Famille Summerbelle

Blue Sky

Hello, where are you?!?

This was taken near Blenheim on the South Island of New Zealand...back in the days when we were traveling the World....

Utopia Goods

I received an email from Sophie Tatlow and Bruce Slorach from Utopia Goods this morning and comletetly fell in love with their patterns and vibrant colours. Every print references an aspect of Australian faune & flora or history. Some patterns are hidding little koalas, kangaroos and cicada which is Australia's loudest bug!

Initial drawing of the Flowering Gum Feast print:

Flowering Gum Feast Cushion.

State of Waratah cushion in Indigo:

How was your Easter week-end?

I hope you had a fun weekend and ate lots of chocolate!
We decided on saturday morning to go to the seaside for the day. It's about 1h30 to drive to the West coast of Normandy to the charming harbour of Honfleur.
We arrived for lunch to enjoy the famous local dish moule-frite Mussle and French fries. Then we drove on the pretty coastal road to arrive in Deauville for a walk on the beach. Not surprisingly we were only a few motivated people looking for seashells as it was so cold and windy. We ended up eating a large gauffre -pancake- and we drove back home while Lucien slept in the car.

Brocante de Chatou

This weekend we visited the annual antique fair on the island of Chatou (West of Paris) called La Foire à la Brocante et aux Jambons. It is one of the largest antique fair in France with more than 800 stalls. I try to go every year as I love the atmosphere there. (see here for last year post).
The fair is also famous for the French terroir food like sausissons, huitres (oisters), barbecued ham, foie gras & cassoulets. Yum!
The children were bored rather quickly, they only wanted to eat chunky French fries and pancakes... I don't blame them, I never liked following my parents to brocantes and flea markets when I was their age!

So, do you fancy developing your business online?

Simon has just started a new business SISU Web Co, to help small businesses and creatives develop their websites. I obviously wanted to share that news with you - in case you needed help - but thought it would also be fun to share how things started for us.

We started Famille Summerbelle some 5 years ago now (it was 5 yrs on 15th Feb!). Time sure flies when you're having fun!

I was working as a set designer in theatre and having just given birth to Ophelia, I wanted to spend time at home with her and continue working as much as I could.
Starting a business felt like a natural next step. I had a lot more time to design at home and a new enthusiasm for interior decoration having a new baby room to decorate.
I remember looking at Bloesem everyday and thinking to myself that one day I would love to have my work featured on this beautiful blog…and my dream came true a few months later!

I think we had the business up and running within about six weeks. Perhaps what made it easiest was that I was married to someone who could build a website. Creating a business online has given us so much freedom. The week after we built the first proper e-commerce site we actually went travelling for three months, leaving Famille Summerbelle in the safe hands of Simon's mother to send the orders! I can't believe we were that cheeky! You can view images of our World tour here.
We've also moved to Paris - keeping the business in the UK (this time in the safe hands of the wonderful Priscilla our studio manager).

We work some odd hours and it takes time to build a profitable business, but we get to spend a lot of time together as a family.

For all the trials and tribulations, I'm proud of what we've achieved and I'm still blown away by how easy it is to one minute be selling to someone in Brazil, and next minute in Sweden!

If you want to contact Simon about your own project, you can email him here or visit the site.

Home

Ophelia's drawings. Last year calendar by Lollipop is still on the fridge. I like to keep it up just to remind me what we did a year ago.

I was very spoiled for my birthday. I received a beautiful card from Ophelia, a delicate necklace from Simon and this XXL woolen scarf from my mum.

48h in London

I should do this more often. Go to London just to party. I had a fantastic weekend with 12 girlfriends and my sisters to celebrate my (male) cousin's engagement. It was a sort of 'stag weekend' with girls!
Sorry I cannot share the photos of the party ;-) instead I'll show you some great photos of street art typo by Ben Eine in East London on Ebor Street and Hackney Rd (FS) and some of my favourite fabric shop The Cloth House on Broadwick Street, Soho.

