Set your alarm!!! 

Warehouse sale tomorrow Saturday 26th Nov, 

8am - 12pm 

Unit 5, 623 Toohey Road Salisbury Qld 4107

Usually our blogs are very whimsical, arty and stare out the window day-dreaming material but the looming prospect of the holiday gift season is on our minds. To make your lists swifter we are offering 20 percent off any Little Branch online order over the value of $35.00 until November 14th, suing the code: PRLove. Pardon our crass use of lipstick red but this is a BARGAIN...and it's our way of saying thank you to all the people who made us blossom in 2011.

Illustration & Letterpress by The Hungry Workshop

Step right up on November 5th and 6th at THE OLD MUSEUM in Brisbane for our second spectacular stall at the Finder's Keepers Market, Brisbane. Maree remembers with relish our first go round and describes the market as "an awesome vibe". We had a line form for our prints and everyone was so excited to be able to find original, non mass manufactured, artsy, unusual things for realistic prices. The neighbours to our stall were both in ceramics: http://www.mrs.petersonpottery.com and Kanimbla Clay http://www.bluecaravan.net/kanimbla-clay. This year who knows what delights will surround us, but we anticipate excellent independent art and design

More info here.

I 'discovered' 'Ruby Slipper' because it is just across the road from my son's primary school and looks a great deal like an Impressionist watercolour. It was a shop I loved to stand in front of and essentially day dream. There are always handcrafted posies on the pavement, odd elegant objet and soaps and old books in the windows and, of course, beautiful flowers. Antonia, the mistress of this boudoir like space is a welcoming beacon. And her aesthetics are very delicate and distinct. The 'Ruby Slipper' palette is not violent or tropical. Every hue of violet and green is present...but not a great deal of orange. This is the ideal shop for water signs, rain lovers, 19th century romantics and people who like their flowers a little bit rustic and wild. Jasmine tendrils drape down to the floor from vintage pots. Deep purple hyacinths and snow white jonquils evoke a painting by Manet and often it's a treat to see a 'Ruby Slipper' wedding spread out through the shop. The house style for weddings is fairly dainty and detailed. Bud vases and miniature bouquets are part of the story as are bridal bunches that have a natural almost tumble down grace. Nothing is forced or compressed or too savagely vivid. Before taking on the store Antonia did styling for corporations and magazines and many...many, weddings. Like all the really great floral artists they never jade her. The idea of ritual, promise and sanctification still appeal and Antonia smiles while she works. Partly it's the joy of working with living things and partly it is the daily immersion in beauty. I always scoot by after school run. To see what's in season. To nab a fifteen dollar posy. And to feel better about being a die hard, hopeless romantic.

The Little Branch Interview: Antonia Georgas | Ruby Slipper - Glenmore Road, Paddington, NSW

www.rubyslipper.net.au

What is the heart and soul of your shop? The vision driving the operation?
We love everything natural and organic, from the style of our flowers right down to the paper we use to wrap them.  We love everything whimsical/vintage/natural/ organic/soft/subtle and like to present that as our style.

How would you describe your customer or customers?
Predominantly female, and quite down to earth and organic.

Can you give us a potted history of your business in two or three paragraphs?
The business began 6 years ago.  The owner at the time wanted to give Paddington locals a place to buy good quality flowers and gifts that were a little left of centre.

I purchased the business 12 months ago and have kept up with that theme.  Over the years we have done many weddings and events and our style has always stayed quite natural.  Our gift lines have changes somewhat and have actually decreased.  I am now wanting to concentrate on flowers rather than gifts, but good quality gifts will always have a place in Ruby Slipper.

What is the best thing about having your own store?
I love the independence it gives me and I love that I have to interact with my customers on a more personal level so that I know exactly what they want me to provide for them.

How much of your style is an extention of how you live, how you dress, what you read?
It’s probably an extension of my philosophy on the way I believe the world should be.  Soft, gentle, natural and everyone should be happy, just like they are when they come into my shop.

We know what we like about you...what do you like about Little Branch?
I love your style, I love the feel of your products, both sensual and emotional.

What is the most important lesson in running your own business?
Listen and respond to your customers.

