House Industries and Hugo Guinness Goodies From Chronicle Books.

Chronicle Books has just released two terrific collections for lovers of typography and contemporary art. Affordable, functional notecards, notebooks, postcards and journals.



Having teamed up with hip font foundry House Industries, Chronicle Books is offering a fabulous boxed postcard collection, a sticker and label book and a set of four mini eco-Journals.



House Industries 100 Postcards:




The boxed set of 100 postcards has an impressive range of letters, numbers, symbols, and patterns (including two full alphabets!) and is printed in bright, bold colors and silver metallic accents. Highlighting House Industries’ cache of typographic treasures, the postcards measure 4 3/8 x 6 1/4 x 2 3/4 inches and come in a cool hinged lidded box.
Link to buy:House Industries 100 Postcards

House Industries Labels & Stickers:




This will hip up scrapbookers everywhere! This handy portfolio contains hundreds of stickers adorned with House Industries’ one-of-a-kind fonts. Including full alphabets, numbers, and symbols galore, these colorful labels are kissed with metallic flourishes and are perfect for personalizing packages, labeling books, decorating goodies, and more. The kraft paperback portfolio measures 5 3/8 x 6 7/8 inches and has 30 full-color sticker sheets and metallic silver ink.
Link to buy: House Industries Labels & Stickers: Over 299 Typographic Stickers for Decor and Design

House Industries Four Mini Eco-Journals:


A set of hip mini eco-journals (1 graph, 1 lined, 1 blank, 1 dotted) feature enticing patterns with classic type elements, all drawn from House Industries’ collection of cool fonts. Featuring splashes of metallic ink and bold designs, these eye-catching journals are as covetable as they are portable. 4 notebooks, each notebook: paperback with stitched spine, 3 3/4 x 5 1/2 in, 48 pp, 100% recycled paper, 1-color interior, bellyband and polybagged.
Link to buy: House Industries Mini Eco-Journals: Four Mini Eco-Journals

Hugo Guinness Journal and Note Cards


Hugo Guinness, is a London-born New York-based artist, illustrator, model and writer. He is known for his illustrations in the New York Times and his bold, graphic black-and-white block prints, many of which have appeared in films and publications. Known for his fabulous lino cuts, Hugo Guinness has created a journal and boxed collection of notecards for Chronicle Books.

Desktop Objects Journal:




Five favorite pens lined up in a row—it’s an image that writers, artists, designers, and students will appreciate. Within, this sophisticated journal features striking linocuts of desktop objects, inspiring planning, doodling, note-taking, or dreaming. The journal measures 5 x 7 1/8 inches, has 192 pages with various 1-color illustrations and has a lay-flat binding making it easy to use.
Link to buy: Desktop Objects Journal

A Curious Collection - 20 Different Notecards and Envelopes:


An inkpot. A keychain. A vintage car. A dog. In this handsome and eclectic collection, 20 unique cards feature classic linocut prints from Hugo Guinness depicting all manner of things, ideal for all manner of correspondence. Measuring 4 3/8 x 5 9/16 x 1 9/16 inches each, the lidded box contains 20 cards (20 designs) and 20 envelopes.
Link to buy: A Curious Collection: 20 Different Notecards & Envelopes

Full disclosure: these items were sent to me for review from Chronicle Books, with the understanding that if I did not find them of interest, I would not blog about them.

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Summer Is Coming, Gotta Get The Chillsner.

I spotted this over at the awesome site, Cool Material. As an owner of the corkcicle, I was pleased to see they've adapted the genius idea for beer drinkers - or anything that comes in a smaller bottle and is served cold.





The Chillsner is the first ever in-bottle beer cooler you can drink through. Simply toss it in the freezer for 45 minutes, take a sip out of the beer you’re going to put it in, then pop in the Chillsner and you’re good to go. Staying cool for a long time, the Chillsner will even keep that gross last back-washed bit nice and cold.




Each purchase includes two Chillsners, a freezer storage case, and two instructional coasters. No more warm beer and no more funky koozies.

$30 USD. Buy it here at Cool Material

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The Key To A Great Housewarming Gift. Actually, Four Of Them.

The Goodworth & Co. makes four different specially designed brass keys that are made to fit all Kwikset K1 locks. Each key measures 1" x 3" and is decorated on both sides. At only $8.00 each (and available to order online) they make awesome housewarming gifts. All they have to do it take it to any hardware store or key cutter.

