Recap of our London Christmas ShopUp 2017

Last Sunday and Monday we had our 5th annual London ShopUp, and boy, was it fun!  More than 40 shops, fantastic food, and fun activities. All this under one beautiful roof at Chelsea Old Town Hall, the perfect holiday location.  Here are some gorgeous photos we wanted to share, along with some of the highlights of the event.

With a wonderful selection of shops, everyone was spoilt for choice!  While the parents shopped, the kiddos were entertained with holiday crafts from Paperbirds on Sunday and The Little Top on Monday.  Children also did a fun treasure hunt — look for the candy canes — (thanks Bear Nibbles for the YoYo Bear prizes!), and enjoyed amazing balloon animals from Mr Baudruche and glitter face paint from Eco Glitter Fun, along with visits to the real Father Christmas!

Maud Fontein was on hand to do sparkly family portraits on both days too.  Sunday afternoon, we loved our happy hour with music by Wilford Social and nibbles and prosecco from Wild Child Kitchen.  Shoppers relaxed and refueled with delicious meals and treats from Deliciously Ella in the cafe.  And Monday afternoon, The Little London Music School came by to offer a toddler music class and fill the gorgeous town hall with holiday tunes.

We were happy to have Little Dish back again this year to provide yummy, healthy snacks for the little ones, and Fifi & Friends were there to show off their lovely new baby skin care line.  Mamas were treated to some luxury fashion with Vestiaire Collective and learned about their closet detox service.  Powder Byrne was an event partner again as well- check out their site for some of the best family holidays around.

Thank you to all our amazing boutiques who joined us from near and far. (And thanks to Pip Organic for keeping us all hydrated!) We love working with so many incredible brands and bringing them together in one room is such a special treat.

Thanks to our photographer Nadine Brandt from Parentville Parties for all the photos above.

Last but not least, we’d like to thank Peanut, who partnered with Babyccino for our 10th birthday party.  Peanut is an app all about connecting mamas together, which we love!

Thanks London for another great event! And our ShopUp holiday tour continues December 10 & 11 in Brooklyn, New York at 501 Union Street.

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Paper Cut Maps by Famille Summerbelle (and a new one from Copenhagen!)

One of the treasured art pieces we have in our living room is the paper cut map of Amsterdam by Famille Summerbelle. I just love the details of it (some of them are so cute and funny!) and the concentric shape of the city, with all its canals, which makes it so typically ‘Amsterdam’. The fact that it’s made by my good friend Julie, creative force behind the brand Famille Summerbelle, makes it even more special!

Julie just launched her 6th paper cut map, of one of my favourite cities, Copenhagen, which is another gem. It’s just incredible how tiny the details are. Here’s a little video, showing Julie’s work in progress on this Copenhagen map. Isn’t it amazing?

Famille Summerbelle now offers paper cut maps of Amsterdam, New York, Paris, London, Copenhagen and San Francisco. A beautiful present to keep in mind, with the holidays coming up, I think!

xxx Esther

PS remember this friends book I made with Julie?

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Colourful Papier-Mâché Fruits & Vegetables

I haven’t made papier-mâché for years, and almost forgot how much fun it is! You start with such simple and basic materials and end up with an impressive sculpture. Papier-mâché is a great excuse to put on an art smock, and have a bit of messy fun with your children. There are severals steps and a good deal of drying time, so patience is essential. But all of the steps are simple, all ages can be involved, and most of the steps (mixing paste, ripping newspaper, and dipping of the strips) only take a few minutes.

Sometimes it is refreshing to do a non-seasonal craft project. Although I was very tempted to  create all matching seasonal produce, I withheld my art direction, and let my daughter choose her favourite fruits and vegetables instead. Pumpkin, watermelon, pear, sugar snap pea, and corn on the cob! She decided the produce to create based on the balloon shapes we had of course (for instance a strawberry wasn’t going to be easy to replicate).