What fires your creativity day to day?
My surroundings.  The flowers that I buy, and they can be quite different from day to day, the school that’s across the road from my shop (Glenmore Road Public) with all it’s trees and naturalness, even leaves and pods on the ground that have fallen from surrounding trees.

Which city in the world is your creative utopia?
Paris

Which of the following things can you absolutely NOT live without:
1. Chocolate
2. Flowers
3. Coffee
4. Tea
5. Extremes of passion
6. New shoes
7. Gossip
8. Australian made design
9. Contemporary art
10. Antique textiles
11. Whimsy
12. Clean lines
13. inspired clutter
14. Rock and Roll
15. Wine (by popular demand)

If the shop was on fire what would you grab first?
My gorgeous lamp in the corner

Do you have a blog that always makes you feel good...would you share it with us please to add to our links...
http://sheridannilsson.typepad.com/sheridan_nilsson
I love Sheridan’s blog.  And she’s a fantastic photographer as well. 

Photography | Sheridan Nilsson

It's not as if I have time to sew. Um, not at all. But the result of spring cleaningthe spare room to create a new studio has yielded a TROVE of dress fabrics, weird fashion and craft visions and a search for the best textile shops online. You see suddently there is a style vacancy: I have given away most of my best vintage clothing because it's simply time. Time to give fragile wispy size eight dresses to all my girlfriend's fourteen year old daughters. Time to admit I look odd dressed as Lillian Gish in a broken art deco nighty. Time to buy a batch of vintage patterns, to trawl ebay for original fabrics (try: vintagefabricaddict) and re-invent the wardrobe from the big pearl buttons up. When I was fourteen I was a very amateur dressmaker who sold strange garments (loosely based on Brideshead Revisited) to the richer girls in my school and the unsuspecting post Punk punters at Paddington markets. It was money for gin and hot chips.

Thirty years later.... Seeing the film "Coco before Chanel" got me going again. In this gorgeous biopic of Chanel (before she became a Nazi spy and all-round grumpy ), the designer is played by a very determined looking Audrey Tatou, who slices into her lover's english tweeds to make strange little blouses and day dresses that turn belle epoque fashion on its head. One scene in the movie shows her to be the only woman in a black dress in the middle of a ballroom. It's extraordinary and it makes you reach for your pinking sheers even if, like me (and possibly Maree), you are only the Very Easy Vogue pattern type. I think the cost of clothes and the uniformity of fashion will inspire a new wave of women making their own dresses or at the very least adapting high street clothes with add-ons like custom buttons, patch pockets, vintage collars, hand covered belt buckles and groovy hem trims.

Recently on a trip to Bali my mother took a bag of vintage Japanese obi silk to her favourite back alley tailor. I was shaking with apprehension. The fabrics came from the amazing Melbourne fabric emporium ZIGU ZAGU (www.ziguzagu.com.au) and were in long kimono panels of the most delicate hues from the 1940s. "God help that fabric!" I muttered as she madestrange drawings on a stained notepad. Ten days later and she is wearing them in Paris, these tops that look like Akira Isogawa couture pajamas! No one else has them. She feels lovely, chic and economical with an edge.

Three dreamy fabric designs by Australian designer Saffron Craig from www.earthgirlfanbrics.com.au

For my own summer frock fantasies I am looking at some great Australian designers at the gorgeous internet fabric emporium www.earthgirlfabrics.com.au. Saffron Craig is like a modern day Marimekko visionary but with a very Antipodean palette. I love her prints " magical lands" and "magic trees" and see them as smock dress. kick arse, knee length, craft will take over the universe smock dress...that is. also gorgeous on this site (and aussie as well) are the tea towels by flower press and the classic vintage japanese fabric designs by naomi ito for kokka. the prices are by the half yard but they are still reasonable. the only frustration of this site is that the fabrics are illustrated quite small. but one look and you get the drift...this is fashion paradise without pretence. the cottons are not scary to cut, the prints are not hard to imagine as clothes (as some more expensive knits and imported silks can>

One day I am pretty sure Little Branch will do a textile line. Maree loves her decor and I see everything (I mean everything from newsprint to fresh cut grass and field flowers) as a print for an A-line dress. The beauty of design for fabric (as opposed to our beloved paper) is that it is fluid, moving with shifting light and the body. As a child I would get lost in the teacher's dress print and barely hear what she was saying....these days, with a million deadlines and the dreary repetition of domestic rounds...beautiful fabric still takes me there. To the great somewhere else that is infinitely better dressed than HERE and NOW and to the big sewing room in my mind where mice fiddle with floral piping and French seams and corduroy wrap skirts while the world sleeps.

