It's Cyber Monday Folks!

And that means heaps of deals! Just a reminder to check out our EPIC list of "handmade" CYBER MONDAY deals we've collected this past week! Click here to see the list! (Note - 3 pages).

Anthropologie Commissions 1000 One-of-a-Kind Books from roughDraft Books

As part of Anthropologie’s holiday line, the US-based chain store commissioned e Bond of roughdrAftbooks (a Poppytalk Handmade participant) to make a limited edition series of handmade journals for people who want to write, document or remember. The series, called 1000 Books, will be available this holiday season in four styles exclusively in Anthropologie stores nationwide.

Fun Fact: Bond was key in inventing the Anthropologie website's signature hand-touched look and feel. She was hired by Anthropologie when the brand, beloved among design enthusiasts, launched its ecommerce site. After five years of designing for the brand and running her design studio, roughdrAftbooks, during off-hours, the former Anthropologie interactive media & catalog designer recently made the transition to full-time entrepreneur/craftsperson. For fans of Anthropologie's signature 'hand-drawn' look, Bond's books are a collectible.

The journals are part of Bond's ‘exposed’ collection of stationery, which deconstructs the book by paring it down to its essential form: boards, binding & paper. Bond then paints and prints directly onto each book, layering them with her love of words, reading and documenting the everyday. While each book is a work of art, Bond hates the idea of them collecting dust on a coffee table. "I would love nothing more than for the books to be written in often, and in whatever way works best in people’s daily lives.”

Inside each book is a hand-numbered bookmark that further illustrates how each journal is one-of-a-kind and was made to be marked up at the owner's whim. In this collaborative spirit, Bond is asking her fellow documenters to share a page from their books, so that the collaboration doesn’t end. Designs can be emailed to roughdraftshares[at]gmail[dot]com and will be featured on Bond's website, roughdraftbooks.com

e Bond's books are also available this month at Poppytalk Handmade. Click here to visit. And at her etsy shop here.

Elegant Lemon and Crystals at Villa Padierna

We loved this wedding, it was stunning and the guests outfits were amazing, every attention to detail was not left unturned from the stylish fascinators and hats to the gorgeous die for shoes and handbags, it was divine.

This wedding, for us, was quite a late booking that came in through Moira at Perfect Spanish Weddings. We had not met Moira before but she contacted us as her client wanted to use us which was extremely flattering. We were available as it was a date in October thank goodness as I would have hated to have turned down this amazing wedding.

The wedding was a church ceremony held at the Santo Cristo de Calvario in Marbella, which is quite a retro style seventies church and has a wonderful bilingual priest.

We created a gorgeous lemon rose teardrop bridal bouquet and the bridesmaids had ivory rose handties with crystal details, the buttonholes were made with lemon roses and white orchids. We decorated the church with crystal organza pew ends, lay down an aisle runner supplied by the client and provided two large pedestal arrangements for the altar.

The reception was at the fabulous Villa Padierna hotel and the theme was a lemon and crystal colour scheme as Martina's dress was covered in AB Swarvoski crystals, it was stunning and very elegant.

Martina wanted tall candelabras for her wedding and it was a large wedding of 20 tables so we had some ivory iron candelabras made up for us by a charming iron maker in the poligono in Marbella. I will be back there as he has some wonderful props and furniture so my mind was full of ideas!

The cocktail area was decorated with white and lemon balloons created by my wonderful balloon lady who I will be working with a lot more next year as she has some fabulous decorations, a creative mind and a style I like.

We covered the chairs at the hotel with our loose style white satin chair covers and decorated these with crystal lemon sashes, decorated the tables with the tall candelabras completely adorned with floral arrangements and candles and scattered the tables with crystals and tealights. The head table was decorated with a beautiful long arrangement of flowers, candles and swags made with ivy and crystal lemon bows.

I have to at this point thank my team this day, Anoulka and Izzi, who both worked incredibly hard as we were one person down.

We started the night before as it was a large wedding of 200 people and we worked into the night to get the chairs dressed. We then came back the next day with Loraine and Maureen to finish off the tables and create the arrangements on site. The final effect was incredible, I kept looking back when we had finally finished and the wedding by then was well underway, to take in the transformation we had done on this room. It was one of those moments where I thought wow!!

Moira was charming, we got on like a house on fire and are working together a lot next year which I am hugely excited about. Our thanks to Moira, to Helen and Joey for letting us decorate their daughter's wedding, and to Jenni for providing us with these gorgeous photos.