I would love these fruit and veggies on display in a big wooden bowl, on a bookshelf with cookbooks, or in a cornucopia for a Thanksgiving decoration. Perhaps more Autumal fruit than a watermelon though. : )

Materials:

• Flour
• Water
• Salt
• Arrowroot Powder (optional)
• Electric hand mixer or hand held whisk
• Deep bowl
• Shredded newspaper or recycled paper
• Balloons — assorted shapes / sizes
• Ribbon or kitchen string (we used scraps)
• White paper or white paint (painter’s gesso –used for priming canvases — works very well for this)
• Tissue Paper — assorted colours
• Miscellaneous craft materials : Glue, Paintbrush, Markers, Pipe Cleaners, etc

Steps:

1. Decide which fruits, veggies, or other sculptures you are going to do.
2. Blow up the balloons, and add ribbon or string to the ends so they can hang up while drying later. The bigger the balloon the longer it will take but we had fun doing oversized sculptures.
3. Tear up your recycled newspaper in long strips.
4. To make the paste, use a deep bowl and mix one part flour with two parts of water to create a yoghurt like paste. Either mix it with a whisk or use an electric hand mixer to remove all lumps. Add in a few tablespoons of salt (this prevents mould) and if possible some Arrowroot Flour, since it makes the dried papier-mâché stronger. (Add water if it is too thick.)
5. Prep your work surface for easy clean up later.
6. Dip the newspaper into the paste, and then squeeze the strip thru your fingers, removing any excess, but also allowing the paper strips to be saturated. Layer the pieces on, no more than 5 layers thick. Be sure to overlap the pieces so it helps to strengthen the shape before letting it dry.
7. Hang up items and let them dry overnight at least.
8. Prep your shapes — we cut the watermelon rind off of the balloon, and cleaned up the edges. We filled our watermelon with recycled bubble wrap, so it was lightweight but not hollow. We also deflated the balloon inside of the pumpkin, and intentionally squashed the shape to make it a bit more quirky, and realistic. So think about these tweaks before the painting step.
9. Once completely dry, using a wide paintbrush you can either paint the shapes with white acrylic or gesso.
10. Let this dry, (overnight) and then you can have fun bringing colour, texture, or pattern to your art. We loved bringing our fruits and vegetables to life! We used torn crepe and tissue paper with regular school glue, and had lots of fun bringing our creations to life.
11. Pipe cleaners and fabric pieces worked best for stems. We enjoyed using soft felt and foam paper for watermelons.
12. And don’t forget a few details with marker or paint at the end work brilliantly for those final touches!

It is a bit messy, but embrace it, and you will love it. I promise!

We arranged our cute oversized fruit into a repurposed fruit crate for her school project. Then once we got it home we used the pumpkin as an Autumnal display, and the pear next to some cookbooks in our kitchen.

Papier-mâché is so versatile… I would love to also try puppets, masks (great for Halloween!), a pinata (for Birthdays!), a nest (for Easter!)… and if you want to make some music, try these cool maracas. The possibilities truly are endless. But I’d love to hear what creative projects you have made with your papier-mâché.

Lara

x

ps See our other fun projects with crepe paper!

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ZooModern, sustainable and eco-friendly Wooden Creatures

Because of the amount of toys of all kinds on the market today it’s pretty hard to get excited over the new ones. I remember just eight years ago when I had my first daughter everything was different. The variety was a lot narrower. So what I try to do now is find and accept only the best ones, which in my own head means the following: a type of toy that will make my kids want to play with it for a long time (not necessarily all the time but I don’t want toy to get boring or useless for a child in a year or so) and in several different ways and spaces. And the last and not least – the materials! Wood or at least another sustainable and planet-friendly materials.

These amazing forest creatures from ZooModern made of wood and dressed in 100% wool are everything I mentioned above and so much more! I love just everything about them and I’m very sure you will too! For a start you’ll love the fact that they are actually designed by a dad! His name is Glen Hay and he worked in a toy industry for the last 12 years, creating classic, mainly wooden toys but in the meanwhile he was also on a mission to find a safer toy, something that his own daughter would be interested in playing with. He felt that others made from wood were either cars or teething toys for babies.

Even though his own daughter is already a teenager now he decided to keep going because he sees a big problem in plastics. And this is how Leo (the Bear), Evan (the Rabbit), Lars (the Owl) and Abe (the Fox) finally came to life!

They are about 10 cm wide and 18 cm tall and completely hand crafted from raw and eco-friendly materials like rubber wood and their capes are hand sewn from natural wool.

We have had Lars and Abe for a little more than a month now and all of my three children still play with them almost every day! And I make sure that they are dressed in their own clothes at the end of the day  And the thing I love is that they also make a beautiful decor! You know the saying about the two birds and one stone…

Polona xx

***

You can follow Polona on Instagram or visit her online boutique Baby Jungle shop!

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