Maison et Objet - Part 3

It was a nice surprise to see so many different products by Dutch designers Stefan Scholten and Carole Baijings at the show (Scholten & Baijings Studio for Design). I am a huge fan of their minimal design with always this selected palette of bright colours and fine details.
For the Danish brand Hay, they designed a new range called Colour Tape, Colour Note, Colour Glasses with gradient colours for water glasses and gold lines for the champagne glasses.
Hay had an impressive stand at the show. The structure was made of natural wooden sticks with a mix of vivid colours from their entire product collection.

1. Hay stand in the hall 8.
2. Wooden Wonderland blocks designed by Lee Storm.
3.Colour Tea Towels and Bed Linen designed by Scholten & Baijings.
4.Mirror Shapes designed by Sylvian Willenz.

Colour Glasses and Colour Notes by Scholten & Baijings.

1. Hook Gym designed by Staffan Holm.
2 & 3. Wooden Wonderland by Lee Storm.

Office accessories by Hay.

Match boxes designed by Shane Schneck + Clara von Zweigbergk.

Scholten & Baijings also designed ceramic tableware for Thomas Eyck. The background stripy wallpaper is from Irma Boom.

This collection from Scholten & Baijings for Japanese company Karimoku New Standard was my favourite. The wood of the dotted table and stool was so soft and details of the lines and colours were so beautiful!
1. Colour Stool.
2. Colour Platter.
3. Mix of different products and Karimoku stand (Photo by Agence Violette)
4. Colour Wood table and cushion.
All products and furnitures by Scholten & Baijings.

Isabelle Gilles and Yann Poncelet founded Colonel in 2010. This was their forst collection at Maison et Objet. This fresh and colourfull collection was inspired by outdoor furniture aesthetics (think beach and camping). It is a contemporary re-reading of this universe mixing colours and patterns.

Brightly coloured geometric shapes were everywhere at the show, from Tom Dixon Eclectic candle packaging (3 - btw, gorgeous smell!), to the foldable cardboard stools for children (2) and the Alpaca wool blackets by Lucky Boy Sunday(3).

And... I had to mentioned the oh-so-famous Missoni geometric patterns. I love the oversized lampshades!

That's it for Maison et Objet. The next time i'll talk about it will be in September...now i'm off to pick up the children from school :-)

Maison et Objet - after show review. Part 1

Hi! Bonjour! We are back to our cosy studio after 5 days exhibiting our collection at Maison et Objet in the north of Paris. For a lot of people it has been rather difficult to get to the show as the airport closed down for a few hours, flights and trains were delayed due to the heavy snowfall. But despite the bad weather, we had a great time catching up with old friends and meeting new people.

This time we had a corner stand (they are highly sought after!) and we were surrounded by fantastic companies such as Engel , Oeuf be Good, Laurette and Anne-Claire Petit.
These are a few snapshots from our stand that I took with my phone so I apologise for the poor quality of the photos!

I made a little display of our beautiful photos styled by Aurelie Lecuyer.


We presented our new mug and tray from the collection Un Dimanche à Paris. The new products will be available on our website next week. Also on display are our new tray and mug from Morning in Manhattan collection and the book from Edition Paumes Be Creative with Famille Summerbelle. Our tea towels and cushions are nicely packed in this new brown card and white triangles packaging.


I made 2 wooden swings with bright neon pink strings to hold our promotional cards. Behind are hanging the colourful paper honeycombs by our Dutch neighbour Engel.

Over the next few days I will pull together photos to show you my favourite brands and products I spotted at the show.

Maison & Objet 2013

This week we are setting up our stand at Maison et Objet trade show in the north of Paris. We are very excited to go back as exhibitors for the second time around (our first show there was back in September). We have a bigger, corner stand (hurray!) so if you visit the show, come say hello!

Apologies for not posting much while the show is on. I'll be back very soon...

The best of 2012

Looking back, 2012 has been an amazing year.
We've launched 2 new collections The Perfomers and Morning in Manhattan, a book, paper cut maps, screen prints and I enjoyed working with Issey Miyake on the World Map collection.
We also had plenty of relaxing holidays in France, Copenhagen and Japan. Ophelia learnt to read and write in Franglais (French & English). Lucien turned from a toddler to a very funny little boy, making us laugh a lot but also making us crazy at times being so cheeky!