Sunday Reading

Scout and Catalogue

Hello internets, hope you're having a nice weekend! Today I thought it would be fun to list a few blogs that I enjoy visiting when I can for this week's Sunday Reading column. I'm sure you'll like them too! xo jan (Above photo: Scarf from Scout and Catalogue).

And not to forget, the Black Friday Deals we've listed here this week are still continuing through the weekend and into Cyber Monday!

Seesaw
Oh So Beautiful Paper
Miss Moss
My Scandinavian Retreat
Sandra Juto
Rosa Pomar
The Brick House
Door Sixteen

Poppytalk Handmade Gift Guide: Pour Le Bébé

1. Organic Alphabet Blocks, Little Sapling Toys
2. Polar Bear Print, The English Muffin Shop
3. Feather onesie, Coucou Salut
4. Wood alphabet, Bookhou
5. Organic Sapling Stacker, Little Sapling Toys
6. Pouf en Lin, Les Petites Emplettes
7. Les Petites Emplettes Sheep's Mobile, Smallable
8. Alphabet Pillow, Pillowfactory

9. Paperpod Cardboard Fort Castle, Smallable
10. Stuffed Plush Owl, Olbapi
11. Girl's Personalized Patent Leather Tote Bag, French English Confectioner's
12. Sirch Sibis Villa Doll House, Smallable
13. Five Birds Told Me Mobile, Baby Jives
14. B is for Boombox, Finny & Zook
15. Baby Barolo Cocoon Sleeping Bag, Smallable
16. Ferm Living Cushions, Smallable

To all our 2010 brides

We have had the most fabulous year creating many beautiful weddings and we have featured many of them on this blog.

It is always a joy to receive the photos from our weddings from the photographers or the couples we design and decorate the weddings for.

There are many weddings we have designed and created this year where sadly we do not have any photos to feature, from the top of my head now I have Nicole, Tracy, another Nicole, Laura, Ciara times two, Marie, Natalie, Michelle, Regina, Sarah times two, Suzanne the list really is quite endless which makes me feel rather sad.

All these were gorgeous weddings that unfortunately we have not been able to share with you. Many of the brides have contacted us since to rave about their weddings and yet we have not seen the photos.

If you are one of our 2010 brides which have not been featured it is not because we did not love your wedding it is because we have not seen it since, so we would love to see photos of your day, details of the flowers and decorations we created and what made it special for you, your bouquets we made up, table centrepieces, etc. Our blog is being turned into a book shortly so if you wish to be featured in this then please do send us you photos to blog as soon as you can.

Reviva Planning and Coordination

As Reviva Weddings grow, we are delighted to be involved in more and more weddings, although we do carefully plan the logistics of the dates, the work required on each event and moving around Andalucia.

Here was a classic example of one of our rather busy days at the end of last August.

Me and my decoration team were in Seville and Carla was in Frigliana holding Julia and Jamie's hands and overseeing their fabulous wedding day.

We were decorating and overseeing a wedding and over two hours drive away Carla was booked as the wedding coordinator for Julia and Jamie's beautiful wedding in Frigiliana with a reception at the Cortijo Bravo in Velez Malaga.

I am now known as the fairy godmother of the Costa Del Sol which I love, but I do think Carla really deserves this title, along with many other planners I work with to be honest.

I like to think of Carla and I as the fairies in Sleeping Beauty (I have a 4 year old daughter !)

I change everything to pink and make it twinkle and then Carla comes along and changes it to blue, organises it and puts it down on paper!! Carla is the most organised and efficient person I have ever met and I am very honored to have her on my team, she is amazing.

Her attention to detail is unmatched and I have never met anyone like her, I do feel like one of her students when she tells me off!!

Carla also teaches hospitality and event management so you can see her standards are high.

I was at a lecture this week teaching the students about event design and decoration and she even told me off then for over running on time and talking too much :)

Carla was booked to organise the details of Julia and Jamie's wedding held at the pretty church in Frigliana, arrange the paperwork and work with Julia and Jamie to coordinate their day and oversee it so that everything ran smoothly.

Julia and Jamie had given Carla their list so far and we finalised it for them and checked all the details were in place and then Carla was present on the day. I love this set of photos as you will see Carla in her black dress, with Julia and Jamie at the beginning and then the last photo she is outside watching over the reception.

Whilst we did not become involved in the flowers or decorations for Julia and Jamie, we are delighted to see these fabulous photos from Jeremy and will find out the florist who worked with them for their day in order to recommend them to our brides who wish to work with a florist in this area, I thought the photos of the bouquets were stunning.