Dear friends,
It’s been a while since my last letter — a long season of shifting gears, collecting moments, and finding a slower rhythm again. October always feels like the month where we turn a page: the air cools, routines settle, and new beginnings start taking shape.
A few pages have turned here too.
This month I began preparing for the Australia Book Fair, which will take place in February next year (!!!) — a milestone that was confirmed only last month. Seeing the Tikka Tikka ABĊ get ready to travel to the other side of the world feels a bit like sending a little paper boat across the sea. I also took a deep breath and stepped fully into self-employment (very scary, very exciting… and yes, very scary again). Tikka Tikka now shares space with my architecture and design projects — all beautiful and ever-evolving in their own ways. If you’re curious about that other side of my work, you can find it at @alexine_sammut — a slower corner of Instagram where I share updates from my teaching and space-making work (interior and architecture).
And last weekend, Louis turned four! I still can’t quite believe it. These small birthdays hold so much — a reminder of how quickly our children (and we) grow, and how the tiny rituals (cakes, candles, bedtime stories) keep time better than calendars.
In between all that, I’ve been cutting and gluing scraps of paper again — paper collages that somehow stitch these changes together. There’s something calming about taking old things and rearranging them into new shapes, a quiet way of making sense of transition. Maybe that’s what all creative work really is: turning the mess of our days into meaning, one tiny piece at a time.
Recently, while taking part in a workshop in Finland, I was asked to write a story from the perspective of an everyday object. I chose a sweet — a silly idea at first, but it quickly turned into something tender. The sweet wonders where it belongs and how long it will be remembered once it’s gone. (Perhaps I was thinking about childhood, or about projects that travel beyond us.) I’m sharing a photo of the scanned paper piece with the story — it’s in Maltese, but if you’d like to know what it says in English, just drop me a line here and I’ll be happy to share the translation.
It made me realise how stories are hidden in the most ordinary corners of our lives — in a sweet wrapper, a button, a leaf tucked in a pocket. Children are especially good at finding them.
If you’d like to try it with your child: pick a small everyday object and imagine what it might say if it could talk. Where has it been? What does it see when you’re not looking? It’s a five-minute game that can turn an afternoon inside into an adventure — no supplies needed, except a little curiosity.
And if you do this — or if you’ve been making collages or drawings together lately — I’d love to see. You can comment here or tag @tikkatikkacreative on Instagram. Maybe we’ll collect a few and share a small “story gallery” next time 🙂
Thank you for being here after the long pause. Writing this feels like reconnecting with old friends. I hope your own October has been filled with small, good things: warm light, slow moments, and maybe a story or two hidden in unexpected places.
Till next time,
Alexine xx