Design Inspiration. Planet Stencil Library.

Design Inspiration shares the ideas, projects and ephemera that currently inspire the creative team at The Stencil Library.

Storming The Bastille

See Paris and Di.  I did both.  Last Sunday morning I met my long time friends Di and Harvey for coffee at the Places des Vosges.  Di writes the very entertaining and popular blog Designer's Block.  They were shopping for pieces to embellish the Ghost Furniture that she creates from her home in northern England.  I was there to flâner (see next post) and take pictures.  Di and I took many of the same shots so....seeing as she posted first I will say go to Di's blog to see more of the things that I saw.  Isn't this box of small dolls creepy?  Even more so when you crop the box from the shot!  Di has put a photograph of me on her blog and so I will do the same.  Here is Di trying to scale the wall to avoid paying the toilet charge. No seriously, here she is looking for things small enough to fit in her carry on bag.  

Tara at Paris Parfait has posted about the Bastille Antiques Fair too. If you are in Paris before the fair closes on May 18th you can check it out for yourself.  This would have been the perfect entertainment for Rachel but she had already moved on to Avignon for the week.

Sorry Rachel but the vendor would not accept card payment for this green handbag and I know you would love it, the sides flip open!  I love seeing multiples of one item in a display and the soda siphons were such a lovely blue.    

Di and I bought small unframed mirrors, she had ovals and I bought a rectangular but convex magnifying mirror.  I will set mine into the garden wall if possible.  I am certain that hers will appear on Ghost Furniture. On the way home I wandered up the Rue des Barres.  Hard to believe that I was in the middle of a major capital city.  Helen.

Photo credit. Cafe picture (top) from Paris Postcards.

Licking The Windows

  One of the cheap and simple pleasures that I enjoy in Paris is to flâner.  It means to stroll pleasantly around the city doing nothing more serious than enjoying the ambiance.  Whilst flâneur'ing I stumbled upon the gardens of The Palais Royal. I don't know how I have missed these on previous visits.  The sun was shining and whilst I had no where to be this was as good a place as any.  

Another of my holiday pastimes is 'leche-vitrine' the literal translation means to lick the windows.  I know it as window shopping.  I combine this with being a flâneur.

 

This window was in the Upper Marais close to the apartment I stayed in.  The dress is from Isabel Marant's spring 2008 collection and is suspended over a landscape of the same fabric. The material seems feather light.   It has been knotted, quilted and sewn to make a pastural sculpture including cypress trees, fields and vineyards. The scene is billowing above several oscillating fans that keep the silken country side floating and shimmering on a cushion of air.

I loved the minimal combination of stacked cars and crate of blow fish in this clothing shop for children. I returned many times in the hopes that it would be open and I could photograph sans window grille.

My Parisian friend Patsy and I strolled to Mariage Freres in the Lower Marais to buy Russian tea for Rachel.   There were many on offer and they allow you to sniff the tea cannisters ( I'm sure the French have a word for that too).  Tea sniffing is a delightful way to spend time and we chose one and had it wrapped for her.   When time allows we will return to experience their cafe, reputedly they serve the best cakes in Paris. I apologise for the fuzzy photo but the tea jars matched by outfit perfectly so I had to include it. You can just see my cardi in the mirror!

Co-ordinating my outfit with shop display was exhausting work, another form of licking was  needed.  Gelati from Amorino on the Rue Vielle du Temple was the perfect soloution.   They build up shavings of gelati onto a cone until it resembles the petals of a flower.  Mine was Ecuador chocolate, raspberry and strawberry.

My friend Michael is a professional Leche-Vitriner and Flaneur.  His photography exhibition of reflections in shop windows is currently on show in Copenhagen but will be hosted in Paris pretty soon.  When I get more info on it I will post.  They are fabulous and one gets lost in the dividing lines between the inner and outer reflections of the windows.  I can spend ages looking at them, just as I did with the windows of The Marais.  Helen.

At home in Paris

Bonjour.  I am home after having a lovely few days in Paris.  I will sort some photos and blog the weird and the fab things that I saw but for now I will show you where Rachel, her family and I stayed in case you need to book a three bedroom apartment in Paris.  It is in the Upper Marais and the Marais is just the best area for a Paris break.  We lived on the third floor of the white block with the tall windows. 

