive arty mess, search for #artjournal or #artistsjournal.

2 – The Planner Journal. Get yourself an undated planner! Best if it isn’t dated, because then it doesn’t matter if you – heaven forbid – miss a day because there is no such thing as missing a day. Days are days, they come and go. Have a look at different planning methods. I am still going to recommend this particular book by Rachel Miller as I think it is just the clearest and the best explanation of, essentially, how to make diaries and to-do lists helpful. Then spend some time trying to find a planner that suits the sort of list-making and calendar-syncing that you know will work for you, and that matches how you visualise your week in your mind’s eye. Because guess what? Just because a planner has a template on each page, does NOT mean it cannot be decorated, colour coordinated and fun. Stickers, highlighters, colouring pencils, whatever you want, it still has its place in the planner and actually, it’s more fun and involves putting less pressure on yourself than when you sit there paralysed with the fear of the blank page.

Ellie, you’re just trying to sell us your products.

Erm, yes and no. Yes (because I’m poorly and run a tiny shop, selling fantastic quality products that I have personally chosen and tested and want other people to share in the joy, so I price everything much too low) but no, in that I have spent quite a long time studying the psychological principles of both creative expression and some useful elements from CBT, and have written & deliver a journalling course for adults with long term health conditions and/or mental health difficulties.

Programmes like that at Nice Time Arts are what you are contributing towards buy purchasing from this very shop, Stationary N’ Stationery, and why the extra pound you might save by purchasing off Amazon is important to this shop, and important to the community projects that this pretty little side hustle is trying to fund.

The SNS Chorlton Recommendation?

Below are some particular products available on this very shop that I highly recommend for the various steps I described.

Pink Pig Sketchbooks
You may be bored of me going on about them, but you really won’t find a sketchbook of the size, paper quality and beauty from anywhere at a more competitive price than from Pink Pigs. So have a gander, choose a cover colour and grab some sketchbooks! Made in Yorkshire, they’re an eco-friendly choice of gift, whether that is to yourself or to someone else.

Ohh Deer Undated Planners
For such a long time I had dreamed of selling my favourite day-to-day stationery makers, Ohh Deer. Now, not only do we sell some of my favourite collections (Hello, Twin Pines and Gemma Correll), but we also sell their planners which are perfect. Pen doesn’t bleed through the pages, the covers are sturdy and beautiful, the page templates are practical and just light enough that they don’t detract from any colourful decor you may wish to add.

Sticker Mini-Boxes
They contain between 40-60 stickers in at least 12 different designs. They are a mega super bargain. Buy two boxes for £5, and you will have a variety of decor for your planner and collage material for your art journal. I have been pushing these for nearly a year now – they are so cute and happy-making, and not really found in any other stationery shops in the UK.

Enjoy this article, share it, and I shall leave you with some links to some tasty products below, while I work on creating the ULTIMATE JOURNAL GIFT BUNDLE.

Ciao!

x

Posted on Leave a comment

Tuesday Pop-Up @ Metro Cafe, Chorlton

As we upload our exciting new range from Ohh Deer to our beloved website, we’re also arranging our pop-ups for the festive season. The first is next week on Tuesday from 12-4pm with our lovely friends at Metro Cafe in Chorlton.

We’ll have a special 15% off our older stock, and a number of other offers & big savings that you won’t find online.

It’s directly across from Chorlton tram stop on Wilbraham Road.

REMEMBER: you can order in advance online, enter ‘silly chorlton’ at checkout and then pick up for free from Metro Cafe.

The venue is wheelchair accessible, of course, though if it gets busy it might be a bit tight! Fear not – I’m well-practised and bulldozing standing people out of the way with my own wheelchair, or doing lots of suggestive poking with my walking sticks <3

Look forward to seeing as many of you there as possible. Some of our new Ohh Deer range went up tonight, more Gemma Correll will be up tomorrow afternoon, and a whole range of artistic delights from Wednesday onwards. We have very limited stock as these have all been very popular in the run up to Christmas, so we recommend pre-ordering your secret santas, stocking fillers and whatnot beforehand.

Big love!

x

Posted on Leave a comment

It’s November already? Ohh Deer!

