Today is a very special day, it’s Thanksgiving. It’s time for our American friends to share a big Turkey dinner together and think about all that they are thankful for.

It’s also exactly one month ‘til Christmas so the countdown starts here.

To make the next 29 days wait seem shorter, and to spread a little festive Momiji love, we’ve just launched the Momiji Advent Calendar!

Click here to sign up and you’ll receive a daily dose of jolly directly from Momiji HQ. There’s Christmassy projects, printables, downloadables, offers, discounts and a whole manner of Christmassy shenanigans ready for you so sign up now.

Get your party hats on, the festive season starts here!

Thought Bubble festival is a comic-book convention held annually in Leeds. We went there, armed with blank dolls, paint and a whole manner of Momiji goodies, at the weekend and loved every second of it.

There were loads of Cosplayers dressed as their favourite characters from Anime, Manga, Comic Books, Films and just about anything else you could think of. A large number of comic book artists were also there, signing comics and looking at everyone’s work.

The workshop was fantastic and the painted dolls looked amazing! Who would have thought of creating a Momiji inspired by a pineapple? Or even a steampunk themed doll? The level of creativity at this workshop was off the charts and we had a great time chatting to all the Momiji fans who came along. We’re donating 50% of all the workshop ticket prices to Médicins Sans Frontières so a big thank you to everyone who came along to paint.

Hallowe’en is right around the corner and we’ve been celebrating with toffee apples, spooky cupcakes and pumpkin carving.

Pumpkin carving is great fun and our work experience girls, Mary, Charly and Charlotte, got stuck in. We’ve made some pumpkin stencils based on our favourite Momiji designs; the Momiji Maid, Kitty, BFF and Snuggle. You can download these stencils for free and join in with the Momiji Hallowe’en fun! You can also upload your pumpkin photos to our Facebook wall and we’ll send a prize to our favourite.

“But how do you make a Momiji pumpkin?” You might ask. If you’ve never carved a pumpkin, we thoroughly recommend it.
Using a small knife (and watching out for your fingers) cut a small hole around the pumpkin’s stalk at the top. Take this off – it will be the lid. Then scoop out the insides.

Download the Momiji stencils here, resize the picture to match your pumpkin and print it off.
Pin the design to your pumpkin.

Using another pin, make small dots around the edges of the design. When you’re done, take off the paper and begin cutting it out.

Black areas on the design should be cut out entirely, white areas should be solid pumpkin. The grey areas on the cheeks and on Snuggle’s head are shaded.

To make the shaded effect, shave the first layer of pumpkin skin off but don’t cut the flesh away completely.
Refer to the stencil if you lose track of your design

When you’re done, turn off the lights and admire your Hallowe’en masterpieces!

Drumroll please. Actually this deserves more than a drumroll, bring on the dancing girls, fireworks, kangaroos and maybe even the All Blacks performing the Haka. The Australasia webshop is now live!

It’s taken a little while but we got there in the end. So here’s the deal:

• We will now be shipping to Australia and New Zealand (from Australia)
• We’ve reworked our database so that Momiji fans Australasia can now join The Collective under their correct country.
• If you live in the Australasia region and had previously joined The Collective under another country or continent (because yours wasn’t listed as an option) then it would be great if you could reregister under the correct location (then we’ll remove any duplication from our database so you won’t get stuff twice.) This will mean if there are any specific offers or bits of news for the Australasia continent then you won’t miss out.
• The first 100 Australasian customers will receive a free mystery gift (worth over $20) with their order. Yep, that’s right; if you get in quick there are some fabulous freebies to be had.
• For the first 7 days we’ll be running an extravaganza on some of our Celebrations dolls. Choose any 2 of the dolls pictured here (All Generation 3 Celebrations dolls) and we’ll add in a third doll free. (Offer is only available in the new Australasia shop)

• To begin with there may be some differences in what’s available in the different lovemomiji.com webshops around the world. This is a temporary thing and we’re working to get everyone in line for the New Year.

Happy shopping, people. Make sure you’re one of the first 100 to get your hands on your free gift!

To celebrate going live we devoted a day at Momiji HQ to all things Australasian. You’ll have to excuse the abundance of clichés and stereotypes here as we attempted to create our own little sunny paradise in the corner of the office. Kangaroos? Check. Koala bears? Check. Kylie and Jason on the stereo? Erm...check. Charlie and Charlotte created an abundance of bunting with Aussie and New Zealand flags as well as pictures of shrimps, sheep and Bret & Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords.

