A federal election is two days away here in Canada and I find myself thinking about … the American election. Anyone else?

Anyway, here are two of the many great fundraisers going on (with proceeds going to the Obama campaign): 

Census letterpress print, by Dan Funderburgh (via Kitsune Noir) 

 

Denyse Schmidt Yes We Can Quilt: 

  

Look at these beautiful buttons! I love the backing design. By village, via I Love Typography.

Commenter # 6, Cicada Studios! Thanks everyone for entering our first-ever giveaway … check back in a month for another one!

: update - contest is closed - check back on the first friday of each month for a new giveaway : Okay, this is the first ever installment of our Friday (first Friday of the month that is) giveaways! This week, all you need to do is leave a comment between now and midnight Sunday (eastern time) to be entered in a draw (I’ll use a random number generator) for this little veggie print. Good luck!

Okay this feature starts this Friday, but I thought I’d give a little heads-up to anyone who might be interested: starting in October, the first Friday of every month will be freebie day here at the Stockton notebook! Check back on Friday for details …

I painted some thrifted spice racks to use as displays for my cards at a craft show … here’s before (and oh yes, my deck needs painting too):

And after (please excuse the blurriness):

More craft show table pictures here, here, and here.

Hi - just a reminder that I will be at Hoopla tomorrow, with tons of prints & stationery in tow - see all the deets below. There will be lots of great artisans, door prizes, free coffee … so if you live in the Toronto area, stop by!

It’s Gocco-central around here as I get ready for the Hoopla show here in Toronto (more about that soon) so blogging will be light for the forseeable future … in the meantime here are somethings I’ve been enjoying lately:

• eraser with 28 corners, at Tokyo Mango
• lovely Japanese mail order catalog (corduroy flat club!), at Moving Hands
• new lorena barrezueta jewelry, (you might know her line of ceramics based on classic take-out/disposable dishes) via sub studio design blog
• conversation with Paul Rand, on Swiss Legacy

One of the perks of participating in the Pika Package Project is that you get one of the packages yourself … and here’s what came in the mail for me this week:

So exciting! I was so impressed by the quality of the work by these artists. Clockwise from upper left:

print by number eight
hedgehog print by melanie wickham
worry print & thank you card by amy ng
print & sticker by bubbo tubbo
pika package zine
buttons by pretty little theives

p.s. In putting together this post I discovered that Amy is a very busy girl - in addition to putting together the august pika package, she has a shop called remakeables, stocked with some very, very appealing notions and fabrics (ack, just what I need ^_^!)

I wrote earlier about the art of the note Gocco swap at cloth.paper.string … here is what I ended up making:

My intention was to make something in which it was very evident that a human hand was involved … I’ve gotten in such a habit of ‘cleaning up’ my drawings in Illustrator, and I’m not sure it’s a good one. So this is rows and rows of loops, handwritten with my Gocco pen (first experiment with that - up to now I’ve been photocopying my drawings and then burning my screens from the copies). So there you have it! I am really happy with them and I hope my swap-mates are too. Their sets have been trickling in (and what great sets they’ve been) and I hope to post a ‘group photo’ when they’ve all arrived. (More photos on Flickr.)