Beautiful day to draw & drink tea

Today is gorgeous outside. It's just a little cooler than it has been lately. It's light sweater weather. Just like I like it. The dogs are calm and we are plugging away at some pattern projects.


Twinkle likes to help Francesca Draw when he can.


He's not too harsh with the critiques


Strangely Delicious new tea with beautiful packaging

I got a new tea at Seward Co-op over the weekend and just got the chance to try it out. It's from Juniper Ridge and comes in this gorgeous container. I suppose I'm a sucker for nice looking packaging. They also sell a tea that is douglas fir tips. I wonder how that tastes... I see Bear Grylls making tea out of weird stuff all the time and it doesn't kill him. I'll let you know how it goes!

(This tea tastes like minty pizza)

Dogwood Coffee Company

Dogwood Coffee is my newest favorite place for a mocha. I'm more of a tea person in general, so credit to them for making a drink I've occasionally decided on over tea. The people are friendly, the place is cute, and it's in Uptown. Across from a bookstore. I didn't need another reason to admire them just yet, but Chris informed me that they were recently featured on the Dieline for their sweet packaging design. And boy, do I love the Dieline...



It gets even better. The design and letterpress was done by two Minneapolis based studios: Holmberg Design developed the packaging, Studio on Fire created the letterpress. Now I have a multitude of reasons to get a mocha.

A Graphic Cosmogony

A Graphic Cosmogony is a comics compendium by the ever-amazing publisher NoBrow. It features comics by 24 artists, each telling their version of a tale about the formation of the universe. Or something.







Some of my favorite artists are represented, like Stuart Kolakovic and Mikkel Sommer (previously posted). The whole package is a beautiful thing...

Cute Bikes = all the rage @ Paper Source

I went to Paper Source on Saturday after picking up Chris's new and improved* Macbook Pro from the Apple Store in Uptown. It's funny that right now, we seem to be swept up in the bicycle-themed trend of the moment!
Paper Source is stacked to the brim with bicycle themed EVERYTHING including some really adorable calendars, some great stationery, rubber stamps and even scrapbooking paper. I wonder if our sweet sweet love of bikes has finally caught on?

I ended up picking up a few things while I was there including some amazing recycled leather calendars (one for creative things, and another for work things) that are also in the cutest of the Paper Source colors.

It was awesome - while we were there I ran into a past student of mine and had a great chat! Small Small world!
I'll have to refrain from getting bicycle themed everything - unless I want to look like a nut!

*One of our cats tap-danced all over Chris's laptop and did a flying kick that slid it right off the kitchen counter! Some curses and tears later, Chris finally brought it in to be fixed; it's been a painful week for him without his computer.

Clipper Tea

I'm going to follow Chris's inspiring winter post with a winter remedy: tea (of course). The cool thing about Clipper Tea, aside from the fact that is it very good, fair trade and located in the UK, is the packaging.






If you check out the website, you can see a spectrum of colors and flavors. It kind of makes me want to purchase a planned color-scheme collection and make a shelf to sit them on.

Amazing Candy - United Noodle

I've been holding on to these amazing treats for a week or two, and FINALLY took some pictures of these amazingly illustrated packages! I love marshmallow anything, so for me to hold out and not eat these until I posted them!



So here you have it! They are so cute, and incredibly tasty!



United Noodle, the cute world/Asian grocery that is here in Minneapolis (Hidden in the depths of Midtown) has a huge aisle or two filled to the brim with amazingly cute packaging! Besides that, they also have a ton of really tasty imported teas!



Here are some more marshmallows.



I can't wait to go back and get some more! Stomach Ache, here I come!

Mast Brothers Chocolate

These guys might be some of the most revered chocolate people in NYC. Next time we go, we'll have see if we can find them.





Bottom photo courtesy The Selby, who has a ton of other great photos of the Mast Brothers' place, if you follow the link.

Lovely Package

Lovely Package features tons of amazing packaging designs.

They have a wide variety of fun categories, including a spotlight on student work. Current student Chul Lee came up with this super smart, geometric packaging motif for coffee and all the things that go along with it.

Ebay's Reusable Boxes!?!?

What a cool new way for a message in a bottle? Ebay has created these reusable boxes to be shipped around that started in October. After a few months they will track them to see if they are effective! For more info, visit inhabitat.

Rogue Chocolatier

I almost can't believe how long it took me to realize I should post about this. Rogue Chocolatier is an award-winning, Minneapolis-based gourmet Chocolate company, and you will not often taste chocolate as magnificent as this.

Did I mention the packaging is beautiful, too?
One of the few ways you can try these delectable bars is by ordering online, though if you're in town, I'm also heavily in favor of visiting one of our favorite teahouses, Infinitea, and buying a bar there. Otherwise, at the moment, they're pretty hard to come by! (My favorite so far is the Rio Caribe)

Clever Tea Packaging

Two of the three of us adore tea. So - when I saw this post about all the amazing ways that people have dressed up my favorite drink, I just about died.


Natalia Ponomareva


Maum Tea Bags

If you want to see more ... head over
here

Green Box

Green Box is pretty clever.



I hate washing dishes and I hate unwieldy pizza boxes, so I like this.