Famille Summerbelle

Colour Combo

These colours put a smile of my face unlike this depressing grey sky outside my studio...So i've made a little selection from my Pinterest Colour Board for you to keep on smiling :-)

Left: Claire Desjardins from Saatchi Online Shop.
Right: Pompom from Purl Bee Soho.

Left: Emily Green watercolours.
Right:Gypsy curtains handmade by Babylon Sisters.

Left: Apartment Therapy.
Right:Harlequin Cushion by Wool & Wool Stool.

Left: Super Soft Merino Wool by Purl Bee Soho.
Right: Still Life from Purl Bee Soho.

Left: Color Wheel by Moses Harris, (1766). Moses Harris's chart was the first full-color circle. The 18 colors of his wheel were derived from what he then called the three 'primitive' colors: red, yellow and blue. At the center of the wheel, Harris showed that black is formed by the superimposition of these colors.
Right: Designed by Inaluxe.

La Textilerie

When I walked out of the Gare Saint Lazare yesterday, I was rather surprised to see a giant see-through tent by Ikea on the main square of the station. La Textilerie is hosted by 8 seamstresses and 2 interior designers who have lots of ideas for your home to share with you. You can choose from their catalogue a fabric pattern and a design you like for your home (tablecloth, cushion cover, curtains...). Place an order in the morning and a seamstress will make it during the day ready for you to pick up after work. If you have some spare time you can also take part in sewing or fabric customising workshops. Be quick as the pop up tent will be gone at the end of the week...

Coloured resine tables

By Japanese designer Jo Nagasaka of Schemata Architecture Office. The table smooth and colourful surface is achieved by pouring coloured epoxy onto the uneven surface of the wooden table. The colour of the resin is more or less intense depending on the varying depths of the wood across its surface. Isn't it beautiful?

Embroidery of the World

Happy new year to you all! I hope you had a wonderful time during the holidays. We are just back from London where we spent 4 days partying, drinking (tea!), relaxing and visiting friends and family. Now we're back in Paris and sadly the sky is as grey as it was in London...
To start the year I wanted to share with you this beautiful book Embroidery Design of the World I bought it when I was in Japan back in September. Embroidery is not usually my thing, but I was so fascinated by the drawings, patterns and colours that I needed to have it on my bookshelf! I often flick through the pages to find inspiration.

My ceramic Christmas trees

This is another fun side project I've been working on lately at my mum's ceramic studio in Paris.

I have also made a series of little houses, mushrooms and a snail which I will show you very soon...Vive Noël!

The making of the stars & the Christmas tree

This year we decided to make the decoration to go on the Christmas tree. The children and I started about a month ago to make stars from clay, it became our favourite activity of rainy Sundays! Ophelia helped to shape the stars and Lucien to paint them afterwards. We added a little bit of pink and glitter, just because we like it... Hope you like it too!

Countdown til' xmas...

Last night while the children were asleep I was setting up their advent calendar I secretly made over the past few days. I got some little things like crayons, hair clips, Kinder chocolates, some Playmobiles toys and other silly things. I used a gold crepon paper to make the little houses and pinned them to the wall in the shape of a Christmas tree ( I actually got inspired by similar advent calendars I saw on Pinterest).

My best present was this early morning when the children walked out of their bedroom. The first reaction I could hear was Whooouaaaaa! Then they were jumping screaming 'yeah! c'est bientôt Noel! Merci maman! T'es trop gentille! T'es la meilleure maman du monde!
It's nearly Christmas! Thank you mummy! You are so nice! You're the best mummy in the World!.
Happy happy morning.

Live Free or Die

Dan Tague via I Am Always Hungry.

Drawing on the windows

When Ophelia comes back from school she often comes to my studio and ask to do stuff with me (like drawing and making things). I had a dozen of Posca (water based paint markers. They are very easy to clean with window cleaner product) on my desk in front of me, and don't ask me why but I thought it would be fun to draw on the windows in the kitchen while Lucien was eating his goûter (4 o'clock snack). Ophelia was of course very excited as we usually never draw on the windows. We had a nice time making web shaped stars and leaves and other random drawings...

Enjoy your Easter weekend!

On saturday we will be at the airport to welcome Simon's brother and his 2 daughters who are coming all the way from Blenheim in New Zealand to visit us for few weeks. We haven't seen the girls since we went to New Zealand in 2008! Ophelia is super excited to see her cousins. The rest of the weekend will be enjoying eating chocolate! Enjoy your break.

