Dublin

Scott and I spent the last week and a half road tripping around beautiful Ireland. We flew into Dublin on the most glorious day Ireland had ever seen and rested here to check out the city for a couple of days. We loved Dublin. It's such a vibrant city, full of interesting little pockets and a diverse mix of expressive cultures. We filled up on fish pie, Guinness and cider and were quite content checking out all of the local pubs and vintage stores. We stayed close to Trinity College, which is a beautiful part of town and a close walk to the Grand Canal and to my favourite part of town - the many small streets around George's Arcade. The simple buildings in Dublin are wonderful and I seemed to develop a strange fascination with their brickwork and their roofs full of chimneys! - for some reason I found them to have loads of character and are reminiscent of the many cold winters gone by. Here are a few pictures from our time in Dublin and I will follow up with our trip around the Irish coast shortly. Until then, bisous x

Arriving to a beautiful early morning sky

Grand Canal view from left bank

Gorgeous Grand Canal buildings

Grand Canal

St Stephens Green,  green oasis

National Gallery of Ireland

Trinity College grounds

Dublin streets

Blue skies, buildings and power

Our street for two nights

Flags overhead in Temple Bar

Old tram tracks

Gorgeous buildings and brickwork 

Dunloe Hall

A beautiful dungeon

Chimneys, all in a row

Typical Dublin buildings

Marché aux fleurs

Sometimes flowers just make you feel better. Not that I was feeling particularly bad this morning, but I felt myself smiling as I wandered through a large outdoor marché aux fleurs (flower market) in the 7th arrondissement. The flowers smelt amazing and the colours looked incredible against the neutral Parisian buildings. With the sun pouring through the wee awnings and the bees buzzing around, I couldn’t help but buy a few bunches for the kitchen table – It’s such a simple way to make your home look and smell so much better! Here are a few pictures of the beautiful flowers in the house. Bisous x 

Braderie de Lille

Scott and I made an impromptu decision to visit Lille on the weekend, to attend the annual 'Braderie de Lille' - the largest and most famous flea markets in Europe. The city was absolutely flooded with people (apparently more than 2 million visitors over the two days) and I'm surprised we didn't bump into any familiar faces! The city streets basically close off for the entire weekend and hundreds of vendors take over, selling everything from vintage clothes to vintage cars. We had an amazing time exploring the markets and walked away fairly empty handed (considering the prices!), with just a few clothes, vintage frames and some old French comic books. We also joined in the long standing tradition of moules, frites et cidre (muscles, fries and cider) for dinner and watched in amazement as the piles of muscle shells grew and grew and grew. It was difficult to see through the masses of people (and the piles of muscles), but when you look up and around, Lille really is a beautiful city with quaint old buildings, artsy shops and fantastic old street lights hanging overhead. Thanks for a fun weekend Lille, we will be back. Bisous x

one of the gorgeous city street lights

old records

reflections

moules et frites hall

oh la - my heaven!

wish I could have taken this back on the train with me

more lovely street lights

our lunch stop - a quiet oasis

Autumn Winter palettes

My sketches are coming together just in time for the Lineapelle 'leather and components' trade show in Bologna, Italy next month. Lineapelle is held bi-annually - this will be my third visit to the fair, though it will be the first time I attend with the intention of ordering materials for my own collection. It's an amazing event, where the best of the leather & fabric industry come together to showcase their new season collections. Designers from all over the world descend upon the fair twice a year and there is no better place to find the perfect leather swatches and components for a collection. However, I have lots of work to do before then and with my sketches almost complete, it's time to start working on the colour palette. It's to be an Autumn Winter collection, so I'm tending towards warm 'fall like' tones in the main palette, with perhaps some hints of bottle and mint green. Here are a few photos from today's work - I'm just playing around with colours & swatch samples. Bisous x

mixing a nice soft pink to offset the warm ruby

initial palette

nice warm tones for winter

I'm certainly a messy worker

swatch samples AW13

swatch samples AW13

the swatch & concept sketch board - a work in progress

Saint Germain en Laye

It was Assumption Day here on wednesday and what better way to spend a public holiday than outside the hot and humid city! Scott and I took the RER (still trying to pronounce this as the French would - something along the lines of airgh-ergh-airgh) out to the western most suburb of Paris - Saint Germain en Laye. It's a seriously beautiful suburb, which feels like a French country town, yet it's just an easy hop, skip and jump from the city centre. Very little is published about Saint Germain en Laye, so we were quite surprised when we came out of the train station and saw an impressive grand chateau perched in front of us, surrounded by a labyrinth of beautiful gardens. We couldn't help but head straight for the chateau grounds and strolled the gardens for a while, stopping only to take in the distant view of Paris city. We finally made our way into the gorgeous town, where we found a wee English pub hiding in the back streets and were quite excited by the prospect of fish & chips and cider for lunch! We had a fantastic day exploring the interesting streets, which were filled with a great mix of ethnic restaurants and boutique shops... we will be back soon, if only for another round of fish & chips! Bisous x

The chateau & it's beautiful grounds

Gorgeous houses with views of the chateau

Chateau gardens

Chateau gardens

La Poste à la Francaise

Lovely quiet streets

Colourful doors

A street of ethnic restaurants

Popular creperie

Bingo!

Shutter love

I fell in love with these blue tiles - a very unusual design in Paris

'Monday compulsory closing' ... But it's wednesday!

Where to next?