BeautifulPaperLand: The Warehouse Sale

Thanks to Miss Fish, I bounced around the apartment this morning singing "BeautifulPaperLand" over and over and over. Occassionally I'd clap my hands together in gleeful anticipation.

And, oh, was it worth it, although I think that Ptichka and I were a bit disappointed initially. On the first pass through the ground floor, we picked up some beautiful packs of 8.5 x 11" stationery, a huge pack of decorative papers and cardstock for ten bucks, a thick pack of what looks like kozo origami paper for two bucks (it used to cost fifteen), a pack of textured origami paper, and some beautiful "scrapbooking sheets" for a buck (the only thing scrapbooky about this paper is the size of the sheet). Then we went upstairs and felt better. Ptichka bought a set of Japanese stationery to hoard, some pearl envelopes to hoard, some stickers to hoard, and then we hit the tables of rolled paper. The first table contained Italian decorative paper (we bought a roll of four sheets), Indian sparkle paper (which we didn't buy because we already have some), chiyo cardstock (which we did buy), and random other rolls of various decorative papers like echizen, tairei, and the like (we picked up two of those, one in blue and the other in this sparkly paper that Ptichka loves loves loves). We were both hoping for tissue but it only came in packs of 50 5 x 7" sheets for five bucks. And all the sheets were the same, so we opted not to buy any of them. We bought some half-sheets of chiyo. Ptichka found a pack of silk paper squares for seven bucks which we deposited in the shopping bag ASAP. And then my eye spied another table of rolled paper which no one was examining. It was just sitting there so I strolled over to see what it was. Jackpot! It was the kozo table. At one end I found a roll of four sheets of St. Armand Canal Paper, one in denim, one in sisal current, one in sisal cuke, and one is white cotton for five bucks, and a roll of this wonderful textured black paper that is a bitch to glue but a pleasure to sew. In the middle there were rolls and rolls of coloured kozo. We picked up a roll with what looks like silk paper but is kozo in yellow and a sheet of orange, another roll with hand-dyed yellow kozo and another sheet of orange, a roll with steel blue and green kozo, and one last roll with a purple hand-dyed sheet and a green sheet, both kozo. That table set us back thirty-five bucks, ut, as I mentioned, it was deserted. We were the only ones going through it, which made us wonder. Did people know something we didn't? Our superior paper-spotting skills weren't confirmed until check-out when the owner of BeautifulPaperLand looked at the kozo rolls and commented, "Somebody has good taste." That's us! That's us!

On our way to check-out, we spotted a woman with a type of paper roll we hadn't seen yet. Ptichka asked her where she had found it and we discovered that we had missed a section of the ground floor. Back down we went. We picked up a full-sheet of chiyo, a two-dollar roll of four full sheets of tissue, a roll of Clairefontaine gold paper, a roll of flecked white paper for fifty cents, and an artist's roll, which contains eight 37 x 25" sheets of paper. It looks as though there's a sheet of katazome, an obonai feather sheet in green, three sheets of pure kozo in three different colours, and three different types of white paper (mulberry, echizen, and some other stuff).

After scoring all of these, we went to wait in the everything-but-cash line, which started near the entrance on the ground floor and extended up the stairs and into the showroom on the second floor. We talked to the women behind us, one of whom stopped shopping only when she realized that she wouldn't be able to actually carry her purchases home if she bought any more and another who was buying a bunch of photo albums because the photographer for her son's wedding charged six hundred dollars for the photo album. I asked her if it was gold-plated. No, it wasn't. One again, I am thankful that Ptichka and I gave exactly zero dollars to the wedding industry when we wed. The hipsters at Indiebride have nothing on us. After we hit the main floor during our wait, we started talking to the woman ahead of us who teaches art. She had picked up a ton of art supplies for her school. As we chatted, she started passing on some good information. There's a woman in the Distillery District who specializes in hand-made Japanese paper. She teaches courses in Japanese paper-making (and western-style paper making). Avenue Rd Art School offers a class on "paper treatment" or, as the woman translated it into the vernacular, hand-dyeing paper. She raved about interference paints. She mixes them. We are so picking up a tube after I get paid. And then she told us what she uses as her medium when she marbles paper using acrylics: Smirnoff Vodka. It's nice to know that Smirnoff's has a use in this world because it certainly isn't for drinking. Blech!

I'm contemplating going back to the warehouse tomorrow during the last hour of the sale to see if anything is marked down even more. I'd love to pick up some of those tissue packs, but only if they're cheaper. And it would be nice to get some more envelopes. And maybe, if the kozo table remains untouched, the rolls will be even cheaper. Either way, it would be a nice walk. I like Toronto more now that I walk everywhere.

Pictures will be posted next week. Ptichka's out of town until Sunday and she has the camera. So now, pity me? I am surrounded by all of these rolls of paper and I promised Ptichka that I wouldn't open any until she returns from her aunt's on Sunday evening. Sigh.