Another place on my wishlist of countries to visit, and of course the journals get there before we do. We’re thrilled to announce that Five and a Half journals are now carried in Hello Beluga, a design store in Luxembourg. Here are a few pictures of the store, thanks to the shopowner Nirina. So, if you live in Luxembourg or happen to be passing through, remember to stop by for a spin: Hello Beluga, at 5 Côte d’Eich, L-1450 Luxembourg, Tel. 0035226201426. Wish we could be there too!

During our stay in Asia, we took a weekend trip to Hong Kong. Towering buildings, crazy traffic, streets packed with shoppers, and an occasional moment or two that reminded me of the old Hong Kong I grew up in. I also remembered the pet bird I had when I was in elementary school, a little blue budgie named Wendy.

Sightseeing aside, we ventured out to a less touristy area, Tin Hau, in search of a shop called Kapok. We followed our map to the hillside, up a winding cement staircase, and found the store on a sloped, tree-lined street that carried the light scent of incense from the temple nearby. The minute we stepped inside, we were all smiles.

Kapok is part storefront, part gallery space, part design studio, carrying products by Asian and European designers. We spent quite a while there, looking over all the things in the store and chatting with the owner, Arnault, who told us about a great teahouse that we headed over to later in the afternoon. We left the store with a bunch of things from Postalco - marbled journals and notecards, postcards, a wallet, and two booklets, sheets of silkscreened wrapping paper from Bob Foundation, and Print’em’s Shift Calendar 2008 (we’ve been so picky about calendars and this one seems to be just what we’re looking for, except it’s missing a hole at the top to hang it by, so I’ll have to use my hole-puncher).

Seeing Kapok makes me wish I had a big first floor studio with a big glass window so that I could turn half of it into a gallery and storefront ~ how fun would that be! It’s a lot of work though, and right now, I’m perfectly content to be back in our sunny and quiet third floor studio!

Happy New Year! We hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season!  

We’re wrapping up our time abroad after spending a precious month with family (oh how we wish both sets of parents lived just a car-ride instead of a 14-hour plane ride away), and we’ll be heading back to our Brooklyn studio to jump back into work in just a few days. We’ve already started by giving the Five and a Half website a new look ~ it’s a work in progress so please excuse us as we tweak and add things over the next few weeks ~ and we’re marching ahead with some exciting new pieces that will add another dimension to Five and a Half.

Thank you so much for all your support in 2007, and for being back here with us for another great year in the studio!

Our studio is closed for our winter vacation. You can still order Five and a Half journals online, but you’ll have to be patient about receiving them, shipping is on hold until the week of January 20th, 2008.

If you’d like to get some journals before then, here is a list of retailers whose shelves we’ve recently stocked with a fresh supply of journals. Remember, each store carries a different selection, so if you’re looking for a specific cover, be sure to call the individual stores to ask if they have it.

U.S.

Cog and Pearl
190 Fifth Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11217
718.623.8200

Composition
7180 W. Alaska Drive
Lakewood, CO 80226
303.894.0025

Edith and Edna
51 Exchange Street
Portland, ME 04101
207.761.2800

Greenwich Letterpress
39 Christopher Street
New York, NY 10014
212.989.7464

Laumeier Sculpture Park Museum Shop
12580 Rott Road
St. Louis, MO 63127
314.821.1209

Orange Lola
330 Main Street
Wakefield, Rhode Island 02879
401.284.4333

P.A.D.
804 North 2nd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19123
215.925.4005

Pulp | paper & art
418 North 38th Avenue
Omaha, NE 68131
402.319.7857

International

Beautiful on the inside
45/322 Bourke St.
Surry Hills, 2010
Australia
61.2.9360.7733

Nouvelle Nouvelle
209 Abbott Street
Vancouver B.C.
V6B 2K7, Canada
604.644.3912

Magma Bookshop, London
117-119 Clerkenwell Road
London EC1R 5BY
44.0.20.7242.9503

We’ll be back in the studio in mid-January, with a fresh supply of ideas and new work to share with you. Thank you for all your support throughout 2007, we’ll see you in the new year!

If you’re looking for some great gifts, here are some I’d highly recommend (some of whom I shared floorspace with at DWR’s ModernMart), and most of which I (or Shawn) proudly have one or a few items from:

- Sleepyheads: Get one or a whole family of silkscreened sleepyhead pillows to give the sofa some major personality. It all started from a little book that designer Christopher David Ryan drew. We have the one with the long-haired moutasched fellow.

- Sovereign Beck: you don’t have to go to Paul Smith to get cool, funky ties (only to realize that everyone else has them too). Sovereign Becks’ designs are amazing, and because they’re created in limited quanities, really unique. All made from highest quality fabrics, with designs that are sure to draw a round of compliments for the wearer.