Not only do we have two new manchester-spoonie-artist-designed ranges of products coming up soon, we also have some more long-lasting exciting news, that we have been so excited to share and are now popping with excitement.

Not only are we proud dealers of Pink Pig Sketchbooks, but we are now also partners with the super popular cutesy/sarcastic and very beautiful stationery designer and supplier, Ohh Deer!

New Ohh Deer products will be added throughout the week, with the first lot of their unique giftwrap going live this evening!

As a sneak peak of the sorts of beauties there are to come, we have launched a special offer on this Floral Primordia Gift Set:

click me, I’m a bargain!
Posted on Leave a comment

Now a proud & paying member of…

… The Chorlton Traders!

Click the link below to view our profile and see what other local traders are out and about to bear in mind during the run up to gift-giving season!

http://chorltontraders.co.uk/members/stationary-n-stationery

Also, I have a VERY special surprise coming up… I don’t want to ruin it completely, so I am just going to give you this one lil image of one of my favourite creatures, and try to stop myself from publishing the whole range.

Just saying though, Puss Moths can be appreciated all year round, including the time of year where we all say Abi Titmuss (or Merry Christmas).

Posted on Leave a comment

Manchester Artist Kelly Quinzel’s New Collection

We are extremely lucky to be able to offer you some gorgeous prints, bookmarks & cards for the second year in a row, from the very wonderful indeed, Kelly Quinzel.

The bookmarks can be bought separately, but hey? Why not buy the whole set and support #localartists and #localbusiness in the process?

Last year, we had the good fortune of interviewing Kelly for our previous guise, CH Plus. You can read our ‘Meet the Maker’ interview with here on the old site: https://www.chplus.uk/2018/11/30/meet-the-maker-2/

Head over to Kelly’s popular Instagram account to keep up to date with not only her watercolours, but also her embroidery, illustrations, accessories and hand-made jewellery!

A note on CH+

The CH + site exists entirely for archiving purposes currently, as I am moving all of the stock over to Stationary N’ Stationery. You can still have a gander of the old site, see what we got up to last year, and are very much encouraged to get in touch if you are local and would like to sell your artwork through our site in time for the festive period!

For those who enjoyed the workshops we put on last year, just a reminder that I’m currently running workshops with Nice Time Arts. We’re based in Hulme but work all over (providing the venues are wheelchair accessible) and can even be hired for private events, bars, markets and more.

Posted on Leave a comment

One Week Pink Pig Sale!

For the next week only, we’re offering a 15% discount on ALL Pink Pig Sketchbooks – and that includes custom orders!

Any colour, size, paper type you want – we will get it in for you.

Bulk orders are welcome, and no order is too big or too small.

Use the code PINKPIG15 at checkout to apply the discount to your WHOLE basket, and don’t forget to enter ‘sillychorlton’ at check out if you want free collection from central Chorlton.

Grab those Christmas presents early! The sale is just for the next week. Who DOESN’T want to receive a beautiful, handmade Yorkshire sketchbook in their stocking? I can’t think of anyone!

Tag us @snschorlton with your purchases once they arrive!

Posted on Leave a comment

thINKing about Inktober? We got you covered

For this #Inktober we have a price-match guarantee on our fountain pens!

My personal favourite is the hooded, Kaco Retro Fountain pen. It comes in a practical, matt gift box with two ink cartridges AND a converter.

It flows unbelievably beautifully, and is totally unlike any other fountain pen I have used. It sort of is its own genre of pen.

We also have the famous and beautiful Kaweco ink cartridges now in stock, so order both now in an inky gift package for less than £15!

Get your Christmas prezzies sorted now, from independent businesses, before all the commercial shops up their prices!

Posted on Leave a comment

HEAD Market – Brand new stock this Saturday!

We’ll be at HEAD this Saturday 12th October from 1pm with a whole haul of new stock!

Some of it is up on the site, but there’s about 20 new products I’m in the process of uploading. First come, first served, so if you want to grab anything online in advance, do so now and enter ‘sillychorlton’ at checkout for free collection on Saturday!

Here’s some pics from the last one!