There was a homecoming in our house (Little Branch Sydney branch) and I decided to bake a cake on Saturday night at 10pm. To paraphrase Flight of the Concords..."conditons were perfect..." Cake indicates love. People feel special when you let them know the cake is JUST for them. And pears are so soulful. I am always painting them. Probably because I am pear shaped.  Everyday life is very often pear shaped and unlike apples pears have a strange mellow depth and that slightly grainy texture. 

I found the recipe on a lovely very easy to follow American website called In Erica's Kitchen (www.inericaskitchen.com) and I made some small changes, such as adding a bit of butter (I don't trust cakes without butter) and plopping pears and livered almonds on top. The pears were meant to look like a French cake from Alsace or some perfect tart in a book by Stephanie Alexander. Instead they actually sank and functioned like an apple Charlotte, but what a delight a pear is when floating in the centre of a moist slice. I also ignored the command to bake for forty five minutes and left the little creature in there for an hour to get really crunchy on top. Because of the yogurt, the oil and, yes, probably the butter, the cake was very moist even with the extra baking. 

The hardest part of baking a cake alone, late at night, is the temptation to nibble some hot out of the oven. Next time I swear I am going to make a separate muffin out of the same mix simply for the selfish pleasure of that first taste. I slept with one eye open wondering how it was settling, my baby, wrapped like a foundling in a green tea towel in the darkness of the kitchen. By 10am we finally got to try. cake for breakfast. With thin runny cream and strong Timorese coffee. It was good at 10am and it was even better at 3pm when my friend Luke the painter came by and wrapped me a lovely little oil painting for a kilim. Cake. Love. Bartering. Pears. The working week beckons but this Sunday was like being inside a Little Branch card (see above) where afternoon tea is a bliss not to be rushed and a nocturnal experiment becomes a joy in broad daylight. I have one slice left. I am asking myself if I post it overnight to Maree if the cake will still be good....that is of course if the cake survives in this house to the next morning! Try this recipe, maybe with a pinch of nutmeg or even lemon zest. But don't forget the butter. And the extra cupcake. Just for you alone.

Sunday afternoon Pear almond cake with yogurt

• 2 eggs • 1 cup plain yogurt (low-fat is fine)
 • 1/3 cup grapeseed or canola oil
 • Third of a cup of butter, softened
 • 1 cup granulated sugar (I used raw)
 • 1 tsp almond extract
 • 1 large pear, peeled, cored and grated
 • 1 large pear sliced into quarters with the skin left on
 • a handful of slivered almonds
 • three tablespoons of lavender honey
 • 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
 • 1/2 tsp baking soda
 • 1/4 tsp salt
 • 1/2 cup ground almonds or almond meal
 • 3 Tbsp coarse raw sugar crystals

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a round 9-inch cake pan with nonstick cooking spray.

In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, yogurt, oil, granulated sugar, honey and almond extract. Add the grated pears and stir to combine.
In a smaller bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, butter and salt. Stir in the ground almonds, making sure to break up any clumps. 

 Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and blend with a large spoon or spatula just until everything is incorporated (I used an electric cake mixer for a smooth result). Turn the batter into the prepared pan and top with slices of pears, and a handful of slivered almonds sprinkle with the raw sugar. Bake 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a rack for 5 minutes, then turn the cake out onto the rack to finish cooling. (Mine wouldn't come out and I had to serve it in the tin. I suggest baking paper for the best result.) 

