We have been having some pretty crazy storms around here lately. The tornado sirens have went off at least 3 times in the last week and I lost power for 8 hours on Friday (of course right as my family who was staying the weekend walked in the door).

Last night was one of the most intense storms I have seen in awhile. Truly what you would call rolling thunder. It was almost one constant rumbling sound. While that happened lightning streaked across every direction of the sky, constantly, for about an hour. I wish I could have photographed it but my balcony is in a very bad spot for that.

I did enjoy watching it. It was slightly cloudy so sometimes it would just be the entire sky turning white as the clouds diffused the energy, then a streak would come down and touch the ground as another snaked through the sky.

Why does all this matter? One, because lightning is pretty cool and that's not my photograph above, but it is pretty great. Second, because I went to post last night and the storm knocked my internet and cable out, better then the power I guess.

I wanted to throw in a non-photograph lighting piece of art too. As always I am a sucker for letterpress, and the above card from Etsy is pretty great too (check out the rest of their stuff, great patterns, love it!).

[photo from Flickr and card from Etsy ]

This has been in my "to post" list for quite awhile and by the awesome feature of how Safari fills in your address bar and my need to go to Office Depot, I once again came across The Office of the Tooth Fairy.

When I was a kid and we lost a tooth we put it in a film canister, the black with the gray top, and that went under our pillow. When we woke up the money would be in the canister for us and the tooth would be mysteriously gone. I still remember when I had to clean the tooth up after it came out because it came out while eating a Carmellow bar and it was covered in chocolate and caramel. Great memories (although teeth do freak me out a bit in general) and I will always remember that film canister.

Memories like that are great but on the other hand I can't get over the shear beauty of these "official" letterpress Office of the Tooth Fairy certificates. I drooled over them the first time and once again I am. They thought of everything, the bag for the tooth, extremely detailed record keeping, the deposit envelope (although I might make one out of a film canister, heck my kids won't even know what film is...). I know I am sucker for letterpress in general, but these are fantastic. I have always been tempted to order, and now they have extra sheets so you can keep track of multiple children easily. Which was kind of the reason I held back. To buy for multiple children at $16 a set, was a little pricey, especially when I don't have kids yet. Now with the extra sheets, I can pick up one kit, a few extra record sheets and keep them for the future (plus one just to keep for myself).

You can order online or find a store near you. I just saw that there was one sort of nearby, but since the extra sheets are new, i'll probably order online and save the hassle. $16 for the first set, extra sheets are $6 each or they have packages of 5 and 10. Shipping is reasonable too at $1.50. Go get it!

P.S. Could they have picked better colors! Love the brown and blue. I have been trying to get some clients to use this combo forever.

A quick post on a letterpress shop I cam across: Elum.

Really nice work all around but what really caught my eye was the Desk set featured at the top. The grey and yellow together just pops so well. I wish I had people I wrote letters to so I could get something that nice to write them on.

Elum also does invitations, announcements, bags, journals, stationary sets, editioned prints, calendars and other various custom letterpress items.

One day I will get something letterpressed...one day.

From the same great place as the caution/barricade tape by the same name, Every thing is OK started as a simple project to point people towards positive action. This is one of their new posters for sale in their shop created by Amos Kennedy on election day 2008. 2 color letterpress on chipboard(12.5x19). $35 + shipping in a limited edition of 50.

The June catalog from Anthropologie caught my eye recently. The store always has great window displays (I remember one of a mannequin trailing behind a herd of leashed, pink, balloon animal poodles when I was in New York) and it seems that their catalogs  are something to admire as well. 

It has a great layered block print / letterpress technique applied to the front of it (mostly from teaming up with Hatch Show Print, one of American's oldest working poster print shops) and the aged look just adds a bit more to it. I'll have to file this away in my "ideas vault" for a future project. My copy of the catalog is already on it's way.