We found this lovely set of reproduction "Papier Superieur" French school notebooks at French General. Love the fonts and composition!
Things we're loving at Plümo
We love the eclectic Anthropologie-ish goods over at London-based Plümo. They've got some great stuff in their shop right now, including this Argentinean belt, cheeky eco-friendly tote, and babushka key rings.
This slouchy woven leather bag is lovely. All these lovely items are available right here.
19th century fashion details
These pictures from V&A Museum curator Lucy Johnston's book 19th Century Fashion in Detail (via Style Bubble) are just too gorgeous!
Love the frothiness of it, and all the stunning details, which we can totally imagine incorporating into modern wedding finery.
Reminded us of this painting, "Too Early" by Tissot. So inspiring!
Paper party decorations
We've previously raved about our obsession with paper pom poms and lanterns, which make wonderful, inexpensive decorations for weddings, showers, and parties. We just love these paper garlands, balls, and snowflakes, from UK-based Re-found Objects.
Aren't these paper flower garlands adorable? (From Pedlar's, also UK-based).
For those of you who are looking for paper decorations state-side, we found a great selection of Mexican paper picatas at Lee Carter Company (above).
123 Party has a great selection of tissue paper balls, bells, and fans (flat circular shape - shown above) in a wide array of colors and sizes. We found this pretty tissue paper snowflake decorations at Target. We found a nice dove garland (similar to the one from Re-found) at Oriental Trading Company.
Happy decorating!
V&A Prints
V&A Prints is an online collection of over 3,000 images from the Victoria & Albert Museum's collection of art and design. While the images are great simply for inspiration, you can also buy a print or canvas of the image in a range of custom sizes, starting at just £5! How cool is that? You can browse by artist, collection, era, color, etc. We found this gorgeous floral in the Art Deco section.
Stunning Art Nouveau furnishing fabric...
A fabric designed for Queen Victoria's Jubilee.
Fabulous Ikats. We're loving the inspiration. Thanks, V&A!
Paraphernelia
Paraphernelia is a jewelery designer (for both ladies and gents) based in Manchester, UK. We love their Victorian (and slightly gothic) style.
We love this new series of buttons ("I'll trade this button for a...") - they'd be great party favors! And we adore their necklaces using vintage silhouette vignettes.
Lyndie Dourthe
Lyndie Dourthe is a French artist that we came across via the lovely folks at Rag and Bone. She makes these amazing little dioramas and bits and bobs from paper, fabric, beads and other ephemera. We love the mysterious, cabinet of curiosities inspired quality of her work. Given our ongoing fascination with the aesthetic of 19th century natural science and the like, we find these magical little bits of nature captured under glass absolutely irresistible!
Her boîtes à trésors are available at Egg Mercantile. They feature images taken from encyclopedia illustrations of the 17th & 18th century. The images are transferred onto coarse cotton canvas which is then filled, embroidered and/or beaded, and hand stitched. Each has a silver plated stick pin attached so it can be worn as a brooch and comes in its own painted box. Lovely!
The best of New York gift, part 1
One of the best things about going to the big shows is meeting people that you truly respect and admire. We set the bar pretty high with our encounter with Jonathan Adler, but we were still more than thrilled to meet stationery icon, Anne Taintor.
Anne has been making some of the most clever and witty stationery and gift items for the past twenty some years. Her collaged cards, magnets, totes and other products bear such ingenious phrases as "I love not camping," "martinis....they're not just for breakfast anymore" and "someone was going to have to set a bad example." Anne's booth is based on the design of her kitchen, and it fits the retro quality of her products perfectly. She even has a section on her website that interviews the models (called Taintorettes!) used in her products. Anne is an inspiration to those in the stationery world and she was so kind and friendly - great to meet you Anne!
Celebrity sighting of the year: Jonathan Adler!
Today, we had the honor of meeting one of our biggest design crushes, Jonathan Adler, when he stopped by our booth at the New York Gift Fair. We can't begin to describe how happy this made us (see our died-and-gone-to-heaven smiles above!).
Maybe it was the feng shui of our booth, or maybe it was just meant to be. We used Adler's fabulous Utopia Totem Vase in our booth display, and just yesterday shot the cover story for The Nest magazine at Sabrina's house, which is features several of his pieces. The day before, we'd even received an order from India Hicks, host of this season's Top Design (on which Mr. Adler is a judge), for her lovely shop The Sugar Mill in Harbour Island, Bahamas.
We're thrilled to say that he was simply charming in person - and was even kind enough to pose for a photo with us. Our crush lives on! Swoon!
Swallows & Cherries - Rockabilly and Sailor Jerry Inspired Save the Date
We recently ran a save the date giveaway on Style Me Pretty - participants sent us their concepts for their upcoming weddings and we chose winners whose ideas we found especially inspiring (it was a tough, tough decision - everyone had such lovely ideas! In fact, we ended up choosing multiple runner-ups because we just couldn't decide!). This save the date card design was inspired by one of our runner-ups and by old school Sailor Jerry tattoos and the Rockabilly aesthetic, which we absolutely love. We even have a card line dedicated to this style - check them out here.
Vintage Hotel Door Hangers
Wouldn't these vintage door hangers be a fantastic addition to any home hosting out of town guests? And we can totally imagine creating custom door hangers based on vintage designs to greet your wedding guests at their hotel. Oh, the possibilities! Michael Lebowitz just posted a whole collection on his blog.