- Maxx and Unicorn: a single piece of leather, refined, polished and folded into a sleek sturdy wallet, and then embossed with an oh-so-sophisticated logo with a vintage press, all made by the designer out of his apartment. Amazing stuff. If I were a guy, I’d get one of these as my wallet.

- 20×200: you might find the perfect (and affordable) print for yourself or your friends here. We’ve already bought quite a few and boy do they look good on the wall.

- Greenjeans: You’ll find so many gift-perfect things here. I’ll mention a few of my favorites: Bill Summers’ jewelery boxes, which come in several shapes and sizes, and for the kids, child-safe wooden toys by Frank Ridley.

- Refinery 29: for those of you who want to do some boutique shopping online, the clothes that are sold here are really worth saving up for. And if you don’t mind venturing out to Fort Greene, Brooklyn, you can try on an amazing selection of them (both men’s and women’s apparel) in person at Stuart and Wright.

 - Lovely Design: These, in my opinion, are the most incredible journals out there. Anyone who remotely likes stationery really really should get themselves one of these.

And if you’re not sure exactly what you want to buy yet, take a spin around Supermarket and you’ll most likely fill up your wishlist really quickly.

This winter, remember to support independent design! Enjoy!

We finished off the year at Design Within Reach’s ModernMart on Wednesday night. It was such a great evening, thank you, thank you to all of you who came! 

Above, a photo from when we were setting up ~ we got to play with all the super cool furniture in the store as part of our display ~ all around, the other designers were also busily unpacking, arranging, and rearranging.

Being a part of this year’s ModernMart was such a learning experience for me. I tend to be on the quieter side, but I was determined not to let that get in the way of meeting lots of people ~ while we were all setting up, we went around and chatted with the other designers there, then once the doors opened and holiday shoppers started streaming in, it was about spending time with customers, new ones who wanted to know more about the journals, and old ones (those who have bought Five and a Half journals online) who I finally got a chance to meet in person (which was so awesome). Another round of thank you’s from Shawn and I, to all of you who came on such and cold, snowy night ~ we appreciate it so much!

We finally had a few wisps of snowfall in Brooklyn over the weekend, a taste of winter to welcome December. The cold weather, the bright light, and patchy white layer of snow (which here in Brooklyn quickly turns into gray slush) makes me imagine that things must be really different in colder places faraway. Listening to NPR’s segments on Iceland made me remember Sigur Ros’ beautiful documentary, Heima.

Speaking of Iceland, here’s a short video on my digital camera from when we watched an extravagant concert by Mum a while ago.

For those of you who are in New York City, here’s something to get you started on your holiday gift-shopping: ModernMart 3, an evening sponsored by Design Within Reach and curated by the all-new Supermarket. It’ll be a night of gift bags, chocolate, music and champagne, a stellar selection of independently designed goods, and you’ll get to meet the guest designers (including us, Judy and Shawn, of Five and a Half) in person. So if you’re in Soho that evening, do swing by and say hi!

Since hearing her speak and reading her book, I’ve been noticing a lot of things Maira Kalman lately ~ this documentary (via swissmiss) and three pages of her illustrations from the cb2 ad campaign in this past Sunday’s issue of The New York Times Magazine. Seeing all this makes me really want to just sit at the table with my notebook and draw all day, despite the mountain of journal orders looming above my head that are waiting to be finished.

The evening started with hors d’œuvres  in the Bumble and Bumble building, saying hello to a friend who works as a designer there, and then sitting down for a fun and entertaining talk by the uber-talented husband-and-wife duo, Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin.

They shared a hilarious sampling of things that catch their interest ~ a metal pipe and a copper block that involved a bit of quantum physics, and the big eyebrows on potato chip owls. Everyone in the audience each got a colorful goodie bag, mine had a train whistle, Shawn got a bizarre plastic spinning whistle. “Toot on your whistle if you have a question,” we were told.

A few memorable things about how they work ~ while they help each other out with projects and are obviously very much influenced by one another, their work remains independent of the other. Tamara Shopsin is a full-time illustrator, contributing regularly to the print publications like the Canadian magazine The Walrus, and to columns in the New York Times. And she also churns out some really cool screenprint and letterpress cards and illustrated books. Jason Fulford is the J in J&L Books, juggling editorial and administrative tasks, while also being a globe-trotting freelance photographer whose work has appeared in advertising campaigns, book covers, magazines, and galleries.

On the days when they are both at home working, they put two quarters beside them, one on each of their tables. Each quarter is painted red on one side, green on the other. Green for yes I can listen and talk, and red for quiet please. I think I should make myself a pair of these for Shawn and I, apparently I can get quite chatty.