Isn't it Romantic ... isn't it French

 

 

From Paris to Provence, elegant to rustic - food, fashion, furniture - they do it up with so much style.  My love affair for everything French is still alive and well.

antique needlepoint screen - soft mauves and golds with the back stencilled in a damask pattern - great little accent piece in a room to give it a romantic French inspired look.






Screens and room dividers add a bit of drama and romance depending on the images and or textures.  I have a large Eiffel Tower screen in my office and it is one of my favourite pieces of art!

Favourite French ottoman - it took a client a long while to convince me to part with this - I had found it broken in a store and had the legs re-attached.  This simple but beautiful French toile keepsake pillow is one of my favourites.  I made it for a special couple that have becomes friends (so it's special to me).

Laissez les bon temps rouler - "let the good times roll" - a solid pine kitchen table, now a shabby chic French table

love the French bumblebee - these were traced out and han-painted - steady ... steady ... one sneeze or shake and drats!

The wreath was made by a friend of mine - love the champagne bottle corks

 

These lamps were completely inspired by Parisienne Cafes, Bistros and the Dancers skirts of the Left Bank, Moulin Rouge.  I combined decoupaging with sewing and painting.  I kept picturing a restaurant with a brick wall somewhere in Paris and accordian music (LOL).  Envisioning a scene makes my visual editing button go off.  I start picturing what the tablecloth would be like, floors, walls.  I'm hardwired that way and with those images come the ideas for a feminine lamp.

Here are the lamps when I found them and brought them home - the little baskets were put on them to carry them into the house - you can see the feminine hourglass shape of these vintage lamps.

These chairs have gone from goth to France - restaurant prints with a fresh white frame add to the romance of a French inspired farmhouse.

Here is the before picture of the Spanish-Mission Style Chairs with the red velvet and brass upholstery tacks.  I cleaned them up but didn't remove the original fabric and hardware.  What they needed was a darker stain and some French style aprons that can slip off for washing.  So you have the versatility of a gothic-inspired chair or French Country.  The couple that bought them (the husband fell in love with the gothic - velvet look of them; the wife the toiled aprons).

The colours of Provence inspired me when I worked on this pine scroll meant to be used for hanging clothing, towels, aprons in a kitchen.

 

 When I took an old farm tray and started working on some French rustic country look I was told by one of my children I was French-frying it - lol - Frenchified

 Toile and French Country are one in the same to me.   This evokes a French farmhouse look to me, checkered tablecloths, ladder-back chairs and eating on a stone patio. 

My favourite lamp.  This one is it.  I still remember my husband saying it was the ugliest floor lamp he's seen and what am I going to do with it.  Sometimes the uglier a piece may look to somone the more I want to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.  It's the way we don't see the hidden beauty and potential in people or in ourselves.  Take a look at something for what it could be - not what it is.