Snow in Paris: it is roly-poly time!

If Paris is a beautiful town, it is even more under the snow! Also Fifi, which usually hates the cold, is unable to resist to the fascination of snow!! Here in the photos around, she is playing in the unrecognizable park aside the Louvre completely covered by the snow... and her new game is to catch an iced ball...

 

 

The cold has some positive sides also for me: indeed, hot chocolates, croissants beurre and pains au chocolat become compulsive pauses during the afternoon in order to warm me up. Also people around become more pleasant than usual. The snow and the cold spread a kind of happiness all around, and people appears really funny muffled in pillowy down jackets from which only the face pops out. Especially kids are turned into sweet and milling bundles and look like little Roly Polies: those dolls that right themselves when pushed over.

Thus, I have taken inspiration from this first snowfall of the year to produce these fluffy brooches in fabric made with the shapes of this cult toy, which is able to contain both sweetness and determination at the same time. Actually, the nevelashka or venka-vstanka is the Russian version of Roly Poly: in Japanese is called okiagary, meaning to get up (oki) and arise (agari). This characteristic has come to symbolize the ability to have success, overcome adversity, and recover from misfortune.

I have created 10 different styles for these brooches, with different hairs and different cloths. Actually, I used my favorite fabrics!! By this way, you could find your favorite one, able to warm your heart during this cold winter!

They inspired me to make also a hand carved rubber stamp set with which to create uncountable colored Roly Polies! Stamps also gave me the opportunity to do some paper stickers with the shapes of these dolls in the blue and red version. I hope you like my creations, you can find them on my etsy!!!

Le tourbillon

Love is maybe the biggest adventure in human life. It is like a "whirlwind" that shocks our feelings and our beliefs. For that, I think that this song, "le tourbillon" is able to express for the better this feeling: at the same time it is something unpredicted that happens of our life and that changes it irreversibly as a whirlwind... I would like to dedicate this song, performed by the fascinating Jeanne Moreau in the Truffaut's film Jules et Jim, to all lovers...

As within a month it will be Saint Valentine's day, I made a couple of special sets of hearts (fun jewelry and a stamp) to use to express the feeling of love for our beloved. I hope you like them, check them out on my etsy!

 

Stamping around in Paris

I have often written that Paris is a kind of inspiring muse for me: not only its landmark, its monuments, its panoramas... but also its air in the streets, the smells of bread coming out from boulangeries, its melancholic grey skies, its bruising atmosphere in the cafés... 

 

 

These are some of the pictures that I have taken during my walks with my indefatigable dog, Fifi! Thanks to her, I am discovering again this amazing town, even in its hidden corners that very often disclose to me new and unexpected artistic and poetic inspirations!

 

 

And I have dedicated some hand carved rubber stamps to my muse!! I have made 8 stamps inspired to this town, which represent L'Arc de Triomphe, Le Sacre Coeur, Le Panthéon, Le Moulin Rouge, La Tour Eiffel, Notre Dame, Les Pyramides du Louvre and a Tree (this one useful to represent the parks!). You find them on my etsy, with which I have also made some paper stickers. I hope you like them!!!