It’s giveaway time again. We teamed up with Craft Passion to host a great blog giveaway. It just started this weekend and will be open until February 10, 23.59 PM PST. You can win an awesome bundle of 12 fabrics and 10 woven ribbons. A great prize for all you creative people out there. We wish all of you good luck and of course lots of fun.

And don’t forget. Soon we will celebrate our 22,222 Facebook friends with a huge giveaway ourselves. More details will follow once we’ve reached that magic number. This weekend we already hit the 22,000 Fans mark, so hopefully it won’t be long. We are looking forward to it.

On Craft Passion you can now win our fabrics and woven ribbons

Dear Australian customers: A very happy Australia Day to you! To everybody else: Even if you’re not from Australia and have never heard about this day before, enjoy learning a little bit about January 26th. Because every year Australia celebrates on its national day the anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet of 11 convict ships from Great Britain at Sydney Cove in 1788. It is one of the largest annual public events in the whole country, as there are many celebrations such as concerts, barbecues, festivals and fireworks. It is very popular to relax with family and friends on that day or to visit one of the numerous activities going on throughout the country.

We hope you have a nice day and a good party. In honor of the Australian National Day we today celebrate the most Australian symbol we could find in our shop: Our little koala bear eraser.

grey koala bear eraser by Iwako from Japan

When Sandra and Alan visited Austria they saw an adorable Hello Kitty collection in a Swarovski store and took a couple of pictures. Swarovski is a company based in Austria that manufactures crystal jewelry and products. They are really well known throughout the world. In June they launched their first Hello Kitty collection which they developed in collaboration with Sanrio. There are little figures, necklaces, rings, jewelry sets, but also some leather goods and bags. Everythings shines and sparkles. How do you like those more exclusive Hello Kitty items?

Hello Kitty with apple

bling bling - the Hello Kitty figures sparke and shine

cute little Hello Kitty earrings

the collection also contains whole jewelry sets

crystal and leather - a cute Hello Kitty charm

this card holder looks really impressive

Sandra and Alan visited this Swarovski store in Innsbruck, Austria

We wish all of you a very Happy Chinese New Year. We hope you’ll have a lot of luck, happiness and good health in the year of the dragon. And of course it is hopefully filled with cuteness. Therefore Hello Kitty sends you greetings too. We have to admit that this greeting card is already a bit older and actually celebrates the year of the rat which was a couple of years ago. But it is just so cute!

Today the big celebrations start in Hong Kong. Until Wednesday there will be lots of stuff going on like parades and fireworks. PLEASE DON’T FORGET: We can’t ship any orders between January 23rd and January 25th, as those days are public holidays in Hong Kong for Chinese New Year and all post offices are closed. We will start shipping again on Thursday, January 26th.

Happy Chinese New Year with Hello Kitty

Man, this week we added quite a few products to our shop. At last we finished to upload all the stationery products from our huge San-X delivery, but we also got new Re-Ment-Sets and Kokka fabrics. One item stuck in our mind even a bit more than the others, that’s why we chose it as our favourite product of the week and want to share with you.

Our product of the week is the funny Kutusita Nyanko plush ballpoint cat paw pen. Why? Because it’s soft and cute and hilarious. And it has little bells attached that ring when you move it. It sounds like a real cat is running around. Adorable. And did we mention that we think the pen is funny? Nothing more to add .

Kutusita Nyanko cat plush ballpoint pen cat paw

Prepare for a lot of physical contact today, because January 21st is for hugging. The National Hug Day was invented in the USA and is celebrated since 1986 to encourage people to show more emotions in public. So go out and hug it up. If you don’t find anybody to hug, we suggest you get a cute Rilakkuma plush toy. That little bear loves hugs and is very nice and squeezable as a plushie.

Have a nice Hugging Day. And by the way, the founders suggest to ask first before hugging strangers .

Rilakkuma Memo Pad with bears and chick by San-X Japan

Rilakkuma plush toy white bear chocolate suit

cute Heart Deco Tape love hug kawaii

What? You haven’t heard of that day before? Neither have we. Still the Worldday of the Snowman exists since 2010 and is kind of funny. It’s on January 18th as the ‘8′ resembles the shape of a snowman and the ‘1′ looks like the broom or stick he holds in his hand. Plus meteorologically it’s still winter – at least in many countries of the world. What are you supposed to do on that day? That depends on you, as it’s just a general day of action, where you can do anything related to the snowman. Like building a snowman for example.

…..Well, we would love to, but there was not quite enough snow in Hong Kong for that. But we still have some funny snowman items in our shop! And the best: They’re all on sale. Because let’s be honest, winter is over. Still we wish everybody a very happy snowman day and hope you use it wisely if you have access to snow .

cute small snowman with snow wooden stamp

funny Christmas gel stamps snowman reindeer

black snowman Scotch Tape christmas snowflakes

green Christmas fabric Santa Claus animals snowflakes

cute small snowman wooden stamp Christmas

What a funny idea. Our cute teeth erasers were published in the december issue of German magazine Nido with kind of an educational mission. Nido is a lifestyle magazine for young parents and introduced the teeth erasers on their products page as a funny example of how you can teach your children what happens if you don’t brush your teeth. Not a bad idea, don’t you think?

December issue of German Nido magazine

Our erasers on their products page

products for young families

We always love it when you guys mention us on your blogs. Not only does it show us that you like our products, but we also learn a lot about what you like and want. So we can always improve our shop. Just today we found two more blogs where we were mentioned.
Torie Jayne did a really pretty collage with a gift guide 2011 where she included our lovely rose deco tape. Charlotte Charm made a cute review about her order in our shop. Thanks guys, we are always happy about feedback. Keep it up.

Torie Jayne

Charlotte Charm

This may turn out differently than you would have expected from the headline. Surely most of you think that one of our products got featured in the magazine Mollie Makes. But it is one of our blog pictures! We were surprised ourselves when they contacted us a little while ago. Now we got the magazine and you can check it out yourself.
For an article about fabrics from Tokyo ”Mollie Makes” was looking for a photograph of fabric town in Nippori. They saw the one we added to our blog when we went to Japan in April and liked it. So they asked if they could print it in their article and as they mentioned our website, we didn’t see a problem at all. It’s a nice magazine by the way, we could take a look at it now that they sent it to us. It’s from the UK “for people who love the crafty life” and started out just this May.

the cover of Mollie Makes

the article about Tokyo

with our blog photo on the right

here you see the whole modes4u picture