I wanted to say a big THANK YOU to all of you who've been reading the blog this year. We've had a lot of fun sharing all the things we love with you and look forward to continuing in 2013.
Thank you for supporting us and for spreading the work of Famille Summerbelle. Your lovely encouraging messages really mean a lot to us.

Enjoy the rest of your holidays and see you in 2013!

Julie & Simon xx

*Inspiring colours at Maison & Objet.

*Launch of our City Maps Paper Cuts Originals and the making of San Francisco map.

*We went away to relax in the Alps to recover from a nasty flu...
*Vintage finds at the Brocante de Chatou.
*The art of screen printing our City maps.

*In April I was really loving the colour Yellow.
*Photo shoot at home with the team of Edition Paumes for the preparation of our first book Be Creative with Famille Summerbelle. Ophelia enjoys posing in front of the camera!
*Easter break in Ile de Ré.

*Long weekend with the family in Copenhagen. We loved it and cannot wait to go back.

*We enjoyed Spring time in Paris (my favourite time of the year) while working on two new collections The Performers and Morning in Manhattan.

*Ophelia turns 6!
*Simon completed l'Etape du Tour, a stage of Le Tour de France in the Alps.
*Launch of our first book Be Creative with Famille Summerbelle.

*The launch of the World Map collection with Issey Miyake.
*Time to switch off and relaxing in the South West of France with family and friends.

*First day of school for Lucien (not even 3!)
*Launch of The Performers at Maison & Objet.
*Voyage in Japan for an exhibition of Famille Summerbelle in Tokyo and the book launch Be Creative with Famille Summerbelle at the Galerie Doux Dimanche.

*Launch of Morning in Manhattan.

*Lucien blows his 3 candles.
*Working of the Little Houses project.
*Start thinking about Christmas while making the advent calendar.

*I am enjoying time at my mum's ceramic studio to make little stars, houses and xmas trees.
*Prepping for a Christmas photo shoot at home.
*We're all in the mood for Christmas, decorating the tree, making sablés and watching xmas movies...

Merry Christmas

This is a little selection from my Pinterest Christmas board to wish you all a wonderful, relaxing and joyful time with your loved ones over the Christmas holidays.
This year we are staying in Paris celebrating the French way on Christmas eve with family around a festive table (opening presents at midnight)...and the English way on Christmas day with a yummy breakfast while the children will open more presents followed by a late lunch. For desert we will have the traditional Christmas pudding and the French Bûche de Noël (a chocolate iced cake shaped as a log).
For the rest of the week, we will take it easy!
Images from top left:
Sparkles on reindeer. Carol- Oh yei!
Merry Christmas. The House That Lars Built.
May your days be merry and bright. Jan of Poppytalk.
Antique glass trees. Plenty of colour.

Demond Meek

The series of derelict homes from the East coast of America by photographer Demond Meek are a real inspiration for my current project on houses. Check his Slumbeautiful site, and follow him on Instagram here.

Making Christmas

More on my latest ceramics.This weekend we made lovely biscuits with Ophelia, and we ate them all in in a day!

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!

Pink, blue & green

I had fun drawing and cutting little danish houses on a special rubber stamp pad I bought on my last trip to Japan. I'm just experimenting at the moment!

Colours

After spending my day in the ceramic studio I needed some fresh air so I cycled with a Velib to the Musée d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris. It was soooo cold on the bike! I stopped for some time in front of the Portrait de Pierre Bonnard by Edouard Vuillard (painted in 1930). Stunning colours....

Enjoy your weekend!

Flying Houses

By French photographer Laurent Chehere. The Flying Houses series are on show until 8th December at the Galerie Paris-Beijing, 54 rue Vertbois, Paris 3ème.

Love Locks

Hundreds and hundreds of cadenas d'amour (love locks or wish locks) on the Pont des Arts in Paris.To symbolise their love couples are hanging a padlock with their initials on the barriers of the bridge and then throw the keys in the river Seine!