It’s trly amazing what projects our customers realize with our paper twines. I need to admit that I’ve known Linda Barabé for quite a while (13 years to be exact) and I’ve always admired her creative energy and ideas. Linda says that she has had problems first to come up with a suitable project for the paper twines because they seemed very precious. But eventually it came to her: paper twine dream catchers!

By now Linda Barabé has made a lot of dream catchers because as soon as they’re finished and hang in the house a visitor falls in love with the newly finished piece – and it leaves to catch bad dreams at a different place. Luckily living in the Canadian province of Québec there is an abundance of natural materials and the whole family helps to find old branches, feathers, bones and more. For the big dream catcher shown here a huge, cleaned veal bone was sawn into fine slices by the family butcher.

There are different beliefs of how dream catchers actually work – you can read more about it here on wikipedia. The Ojibwa believe that a dreamcatcher changes a person’s dreams, some say that all bad dreams get caught in the net and only good dreams can filter through.

The three-piece dream catcher shown here was made especially for Linda’s son so the red colored feathers were carefully chosen to his likings and the wooden pieces all come from places that are meaningful to him. The loop itself is wrapped in leather cord and the net is woven/wound out of natural paper twine. Linda Barabé initally followed dream catcher courses in Canada and by now she herself is teaching this tradition as well. Introducing paper twine as a new, natural material is quite a great idea – thanks, Mme. Barabé!

Besides preparations for upcoming craft fairs and Christmas we’re busy with the design of our new online store. It will be slightly bigger, easier to navigate and with more pictures to show you our paper twines, bobbins and odds and ends. One of the tasks that have to be completed is a re-shooting of a lot of our products. The investment in good daylight photo lamps already pays off because the days here in Vienna get shorter and shorter and light is not always as abundant.

One of the pictures for the new shop that shows a whole range of available colors – yes, we know that it won’t become easier to choose colors in the future because you’ll likely want them all… sorry for that. The other picture shows a kraft colored crepe paper streamer/ribbon we’re currently playing around with (whenever we find a spare minute at least). It’s great for gift wrapping, flower-making and all kinds of decorations and it will be available in the new store!

Florence Jaquet: Necklace and Bracelet “Majesté”, 2011, paper, tagua nut

Luckily we live in the digital age – and in the age of Pinterest in this case – though it took us quite a while to find the website by Swiss jewelry maker Florence Jaquet after stumbling upon the first pictures of her work. To call Florence a “jewelry finder” would not do her work justice though natural, found materials are incorporated into a lot of her pieces. The literal translation of her website “bijoux organiques” would also be “organic jewelry”. Florene herself explains that “I named my work “organic” with reference to the word “organ”. A jewel is meant to be worn and then becomes an extra organ on the body : it influences the body’s balance, movements and functions. It is vital and yet so fragile and can be altered during the course of its life. As an organ, it can also have an effect on connections with other people.”

Florence Jaquet: Bracelet and Necklace “Je me livre … et vous?”, 2011, paper, linen thread

We’re only showing you the paper and hand-twisted paper twine related jewelry pieces here but Florence uses a wide range of organic materials for her sculptural pieces. Some of them are installations – like the “Le tea-shirt, 2011″ shown below that was made as a entry for the 70e Biennale d’art contemporain de La Chaux-de-Fonds. This colar and a lot of other pieces do remind us strongly of traditional art from Africa and the South Pacific.

Florence Jacquet: “Tea-Shirt” (top) and Necklace “Perles insolites”, 2007, price tags, cotton (bottom)

While on Florence’s own website you’ll find more pictures the texts are all in French. For some information in English as well as information on points of sale and upcoming exhibitions head to her Klimt02 website.

Our new postcards arrived! We seriously underestimated the weight of a parcel filled with postcards but luckily our mailman was so nice to carry the parcel right into the studio and put it into the designated spot in the shelf – thanks again! The postcard shows all of your strong paper twines – 19 colors in total – and we’ll start sending them out with all the orders.

Air Tattoos: Wearable Art for the Neck by Logical Design

What stunning paper jewelry pieces – we’re already waiting for ours to arrive in the studio!

But to start at the beginning: Logical Art is a London-based design studio run by Hanhsi Chen and Yookyung Shin who started to work together after graduating from the Royal College of Art. The duo just launched a new project – Air Tattoo – on the crowd funding website Kickstarter. You can still support the project on Kickstarter by pre-ordering your very own Air Tattoo until September 9, 2012.

Some stills from the Kickstarter film explaining the design process

Air Tattoo is a collection of wearable delicate drawings. The original material that was drawn onto – paper – becomes the piece itself in the transformtion process from drawing to piece of jewelry. The idea behind this project was to convert delicate hand-drawn patterns into air-like “tattoos” or in other words to produce stunning paper-cuts that can not only be framed and put onto the walls but that you can wear every day.

One of the questions the PaperPhine studio faces most often is if paper and paper yarn weren’t to fragile to be worn as jewelry. The Logical Art studio faced the same question so they set out to find a suitable paper for their purpose because they absolutely wanted to use paper to keep the quality of the delicate drawings. They say that “We managed to find a kind of special eco-friendly paper. The paper keeps all the great quality of normal paper (soft texture, light weight, beautiful tension), yet it is very strong. It is water-resistant / tear-resistant material as you can see from the video. We completed material tests already. Strong enough to wear, even for rainy days. You can wear Air Tattoo multiple times unless you try hard to tear it.” And once more it has to be added that the toughness of paper should never be underestimated.

Definitely a project all paper-lovers should back on Kickstarter!

KNOT can be worn as a necklace as well as a bracelet!

We talked a lot about our new KNOT jewelry lately and yes, it might be that we’re a bit proud of the new pieces. If you read the last blog articles as well you know that there was a long and laborious process behind finding the perfect design. Today we want to share some picture of the KNOT pieces worn as necklaces with you – and yes, it’s the same piece that can also be worn as a bracelet!

When worn long you have the choice between extra-long or you can make a big “knot”/loop to slightly shorten the piece. When worn short you can use the latch that is available in shiny as well as in matt to hold the strands together. And of course you can find your personal way to wear the necklace as well!

The good news are that our agent Helle from Stjernestunder found a lot of shops that loved our KNOT pieces at the Formland Fair she attended. This means that there will be a lot of shops that will stock our KNOT pieces in Northern Europe (and other places!) soon. For the moment you can get the KNOTs at feinheiten… in Innsbruck or you can send us a message and we’ll send you your very own KNOT bracelet/necklace!

Made by PaperPhine: the new KNOT Bracelet (with and without latch)

In our last blog entry Linda talked about the design process behind our new KNOT jewelry line. Today we share pictures of the new pieces with you (you might have seen some of them on PaperPhine’s Facebook page before). It took us a long time to find a perfect length so you can wear your KNOT piece both as a bracelet and as a necklace – and not only in one way but short, long, with a huge knot in front and with or without a latch. More about these possibilities later this week.

Made by PaperPhine: the new KNOT Bracelets (with and without latches)

Our Danish agent Helle from Stjernestunder is taking our new KNOT series as well as some of our paper twines and other paper yarn jewelry to this autumn’s Formland Fair. Visit Helle and Marie at booth H6018 and have a chat with her!