Our bit was further up the hill so can not be seen.  When the apartment is not rented to visitors it is the home of American Francophiles Michael and Patsy.  They were leaving for Copenhagen where a gallery is exhibiting Michael's photography.  I had hoped that he would send me a link to the show before departing as his work is gorgeous, gorgeous, even the weird stuff!   His name is Michael Padnos, look out for him. The apartment is on Rue Dupuis five minutes walk from a major Metro station and right in the heart of winding streets full of restaurants and individual shops, no high street chains in this area.   The parks in the Marais are plentiful and include the stunning Place des Vosges.  Bakeries and chocolatiers are abundant and there are many quiet places to enjoy your purchases. I like this leafy square which is less than 100 yards from 'My home in Paris'  Helen.

We are away for a week.

Rachel and I have gone to Paris.  She is staying two weeks but I will be back next Monday, hopefully with things to show and tell. In the mean time I have left you two more posts which I hope you will enjoy.  Have a lovely week, do leave us your comments.  If you need anything from The Stencil Library in our absence then Heather and Lesley will look after you.

Oh, and apologies to Teddy Thompson and anyone else watching his concert at The Sage, Gateshead.  Would you believe my attack alarm went off mid song, worse than that I did not know it was me and was fascinated as to how he got the load wailing noise from an acoustic guitar, worse still I did not know how to silence it. Big, big ooops!

  I am singing in a fortnight.   So,Teddy, if you are in Newcastle on that night then please set off your alarm whilst I'm singing, it's only fair. Helen.

A garden in your home

Whilst browsing my back copies of World of Interiors magazine, I found this decoupage wallpaper from the 1930's.

We have made large size decoupage papers at The Stencil Library, but not on this scale. I think it's quite fab.  The idea is that you bought the different elements for your garden room and they arrived ready cut from paper. They were then pasted to your wall.  If you were clever in applying and overlaying your plants, butterflies and the like, your room could look something like this.

Of course you know I am going to tell you that you can achieve a similar look with stencils.   We have a large collection of plants, flowers and garden architecture in our Garden Room range of stencils.  The narrow photograph shows a detail from the pages of the June 2008 issue of Easy Living magazine.  The page was created by Sophie Martell and the photography is by Graham Atkins-Hughes.  They show hollyhocks, lupins and foxgloves from the our collection.  Sophie has chosen spring-like, ice-cream colours for her interpretation of a garden room unlike the colour drenched printing of the John Line wall paper.  I am loving that crockery from Albert Hall (on the tray).   It will be on my wish list.  We do a lovely decoupage pack of teacups which would complement that cushion rather well.  Here is the complete page from the magazine:   

Click on the picture to see detail or better still buy the magazine. It has a lot of good stuff this month.

My friend Michelle wanted a Garden niche creating in her French farmhouse some years ago.  So we had a Stencil Library trip and stencilled the entire house.  My Mum and Sabina stencilled this nook for her.

My own bedroom has a bit of a Garden Room vibe going on. I will save photos of the full room for a 'Tour our House' post but here is a preview.   Helen.

Larger Than Life Designer Blossom

Introducing our new LTL3 Designer Blossom stencil from the Larger than Life range.  I decorated three quite different room sets with it.  Room scheme number one was stencilled over a blue black wall using taupe, sandlewood and  baltic green from the Liquitex paints range.  The orange colour was my own concoction. I have had such fun with this stencil, it takes so little effort to get good results.

Room set number two was stencilled over black textured wallpaper.

I photographed each step to help you get similar results.   This is what the stencil looks like.  There are lines and circles.

Make sure your lines are straight, I am using a plumb line to make sure that they are.

Stencil a pattern of lines.

Then add as many circles as you like, on and around the lines.

Add circles within circles if the fancy takes you.

Add furniture and enjoy.   Helen.

The final shot just got finished, I went really over board with the small circles on this one so it looks more like blossom and less like a pattern. 

I am now looking forward to working with the rest of the designs in this series. Helen

American "Vogue Living" Magazine

I am in love with a new interiors magazine!  I have always been inspired by US Vogue, but now they have come up with special edition issues dedicated to interior decorating.

At the moment, they seem to be publishing Vogue Living twice a year.  If you haven't seen this gem of a magazine, I highly recommend you pick up a copy.  Editor-in-Chief, Hamish Bowles says in the current Spring/Summer 2008 edition, "In this, Vogue Living's first Spring issue, we looked no further than the season's fashion runways for the perfect inspiration.  From New York to London, Paris to Milan, the collections were abloom with wallpaper florals, vibrant colour blocking and deft layering of exotic print and pattern - proof positive of the charmed symbiosis between trends in fashion and those in the home."  Well said, Hamish!

His statement and the magazine perfectly echoes my own thoughts and preferred style of decorating.  One only has to flick quickly through the magazine to see the wealth of colour and pattern leaping from the pages.