We thought it would be fitting to devote an afternoon to one of our favourite Aussie traditions; The Tim Tam Slam. For those of you unfamiliar with the TTS here’s a definition from Wikipedia:

“Opposite corners of the Tim Tam are bitten off, one end is submerged in the drink, and the drink sucked through the biscuit. The crisp inside biscuit is softened and the outer chocolate coating begins to melt.
Ideally, the inside of the biscuit should collapse but the outside should remain intact long enough for the liquid to reach the mouth.”

So basically you have to use the biscuit like a straw for your coffee and then shove it in your mouth before the entire thing melts into a big mess in your hands. Despite a fair bit of searching we couldn’t find Tim Tams anywhere so we had to make do with the very British McVitie’s Penguin substitute. With hindsight we think they were a bit too sturdy for the job as they didn’t melt quite as dramatically as a Tim Tam, but nevertheless we enjoyed conducting the experiment.

Cameron embraced The Slam...and the dressing up.

Deb was the best. Excellent technique.

Gemma took a while to get to grips with the whole thing.

Dr Karl and Deb stood by in awe as Kat broke with ‘Slam’ convention by using minty green tea.

Rich was rubbish. He did too much eating and not enough dunking. Nicole was putting him off.

Sorry we’ve been a bit quiet on the news front. Here’s what’s been happening at Momiji HQ over the last few weeks.

We got a huge new clock from our lovely friends at Newgate Clocks. (Thanks guys!)

The Momiji logo turned up and we got some big burly blokes from next door to put it up for us. It took ages...actually it’s a teeny bit wonky but we didn’t like to say anything...

Charlotte climbed a ladder for a bit of cutting and sticking.

Charlie packed a box of Tunnock’s Teacakes (our favourites) for a mystery parcel.

Our Momiji models went to check out the delicious new cafe down the road.

T-Rex (or Tetrapanax papyrifer Rex, to give him his full name ) is our rice paper plant. It’s grown two massive new leaves. We are very proud.



We also heard rumours that our new office is haunted. We have no photographic evidence of this and we’d like it to stay that way.

Momiji HQ was transformed into a busy studio on Monday morning as models, photographers and a camera crew descended on us for our photoshoot.

You might remember a little while back, we asked if you’d like to be a model for Momiji. There was a great response to this and it was brilliant to have some of you along for the day.

9 models arrived at Momiji HQ and divided into 2 teams each with a photographer, creative director and assistant. We got loads of great shots and showcased all our new and upcoming Momiji releases.

It was a long, busy day but thanks to Hannah, our guest photographer, Laura & Charlotte whose help on the day was top notch, our fabulous models, a ma-hoosive backdrop build by Matt & Ray and a large number of special Momiji cupcakes donated by the wonderful Bakeology, the shoot was a total success and It was all captured on video by the wonderful people from Ark Media.

We can’t wait to see all the photos and start using them on the site.

It’s Friday so we’re getting our party shoes on here at Momiji HQ.

So, since you all like a bit of a Momiji competition, here’s a corker for the weekend.

If you make an order between now and midnight on Sunday (UK time) through the LoveMomiji shop you’ll immediately go into a prize draw where we could slip some extra Momiji goodness into your order. You could get a Momiji Doll and T-Shirt of your choice as well as some extra Momiji things.

So if you were thinking of getting your hands on some of the new Momiji dolls & Keyrings or if you were going to treat yourself to an old favourite before they
retire, now is most definitely the time to do it.

We’ll announce the lucky order on Monday so happy ordering and good luck.

Have a great weekend everyone.

At Momiji HQ, we jump at any excuse for cake and with 2 birthdays in the office over the last few weeks we’ve been spoilt.

First up was Claire, we gave her a bottle of bubbly and some very strange-looking plants.

Rich’s birthday is this week, but he’s gone and taken the week off to enjoy himself. So, we decided to celebrate with him on Friday instead. He was very happy with his beer and cake slices.

Everyone seems to be strutting about like Tyra Banks in MomijiHQ today.

I don’t think we quite have the ‘Smize’ technique down, and we’re a little more feral than 'Fierce' but it doesn’t matter because we’re not the ones who are going to be modelling our new Momiji products.

Today marks the start of the search for Momiji’s Next Top Model. There’s lots of new Momiji goodness on its way and who better to show it all off than you.

If you’re aged 16-30 and would like to be one of our models then we want to hear from you. It doesn’t matter whether you’re male or female, and we love a bit of quirkiness. If you can get yourself to Birmingham or Warwickshire (we can give you a lift from the station/bus) on the 6th of September, then send a photo and a little bit of info about yourself to Hello@Lovemomiji.com.

We’ll be starting the shoot in the afternoon and will more than likely run into the evening. If you’re picked, you’ll get to hang around in the new Momiji HQ and we’ll give you a Momiji goodie bag too.

Get your photos in soon as competition will be ‘Fierce’.

Love Momiji x