Found through Grain Edit's blog. (an amazing source for vintage inspiration!)
Prize
We just discovered these gorgeous photos of Prize, an eclectic shop in Ashland, Oregon, on the Paris Boutique Hotel blog (a favorite!) and we are frothing at the mouth! We want to drop everything and go, right now (unfortunately, however, we blew our budget for vintage ephemera at last month's Alameda Flea Market so we may need to postpone the spontaneous road trip!).
You can visit her adorable website here - just note that you can't shop online just yet. See more gorgeous photos here.
264 East Main Street, Ashland, Oregon (541) 482-0345
Store hours: Monday-Saturday 10:00-5:30 Sunday: 11:00-5:00
Vintage stamps
We just love the notion of using mix-and-match vintage stamps on wedding invitations. While it can take patience to amass enough 15- and 3-cent stamps to match today's postage rates, we find the look to be worth the effort (wouldn't this be just the perfect task to delegate to some well-meaning family member who wants to help with wedding preparations? We think so!).
Above, designer Lena Corwin's wedding invitation courtesy of Design Sponge, and a lovely assortment of stamps courtesy of Duet Weddings.
And of course we have to mention Martha Stewart Weddings, who have long championed the idea - trust them to compose each envelope perfectly...!
Where to buy? Ebay, of course. We're partial to seller SeaJay Stamp and Coin, who allows you to "buy it now" (no waiting around for auctions to end!) and offers topical sets featuring different themes, e.g. flowers, birds, butterflies, etc. Just be sure to look out for "mint" (e.g. unused) stamps.
Vintage Travel Posters - Part 2
Here are a few more of our favorite travel posters - colorful San Francisco and deco New York City (a stylized skyline like this, minus the airplane of course, would be beautiful on a save the date or invitation paired with elegant Art Deco fonts...)
We love these cherry blossoms, and the pretty pastel color palette of this Seville poster.
And for beach destination weddings, these posters from Hawaii and Cote d'Azur are breezy and fabulous!
Vintage Travel Posters - Part 1
We have a longstanding love affair with vintage travel posters, and these next two posts are nothing short of an outright, shameless plea: if anyone is having a destination wedding and wants to use the golden age of travel to inspire your save the dates or reply postcards, please call us! We are dying to work with you!
We just love the color palettes and composition of these posters. Not to mention the Glamor, the Glory, the Romance!
We heart Ban.do!
Check out ban.do a brand new range of fabulous headbands brought to you by Jen Gotch and her friend Jamie. We love the combinations of vintage flowers and details, feathers and other bits of loveliness.
These would be beautiful on any bride...
Though really, any excuse to wear one of these gorgeous bits of finery is good enough for us!
Make Diamonds History!
We admit it; we're complete magpies but we defy anyone to walk past the shop window of Jewels by Count Alexander in Islington without stopping, jaw dropping slowly, to gaze at the fantastic, glittering display set before you.
The shop is full of the most enchanting pieces made by Count Alexander von Beregshasy, each faithfully copied from originals worn by various members of European royalty or aristocracy such as Marie-Antoinette's sapphire necklace (above) or Grand Duchess Vladimir's tiara (below).
We can't think of a better way to turn a bride into a fairytale princess - or a frog into Prince Charming if bought for his very own Cinderella!
Jewels by Count Alexander: No. 13 The Mall Antiques Arcade, 359 Upper Street, Islington, London N1 0PD
Open every day except Mondays
Show Us Your Colors!
Lately, we've been noticing vibrant and primary colors everywhere. We love the colorful palette in this shop window in Notting Hill (sorry, we didn't catch the name!).
We also love the combination of fuchsia and other bold colors in these pillows by notNeutral and this Agenda by Sukie.
And then there are the fabulous pop-art-inspired pillows by London-based designer Karen Hilton. These color palettes make us so happy!
Creatures Great and Small
We Moyle sisters come from a family of quirky scientists who spend their whole lives studying things like moss, algae (our grandmother has a magnet on her refrigerator which says "where would we be without algae?" which garners a nerdy chuckle from family members on a regular basis), birds, bugs and fish. Needless to say, we have a special place in our hearts for the natural sciences, especially for the aesthetic of the 19th century naturalist (think bell jars, insect pins, vintage magnifying glasses...). It comes as no surprise, then, that one of our favorite stores in Paris is Deyrolle, a 170-year old quintessential cabinet of curiosities on rue du Bac near the Musée d'Orsay. With creaking floorboards and cabinets chock full of fabulous specimens of all kinds, not to mention a menagerie of taxidermy creatures, it really is a natural history museum masquerading as a shop.
How fabulous is this arrangement of birds?
Much to our dismay, they suffered a fire in February that destroyed part of their historical collections and their entomology room, but they have partially reopened and are planning to continue to restore the rest of the shop. They also have an online shop with a nice stockpile of scientific charts, among other things...
Delicious deco soap packaging
Since we're drooling over the new Claus Porto collection, we figured it was only fair to pay homage to the original designs, captured beautifully in this photo from Cologne & Cotton (you can also see all Claus Porto products here).
We also found this gorgeous soap set from a Spanish soap maker, Suavidad, at ALL-POP, a delightful online shop specializing in imported pop culture emphemra, tchotchkes and knick knacks - we love their "Good Luck" section!