Famille Summerbelle

Decorative wood sticks

This month French magazine Bubble Mag has invited Famille Summerbelle to illustrate how to decorate wooden sticks! It's a fun activity to do after school or during the weekend (or soon the holidays!) with your children.
We live near a forest and we often go there with the children for a walk. Lucien and Ophelia's favourite game is to find as much wooden sticks as they can and bring them back home. We decided to make them look pretty and got the paint and brushes out to give them some colours. Here's the how to paint wooden sticks:

You will need:
-Acrylic paint, medium size paint brushes, a pot of water, a plate for the paint, some kitchen roll and a lot of wooden sticks!

Ophelia proudly shows her tree branch!

The family on a day out to the local park.

This is part of many more activities to do with your children, featured in our book
Be creative with Famille Summerbelle, published by Edition Paumes.

Inspiration boards

With Pinterest it's a playful excercise to pin things on your favourite boards in few second. However nothing will replace a hand made inspiration board with little objects, tickets, cards, colour swatches that you have collected along the way.

In my studio I have a large white foam board standing on my bookshelf where I pin all the things that inspire me. I could be some of my papercuts, a photograph from a magazine, a post card from an exhibition I have recently seen or just a small fabric sample.

Some people prefer to keep their visual inspiration in a notebook. I used to do that but then I like to have it on display so now I prefer to have it all on display on a wall.

How do you keep the things that inspire you?

From my Pinterest board:
1.Styling ideas from Anna Westerlund.
2.White Inspiration from Imke Klee.
3.Kristina Klarin.

1. Dream Office from Barbara Pederzini.
2.Via A view to.
3. Via Decor 8.

Tea or coffee?

White coffee please for me - first thing for breakfast and then black tea all day long. I kind of need it to keep me awake and also to take some breaks away from my computer. I spend far too much time working on Illustrator theses days and my eyes are becoming red and square! My favourite is Earl Grey French Blue from Mariage Frère and the good old tisane (herbal tea) in the evening. What's your favourite?
As you can imagine our kitchen cupboard has all the Famille Summerbelle mugs. Mostly all of our samples, not the best looking ones but we keep the nice mugs for you in the studio in London! Just for the story, all our mugs are fine bone China and are made and printed in the Potteries in the UK.
Enjoy your drink!
Boom le Clown mug

From left to right:
Un Dimanche à Paris mug, Manhattan mug and The Performers - Lucien le Lapin on one side of the mug and Maximilien le Magicien on the other side!

Papier Tigre

I don't know why I waited so long to mention the beautiful stationary range from Papier Tigre? I discovered their first collection at Maison et Objet back in January and I have to say their paper collection (notebooks, cards and perpetual calendars) really blew me away.
By looking at the beautiful geometrical patterns and the hand made finish behind their products, you can really tell that the French designers based in the 10th arrondissement in Paris are truly loving what they do. Their paper products are designed and printed in France on 100% recycle paper, the long perpetual calendar is printed in the UK.

Le Papier Temps Moderne, a perpetual wall calendar.

Le Pose Temps, 12 heavy sheets to display as you wish for a perpetual calendar.

On the left: Les Tri-Angles, 8 ready to fold triangle shaped boxes to hang on your wall.
On the right: Les Modernes, A6 note book printed in France on 100% recycle paper.

Papier Tigre can personalized a range of cards, business cards and birth cards. You only have to type your text online and it will be shipped 10 days later to your doorstep.

Les 6 Architectes part of a set of 6 different cards.