Nest by Tamara's Top Favorite Home & Lfestyle Etsy Shops: Part 3--Les Petits Pois sont Bleus
photos via Les Petits Pois sont Bleus
Ending The Month of April with Another Favorite Artisan Shop On Etsy...
Saint-Divy, France
Hand Cut, Paper Butterflies
Etsy has been a wonderful resource for me these past few years, both for my design projects and personally in my homes. I have a small shop there where I sell our root cellar designs' wares and have tested the waters on some other hand made products over the years. The community makes you feel like you are part of a local cooperative or flea market. What I love about shopping for home products on Etsy is that I source from artisans all over the world, and for small items the shipping costs are relatively affordable. When designing vignettes and tabletop creations, I often find it important to "think outside the box" on design and Etsy has offered me up some wonderful options. Take a look at the latest I have found, these quirky yet beautiful and delicate hand cut paper butterflies...
Les Petits Pois sont Bleus is a butterfly, paper wonderland! One part origami, other part unique artisan French atelier, these butterflies have personality. Artist Valerie Lamour hails from Saint-Divy, France, and makes herself available for custom orders as well as offers ready-made beautiful groupings of paper butterflies. She hand makes these beauties, layers them with vintage newspaper which creates a feeling of movement against all the multi-layers of paper underneath a hand cut butterfly frame, often created in a nice vivid or unique color. Valerie suggests using her butterflies for mobiles, wall art, paper lanterns, table decoration, showers and special events, window art, and even in a bouquet of flowers. The butterflies come with a double-sided adhesive she provides as well.
Our custom designed butterflies:
Valerie even offered us up three different options and
put a great deal of time and effort into making something unique for our special event. We ordered 20 different pieces and in three different sizes
we chose this beauty!
They arrived nicely padded and packed, with extra special care
For our recent table design at the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House Valerie was able to utilize the pattern, Acanthus Column we created for the tablecloth linen and recreated it with three different paper layers in different scales of the pattern, so the butterflies had a sense of movement when together, like a fluttering butterfly. She happily created a special order in a timely fashion and even offered up suggestions. Valerie hand made a black skeletal butterfly frame, then layered these papers underneath, and they arrived carefully packed with instructions and padding. The butterflies added a sense of whimsy to our designs. We used these paper butterflies all over the table and on this topiary hand-made hedge I created out of English boxwood, and then placed one on each dinner plate, and it was a stunning finish to our Roman Garden Party vignette. It all looked stunning together in the grand ballroom in Grand Central Station's Cipriani restaurant. The guests at the dinner table gushed over the designs and the butterflies, and as a result, our table was featured in Veranda magazine in their top favorite table designs from the event, as well as in many other magazines and blogs.
Thanks to Valerie's beautiful butterflies, our table was special.
We will most certainly be ordering more butterflies from this shop again soon:
Susan and I will be giving a lively talk and demonstration at the
Country Living Fair
in Rhinebeck, New York
on June 3,
and we plan to buy more of these beauties for our event to share on a
Fourth of July table!
Happy Nesting
XO Tamara
