It is almost that time of year!!

At the Two in a Teacup studio we are trying out a couple of new designs for our Christmas tags this year. We like to keep them simple and classic to sit well with a range of wrapping styles so our new designs feature our trademark black images onto white card and also a small supply of soft grey card. 

We are also highlighting our 'Tiny Tags' as they make a lovely addition to handmade produce as well as an extra festive element on Xmas parcels. They are big enough to write a small message and the perfect size for jars of jam and pickles!

There will be a couple more designs coming plus our popular Christmas luggage tag designs available on our bigcartel site soon.

Seeing beauty everywhere

 

On a rather gloomy day I thought I would spruce up the font courtyard by sweeping away all the wisteria leaves that had recently fallen. As I swept, I noticed that the central stem of the flowers and leaves were quite similar to pine needles so I retrieved them from the swept up muddle of leaves to see if I could make a small basket or bowl with them. 

Laying them out in bundles reminded me of calligraphic strokes - isn’t nature wonderful!

 Who knew such beauty could be found in a pile of leaves ready for the compost!

Here's to 2026 and a new year of possibilities.

For many reasons we are quite glad to bid farewell to last year but we are excited to start this new year with positivity and a burning creative force. We hope 2026 will be a fabulous one for you all.

We have just begun a new series of gift tags for the lovely little store in Battery Point - Habeō. This will be the first drop of our 'Nature' series featuring hand stamped images on our luxe 36% cotton rag card stock. These are quite a generous size for a small sturdy gift tag and offer plenty of room on the reverse for a thoughtful message. 

We love using natural materials in our work so we were very pleased to have supplied 'Wild Island Tasmania' with our hand painted river stones recently and we are hoping to create a series of these including the iconic Tasmanian deciduous beech leaves. 

May the year ahead be an inspired, creative and healthy one for you all. 

A long time between posts!

 

The old saying 'How time flies..' is appropriate for us this year as many aspects of our life have needed to take priority. Unfortunately, this has meant that there has been much less activity in the Two in a Teacup studio this year, but we are still managing to produce a small number of our popular little products just in time for Christmas 2025. 

On our Bigcartel shop site there will be a limited number of our vintage paper baubles available and a small number of new Christmas tags coming very soon. Our regular stockists - Cuckoo in Cygnet and Wild Island Tasmania in Salamanca Place will have a range of our nests, vintage paper Heart and Swallow garlands and Heart stones and the lovley little Habëo store in Battery Point will have our special edition Christmas tags available.

As always, we hope that 2025 has been a healthy one for everyone and that the next couple of months in the lead up to Christmas are creative and full of lovely moments. 

We will be doing another blog post before Christmas with an update on any new products we are making, so until then Happy Spring and heres to renewed inspiration! 

Nesting

 

As the year unfolds we have found ourselves collecting and foraging beautiful gifts from nature on our walks on the mountain and also from our own small garden. We are lucky that many of our friends often drop lovely gum nuts, seed heads or moss that they have gathered and saved for us, on our doorstep. We realise, too, that we have developed quite a keen eye for natural treasures that might be perfect for our nests, so we often walk rather slowly to carefully observe the garden and bush around us! We always carry a small collecting bag where ever we go because you never know what you might find but only ever pick up what has fallen and no longer living if it is not from our own or a friends garden.

The making process then begins with sorting which of our finds will work well with the nest we are making at the time. I create a nest shape using the vines and twigs first, let it settle and then begin to weave in small elements to the nest. It always amazes me that each nest seems to have a definite mind of its own that determines which seed pods, dried flower heads, twigs and feathers it actually wants! This makes the nest creating process always interesting and ever changeable, which I love. 

The most recent nest (pictured above) measures approximately 25cm in diameter, so it is quite large. It is on its way to the lovely store at Salamanca Place in Hobart called Wild Island Tasmania.

The Christmas season is fast approaching!

We love Christmas and all that it is associated with - family, spending time with friends, the joy of gift giving and making special memories. We also know that it can sometimes be a stressful and somewhat complicated time, so we have tried to simplify things and make sure we have the time to concentrate on some of the more important aspects of Christmas.

This season we have intentionally created only a small number of new products as our family has had numerous health issues that have impacted our time and capacity to produce all our usual goodies. We have a new range of lovely simple hand stamped gift tags which feature gold eyelets as part of the luggage tag style and we have also updated our lovely 'heart stones'. For a couple of years we have made our 'tiny tags' which are perfect when you don't need to write a great deal or when you just need to add a little festive designer touch to a wrapped parcel. Recently we have been making some more of our signature nests and have been thrilled to send one across the country to Western Australia. Locally you can find them at the lovely store in Cygnet - 'Cuckoo Etc' and at 'Wild Island Tasmania' just up from Salamanca Place in Hobart. 

We will be making another post closer to Christmas but we hope that everyone has a calm, productive and joyous lead up to this very special time of the year.

xx

Winter

We often find that because winter in the southern hemisphere is in the middle of the year, it is a good time to be still, read, cosy up by the fire and generate new ideas. In Tasmania, we have been lucky, thus far, to have had some gloriously sunny, crisp days as well as a dusting of snow on the mountain. 

Recently we were fortunate to bring one of our large nests into a beautiful local store 'Wild Island Tasmania'. This store celebrates all things Tasmanian and has a nature and conservation focus in the artisan goods it stocks as well as their exhibition programme so we are feeling very lucky to have our nests there.

This nest measures approximately 28cm wide and is called 'Autumn Crown' as it has lovely bronze and orange tones as well as a central stone with a golden heart hand painted on it.

We have also been making some smaller nests ready for Spring and this Winter we are also trying to design some new Christmas products. It is hard to believe that before we know it the Christmas season will be upon us!