Please Join Us: Holiday Studio Sale & Soirée 2010

Saturday, December 11th

1pm-5pm

116 Noble Street
Brooklyn, NY

An open house with spirits, beautiful gifts, friends & bloggers, designers & artists
a first look at the Bonbon Oiseau Holiday & Spring Collection
+ our favorite but still to be announced talents.

wooden toys and cutting boards, hand-mixed essential and body oils and scents, candles in antique jars, a new season of luxurious handknits, handbags from across the ocean,
incredible artworks & letterpress treats,
hand-tied flowers,
and a first chance for winning a basket of amazing goods
with a simple raffle for the food bank for NYC,
and sweet gift-bags filled with goodies from all of us for the first 25.

Say yes.

*same day as the Greenpoint/Franklin Street Holiday Stroll

Two Bon New Shops for Us

felt, london

arts & science, tokyo

We said goodbye today to two packages filled with bonbons, heading for new shops across the waters. Exciting especially because the shops are incredibly lovely, the buyers of which I met just last month in Paris and we have somehow, though no small feat, gotten them their orders before the holidays begin. Goodbye little bonbons! Do your work in exotic lands!

Felt in London is getting our new Silver Lining Collection* and Arts & Science in Tokyo is receiving our Heirloom and Holiday Crystal Collection* as well as new moneyclips from the Spring Collection* for their men's shop.

* to be seen for the first time at our Holiday Studio Sale and Soirée on December 11th, details to follow!

Finding Beauty On the Inside

*image spark board/chez bonbon

*pintarest pins de moi

and here's what's to be found:
splendiferous frida via lavender lines via P.

by me (you can see at our studio sale dec. 11th and on-line this weekend!)
crazy beautiful font from you work for them

images from jjjjound, typophile, and poires au chocolat
from what possessed me

from kyle poff

The past few nights while nursing quite the cold, I became addicted to Image Spark thanks to Rachel, interior architect/design genius/loving neighbor and Pintarest thanks be to P. who kindly showed me what it is and how it do. I am trying on my Image Spark page, as told by Rachel, to only put the images up that are the most heart breakingly beautiful to me, the ones I cannot turn away from. I love this advice. For a "more is more" person, it helps me to stay focused. On Pintarest, it's anybody's game, like pajama party of beautiful stuff parsed into inspiration boards galore. I love it.

As both P. and Rachel said and I paraphrase, these are amazing tools to find your most happy visual places, and to organize and see what comes from one's own aesthetic choices--a map of at best of the way you look and find and curate and collect visual data. Hoping from these sparks come some new plans for all kinds of things Bonbon and beyond. Both places are setting the path for inspiring new projects, of that I'm sure. Thanks ladies...

What do you think of these kinds of sites? How do you use them? How do you begin large creative projects yourself?

Monday Dose of Inspiration: A few pretties from Ghana

Pictures from Ghana courtesy of Flickr from here.
And then here and here.

Not thinking about Thanksgiving side dishes or all the work piling up before we leave for Iowa. Thinking about Ghana. My brother is in Ghana in West Africa for 10 days. I am jealous. Wait, obsessed. Pics above found while not working or emailing my brother to tell me what he ate for lunch and what he saw at the market. I promise there will be results of my misappropriation of time, something is buzzing because of it. Most likely Ghanian glass beads to start--he's already gotten me some of those...

Today's Happier Place

This time of year always always hits like a tornado--between planning for holiday events, dealing with international shipping to our shops overseas, figuring out how much stock we'll need for the holidays, the first trickling in of holiday orders, more photo editing of new surprise holiday pieces, making new graphics for undecided events, invitations, display planning, packaging, yikes!--and that's just the beginning.
Deep breaths and keep on truckin'.
In the name of excellence in procrastination, I am looking at photos from a market we drifted through in Oaxaca in February. Just enough color to inspire me. Thank you past. I knew you'd come in handy.

Autumn Light

It's always such a good Autumn moment to see the sun bathe everything in gold until it drops lower and lower and lower until even the shadows are pretty. Especially when it's finally cold and you can honestly say, "Hello fall."

How to be a Party Cloud

I thought they said they needed a Party "CLOUD".

How to be a Cloud for Halloween (in less than 12 hours):

STEP 1: Go to American Apparel after picking up groceries only minutes before getting dinner for 6 together. Tell husband, don't worry, you'll only be five minutes while he waits in the car.
STEP 2: Ask girl near sale bin if there are anymore silver spandex leggings in something larger than XS and also will it be obscene to stuff my fat ass in silver spandex leggings size XS?
STEP 3: Listen to the girl reply, "Well, these are like, a really good deal because normally they're $34.99 but today they're only $10 because you know, like, it's Halloween this weekend."
STEP 4: Ask her if this amazing discount will make my ass look any smaller. Or if Halloween will make my ass look any smaller.
STEP 5: Watch her nervously say, she really doesn't know.
STEP 6: Ask if they have any jackets to go with the XS silver spandex leggings.
STEP 7: Go inside and buy a silver spandex jacket (only size available: XS) for 50% off because you know like, it's Halloween (and I guess they don't sell as well as they used to, an industry secret).
STEP 8: Buy the whole kit and kaboodle, plus a shirt the color of the sky. Get suckered into another one at half off.
STEP 9: Wake up early and a little hungover an hour before leaving for a little kid party and call Value Drug in Huntington, Lawng Island. Order 36 helium-filled white balloons.
STEP 10: Go to sports shop and buy silver swim cap because in theory I am supposed to be the silver lining (sadly end up looking like the tin man or as Rachel said "a space monkey shit shoveler".)
STEP 11: Go home and make husband try on silver spandex outfit. Laugh and laugh.
STEP 12: Put outfit on and adapt to how tight it is.
STEP 13: Get in car and put on a cloud-like application of face paint while listening to the Beasty Boys. Feel pretty cool. Wave to people in other cars.
STEP 14: Run in to Value Drug in Huntigton, Lawng Island, pick up balloons while no one gives me a second glance, in silver spandex outfit, see balloons there behind the counter and say to the little kid in line, "I'm a cloud."
STEP 15: Crash party. Tell kids, "I'm a cloud." Hand out little glow in the dark stars and tell kids, "I found these in the sky for you." Listen to kids chant "CLOUD. CLOUD. CLOUD." and ask, hey can I have a balloon?" Tell them "no".

The moral of this story is, whether or not you actually look like a cloud, if you tell people you're a cloud, you're a cloud. Best Halloween ever.