The bunny was hand cut for the occasion. We went to the woods next to our home with my son Lucien to pick up sticks and we painted each one with different colours. Our son is loving bringing back home lots of wooden sticks at the moment so I thought it would be a nice thing to decorate them!

Homemade dollhouse

Ophelia (our daughter who is 5 and a half - very important the half) has been asking me to make her a dollhouse for a while. So when my mum moved house, she gave Ophelia this little wooden cabinet for her bedroom. We decided to transform it into her own dollhouse. It is now inhabited by Playmobil little people. Ophelia made some artworks for the walls and has kindly included her brother's name on one of her drawing but he is so not allowed to get near the house for now said Ophelia - he is 2 and a half and loves to trash anything his sister owns!

Pantone cakes

This will change the way I look at my Pantone book...yummy! Merci Emilie from Griottes! If you like creative food then check her blog, you are going to be very impressed.

Making things

After school relaxing time with my daughter.
Her, dressed in a pink synthetic princess dress drawing the castle she would like to live in with her prince.
Me, painting triangles and sewing a cushion.
Nice.

Serpentine chair

By Eléonore Nalet and distributed by Ligne Roset. A delicate metallic chair dressed with long and comfortable cushions. I tried it and it's indeed very comfy!

Macon & Lesquoy

Marie Macon and Anne-Laure Lesquoy are the French associate designers behind Macon & Lesquoy. I first discovered their products in Bonton, so I was pleased to see their entire collection of cute brooches and repair patches at Maison & Objet.
This is my little selection:


Silver cloud with rain (5cm x3cm)

Gold moon

Repair patches.

Wine Cork - second life

The other night I got lost the web looking at the amazing window displays from Anthropology (see my previous post). This one really caught my eyes...last Spring, Anthropology design team collaborated with the Cork Forest Conservation Alliance to create stunning one of a kind window displays. In an effort to raise awareness for the preservation of the Mediterranean cork forest, they donated 2.5 million corks to Anthropology, who used them to create these unique recycled displays...

Via Bubby and Bean, Natural Home & Garden.. View the making of here.

Geometrical clouds

At the end of December last year, Simon and I went to NYC for few days. We stayed in the Meatpacking District very close to the Anthropologie store. I remember being very impressed by their window displays. Apart from the beautiful colours and visual layout, it was their attention to details and the hand made feel that I liked most.
The window displays I'm featuring below are not from this season but from Fall last year.
I love the geometrical shapes made from dyed fabric, paper and cardboard. It was nicely inspired from the Clouds from Kvadrat designed by the Bouroullec brothers.

Wearable sculpture

Warning! This is not my usual kind of post...but I had to share these amazing heels with you in case you're still looking for your animal themed New Years Eve outfit...anyone?!
Hand made by Kobi Levy.

RGB wallpaper

RGB is a work about the exploration of the “surface’s deepness” by Carnovsky, a Milan based artist/designer duo comprised of Francesco Rugi and Silvia Quintanilla.

Exhibition at -JaguarShoes, East London.

RGB designs create surfaces that mutate and interact with different chromatic stimulus.
RGB’s technique consists in the overlapping of three different images, each one in a primary color.

The resulting images from this three level’s superimposition are unexpected and disorienting. The colors mix up, the lines and shapes entwine becoming oneiric and not completely clear.
Through a colored filter (a light or a transparent material) it is possible to see clearly the layers in which the image is composed. The filter’s colors are red, green and blue, each one of them serves to reveal one of the three layers.

They also have a stunning range of limited edition prints, cards and iPhone covers!

Endless Chair

Instead of sending old refrigerators to a scrapyard, Dutch artist Dirk van der Kooij ingeniously recycles and reuses the materials to create a chair made of one ‘endless’ piece of plastic string.

The ‘Endless’ chair is crafted by a robot that Van der Kooij has specially created for this purpose. The process begins with old refrigerators, which are ground then melted and processed by the robot. Since each fridge used is a different colour, every resulting chair is totally unique.

Van der Kooij says he had always struggled with small, complicated moulds, so he wanted to find a production process that could allow him to adapt and change designs without moulds.
‘I adopted a retired robot,’ he says. ‘With this robot I can build a chair out of one plastic string and refine it endlessly. The colors can be determined by adding different pigments.’
He says the robot took about a year to rebuilt and serve its new function – building a chair of one interrupted line of string.

Watch the making of the chair film on Frame Mag.