 Packing for Melbourne is a bit like planning a holiday in the gulag. I stuffed my favourite hairy mohair coat into an enormous bag and even squashed some gum boots into the suitcase. Ready for the BITE of Collins street, Maree came from beautiful Queensland armed with defensive layers. We didn't need them. Freakishly the week and weekend of the FIRST IN STYLE trade show was unseasonably warm and so was the atmosphere in the beautiful Belle Epoque exhibition hall in Fitzroy Gardens. The trade show was a sea of women and the things they love. checking out the stands on the day of bump in on Wednesday afternoon, was a bit like walking through stage sets of dream nurseries (KID'S IN STYLE) dream living and bedrooms (LIFE IN STYLE) and dream craft projects come to fruit in the form of unusual artwork, paper and jewellery...our section down the back of the huge hall.



 As usual we were crammed cheek by jowl but we were amongst friends. All the lovely artisans we met in February at the Sydney show were there and for days we hustled, munched catering food, did Stevie Nicks dancing in front of the blow heater (day four was cold) and shared he strange pleasure of connection and captivity that typifies a trade show. There were slow patches and there were rushes. We met a lot of new stockists from country areas and re-stocked our beloved existing stockists with cards and miss minis from our Christmas line (see illos). After we set up our super compact and artistic milk crate melange display unit I convinced Maree to come see the VIENNA exhibit at the NGV. To get in the mood we stopped at the one room bar Von Haus for a glass of French Sauvignon Blanc. Or three. Then, slightly rosy, we jumped a tram for the gallery. It is good to look at the work of Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt half tanked. It helps with the feeling of romantic hallucination and dreamy decadence. A great deal of work in that exhibit had never been shown here and we both loved the pencil studies for very famous paintings (Klimt's "Three Ages of Women") and the small waxy looking landscapes and studies of Sunflowers by Schiele. Maree had to drag me away from the erotic drawings. But I was not scrutinising them for the usual reasons. Both Klimt and Schiele used the softest pencils. The drawings almost looked transparent. As if inviting you to stand flush to the glass, their lines were extraordinarily faint and fragile. Not at all graphic or crass, the ruffled petticoats and distended limbs still retain a freshness and modernity almost a hundred years later.  

At "Little Branch" we love drawing. Maree harvests so much work on paper (and artists who illustrate and draw) for her magazine: Paper Runway and I am drawn to the raw immediacy of what an artist finds when he or she simply presses a pencil or oil crayon into the void. Standing with our art for four days I got to study my own drawing without choice. I found fault, reassurance and loads of  funny little habits of mind. Every artist has these griffes, these markings that surface again and again. Mine are petals and concentrtic circles. Schiele drew hands and limbs that looked like gnarled branches and bodies that looked like twisted trees. Yet, sadly,  an artist as beautiful and spontaneous as Schiele didn't live long enough to reflect on his output. He died of Spanish flu at 27. But his prolific brief and volatile career continues to inspire. I can't draw a girl in black stockings without referencing him. I can't think of a woman in a long gown, so deliberately ornamental and blazingly knowing, without hailing Klimt.



 Anyway, it was a great way to reunite and begin our days together at the show. Little Branch began with drawing and continues in that spirit. Unlike the Vienna Secession artists we do not wear caftans or paint murals with gold leaf... OK that is coming, but neither of us feel decorative art is a crime. Beauty makes you feel good. And this sentiment was echoing all around us inside the vast late nineteenth century hall with hand painted, half naked nymphs hovering on the walls above the coffee cart and shabby glorious vines swirling in federation colours up the wall. 



 On the third day of the show it began to rain at dusk and a hug e but very faint complete rainbow arced over Fitzroy. Maree and I had been away from our families for many nights. Our legs were jelly from standing in one spot. There could have been more foot traffic. But the outcome felt inspiring. Melbourne has always been a city with grand proportions and grand visions. The streets always look wide enough for a full army band to do a U-turn with ease. Every morning we arrived to sell our line and every evening when we left, walking past fountains and grand archways, we felt a little uplifted. There was a sense that we were bringing Little Branch to town and re-uniting with a spark of history: from a beautiful Austrian hand carved silver bowl to disappearing into a whimsical tapas bar up a side street, the stage was set for discovery. Oh, and selling a few more cards!