The Sweet Leaf Key for your 420-friendly friends:



The Best Wishes Key For Those Who Favor Their Middle Finger:



The Heads and Tails Key For People Who Like To Take Chances:




The Six Shooter Key For Pistol Packing Mommas and members of the NRA:





Shop for them here.

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This Year's 10 Hippest Stocking Stuffers For Pop Culture Enthusiasts.

My picks for the ten most fun (and functional) stocking stuffers for fans of popular culture. Most are under $10 and all are creative, imaginative and most definitely hip.

One Up Designs' Printed Pencil Sets:

The $6 pencil sets from One Up designs are a great gift for lovers of pop culture and trends. Pencils printed with quotes from books, movies and music, the #2 pencils come in several colors and lots of options. Buy them here.

Tattly Temporary Tattoos:


The coolest (and safest) way to get inked. Tattly temporary tattoos are fun and imaginative gifts for everyone from designers to children. At only $5 a set, they are the perfect stocking stuffer for those who like to change their body art without a needle. Buy them here.

AJ's Toy Boarders:


Green, little and cool, Toy Boarders are an urban take on the classic plastic toy soldiers that promote action sports over violence. The designers at AJ's roots are skate, surf, & snow so when they design each rider they use real moves that would be used by today. Each Art Piece is hand molded with attention to detail and style. Toy Boarders now offers two sets of skateboarding figurines, the newest set of thrashers even includes a girl and a videographer (shown above). You can get a good look at the first set here.
Buy Them Here.

Archie Grand's "[BLANK] I Met and Liked" Notebooks:

Colored blank notebooks are embossed with titles of various occupations and characters that "I met and liked." With tons of options (From Models to Capitalists, Gardeners to Politicians, Brits to Architects and Fashionistas to Bloggers), these make hilarious and useful stocking stuffers. They have a rigid cover, are tread sewn and have a mate leathery lamination. The size is 160x115 mm to fit the pocket of a suit or a small evening bag. The notebooks / journals / scrapbooks contain 120 blank pages of high quality paper with a low emission signature. They are individually shrink-wrapped to keep the clean and protected. €9.95 each. Buy them here

Bandages worth cutting yourself for:

Okay, so I realize that was insensitive to self-mutilators. However, these bandages and the tins they come in are wickedly funny and worth giving yourself an intentional papercut.

Each tin includes between 15 and 25 flexible bandages, depending on the selection.
buy them here

Blue Q's Breath Sprays are packaged in hilarious blister packs with promises like "Enjoy Yor Job", "Understand Men" and "Accept The Fact That you Are Aging."

With 11 to choose from at only $5.49 each, you'll want to buy them all. Buy them here.

We Are Dorothy's Movie and Song lovers Maps:
The Film Map is based on the style of a vintage LA street map, but is made up entirely from film titles. The Map, which features over 900 films is the second in their series of 'Map' prints and is available to buy as a signed and stamped Limited Edition print and an Open Edition print.

The Song maps:

Two new editions of their Song Map are now available. A Special Edition Large Format print which is over twice the size of the original Map and a Saint Etienne Edition which is a print of the artwork they did for the band's 'Words and Music' album cover. buy the movie and song maps here.

Mimico Mimbots (USB flash drives):


Most everyone could make use a USB drive. Mimico has become THE company for designer USB drives that capitalize on popular culture. The Mimbots are available in various storage capacities and feature the likenesses of everything from Star Trek and Star Wars to Hello Kitty and Ugly Dolls.

buy them here.

Fred and Friends Keycaps:
Not only cute, but super useful. These fun keycaps will help you to identify individual keys on your overloaded keychain. Some even glow in the dark. Trendy imagery like Luche Libre masks, Sock Monkeys, Unicorns, Robots, Tikis, Skulls and more are affordable and fun.

Buy Fred Keycaps here

Showtime Series Goodies:
Fans of Showtime series Dexter, Weeds, Homeland, Shameless, Californication, Nurse Jackie, The L Word, House of Lies, the Borgias, etc. will appreciate the numerous t-shirts, mugs, caps, bobbleheads and exclusives to the online store.

The Dexter Garbage Bags, Weeds 420 T-Shirt, Nurse Jackie Coffee Mug and Shameless Sleep mask are a few of my favorites:

Shop for many more Showtime gifts here.

And there you have it, a bunch of hip stocking stuffers - most of which are under 10$ - and none of which will be regifted.

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