I love that even the index/news pages have snippets of patterns around the edges and behind the featured products.  I found the whole magazine to be a candy store of inspiration (there's that word again) and my head is just buzzing with ideas for projects.  I just want to dive right into the pages!  To whet your appetite, here are a couple of my favourite images:

                                                                                    Rachel.                           

A stencilled wedding no 3

In the early 1980's, before I was a stenciller, I wanted to be a wedding planner.  I don't think there was such a thing then. I had certainly never heard of one.  The business advisors, friends and family that I spoke to said "It won't work, every one wants to plan their own wedding or get their mothers to do it."  I listened and never followed up my idea. Now the wedding planning and styling industry is huge and does not include me!  I do love it when I am asked to help though, as was the case with the lovely Lee & Will.  The setting was a grand country house hotel in January.  Lee wanted the plainess taking from the tables.  The tablescapes were my gift to the newlyweds and there were a lot of tables so my budget was going to rely on imagination.  I bought masses of gold organza and cut a length to drape across every table.  The fabric was stencilled with sprigs of blossom to complement the colours of the bride's flowers. I used Liquitex paints for all the surfaces. The stencil was JA121    Bird and Blossom, without the bird.

  Several IKEA glass plates and bowls were bought to hold candles and flowers.  The intention was to stencil the underside of the glass and then gild it.  My gilding attempts were not my best so I stencilled then sprayed the underside of the glass with gold spray instead.  It blended beautifully with the gold of the organza. The picture shows the stencilling before the gold background was added.  This is something that can be done as a temporary decoration for special occasions, food and paint are separated by glass and the decoration can be scrubbed off afterwards.  I bought a proper church candle to sit on each of the glass plates and stencilled them with the same blossom along with the initials of the bride and goom and the date of the wedding. After firmly attaching the candles to the plates I poured water into them and floated flower heads.    Surrounding the cake were lots of matching small bowls all carrying a single flower head. It sat on top of more gold organza.  This time the stencil was JA47  but I stuck with the same colours.  

My contributuon to the decoration was simple but really added to the beauty of the day.  The hotel asked me if I would be interested in styling for them as part of their wedding package.  You bet!!!

  ...They never called me.

Rachel made a stunning job of the table tops at her sisters wedding, again a combination of stencil and organza was employed.  She mentioned it in her monogram post.   Stencilled monograms are great for a wedding and we get some very challenging ones to create.  When Chips and I got married Rachel stencilled cherry blossom over several England flags and hung them from the sides of the wedding tent at our reception. It only took her a couple of hours and made a world of difference to the setting.  The desert buffet was housed in a stencilled pavilion,  on the day it looked fab but got trashed by a wayward chocolate fountain and lives no more.

On a smaller but no less important scale, we often create stencils for customers invitations and their cakes, I shall look for pictures and customer permission then share them with you another time. Helen.

Framing the ancestors

I found this image in the World Of Interiors magazine.  It was photographed by the homeowner Rene Stoeltie.  The Stoelties have written many lovely books on interiors.  Although I could find nothing in the text to explain the portrait in this shot it appears to be pasted to the wall with a frame hand painted around it.

Which is just what you would do with our Print Room Swag stencil. The frames are stencilled onto the walls and the portraits (photocopies not originals!!!!) are cut to fit them. Nifty huh?  Helen.

New Stencils from Country by Mail, Sweden

We've written before about the Swedish Mail order company, Country by Mail.  We had discovered them because we were supplying stencils to them and upon browsing their web-site, found that they had all sorts of wonderful home accessories.  If you are a fan of that pale, slightly shabby chic scandanavian style, then this is the site for you.  Recently, we had designed some custom stencils for them to sell and I thought I would share them with you.  I am particularly fond of this recipe for apple pie in French.  I think it would look great in a kitchen along with our Shaker style Basket of apples stencil:

Here are a few other of the new stencils we made for them.  We made 5 different latin herb names, but I am only showing one example.  You can see the others on their site.

If you like them, you will have to purchase them from Country by Mail.  They ship worldwide.  Their site is in Swedish, but despite only knowing one word of Swedish myself, I did not find it a problem to navigate.  To see the stencil section, simply click on "Schabloner".  Also, they speak perfect English so if you have any enquiries or need help, you can e-mail them info@countrybymail.se.

We recently added a new range called "In Your Own Words" to our site which is a range of over 40 different fonts and you can have us make up your favourite quote or saying or name as a stencil if you fancy having your own text in your decor.  Rachel.