It seems an age since our first trade show. In five short months we have designed two elaborate bespoke bridal invitation sets, garnered many lovely new stockists, some in places as exotic as Tasmania and New Zealand, concocted a new Christmas line, found surprising best sellers (Our Miss Miniature cards are going MAD), moved house (Anna up the hill in Double Bay, Maree up the hill to the Gold Coast), and seen the seasons shift. Seasons are central to the art and design at Little Branch, how the trees are foliaged seems to be the litmus of what styles and trends we sense on the wind. In the heart of a Sydney winter Anna is dreaming of peonies, the first magnolias pushing through their nubs on Paddington streets and that illuminating gust of Jasmine that comes at the dawn of summer. Her drawings for the Christmas range are like bulbs, forced out of a frosty imagination yearning for lipstick red petals and blushing pink silk summer dresses. Little Branch was born in winter, it's a time of deep creative gestation and ferment for us. But after five days in Melbourne I think we will be ready for the dream of Christmas....and much, MUCH less foliage on our limbs and branches.

Draw me Christmas Maree said one grey rainy day. And I thought who's Christmas? Some people think of Christmas and see a field of green thistles and red velvet party frocks. Others pack an esky and head for the beach. I thought of the Christmas of Maree's hot country childhood, sun streaming through the golden hair of her little tribe. And my Christmas, of freezing iced streets and red velvet ribbons wrapping up the department stores on New York's uptown department stores. When I was small it seemed that Christmas paper was thicker and shinier. That people really did wear velvet and ringlets (without a smirk) and of course that Santa made it to Manhattan, parking his reindeer on the roof at Macy's. Our "Holly Diva" evokes that opulent wintery spirit. Then our "Branch Angel" tells another story: ofsimplicity, improvisation, a favourite childhood dress and the scream of Cicadas clashing with carols.

The main design for our Christmas line is a little different again. A riot of peony pinks, flushed scarlets and obscure Japanese elements sets the mood for a summer holiday. I imagine rushing down the halls in a red bikini and an ancient kimono balancing a massive trifle in both hands, the house scented with nothing but pink blossoms. Australian Christmas is different, the weather and the spirit breaks so many rules. At Little Branch that's the spirit we like. The best traditions are the ones you invent for yourself and the people you love!

Our first trade show was in the sweltering heat of February. All the exhibitors took turns to go and wave their arms above the big Elephant trunk of the silver air conditioning vent as clients and stockists breezed through in their summer dresses. On August 4th we venture south into the arctic extremes of a Melbourne winter to the beautiful Royal Exhibition Building in Fitzroy Gardens. (www.lifeinstyle.com.au) The four day event has the usual intense hours (11am till 9pm on opening night!) and will be the first time either of us are away from our children for that long. My maternal and familial bribes have already started but so, also, a sense of personal anticipation.

The beauty of a trade show as big as Life InStyle is that all of Australia comes to one place. I try not to cock a brow when someone mentions a country town, near a country city I've never heard of and Maree (freshly moved to Queensland) can quickly educate me on all realms north of Surry Hills, NSW. A lot of the people who come to the show are women who run their own small businesses and they are a glamorous bunch. Being winter I expect to see feathers bouncing on velvet hats, high heel boots and pashminas...miles of pashminas. The swagger of women (and some men) who run their own show is intoxicating, they know what they like, they move fast, they seem like heroines from 1940s films; a little bit of Katherine Hepburn and a little bit of Audrey too. The spirit of independence they exude really inspires us at Little Branch, and there are so many contrasts. At our first show we met very young girls starting their first shops, eccentric bohemians with a vision, country ladies with a French Chateau dream, mother and daughter teams with uncanny matching chic and a lot of well groomed individuals with raw instinctive style. Everyone was in a hurry (you have to be at a show this size) but everyone stopped and shared a little soul, a little shop talk and a lot of wisdom. OK, so now I am thinking about what to wear (fingerless gloves and a velvet choker?) and how get Maree into The European for a glass of Victorian wine after hours. Melbourne has, amongst her many charms, the best looking waiters in the country and the coldest Collins street winds. I'll be gravitating to one and briskly avoiding the other, with eyes wide open for those fabulous migrating birds that descend and swoop upon our cards, paper and prints. Come on girls we want to see what your wearing this season and what your clientele are craving.