Marie Claire Idées

Eggshell planters from Marie Claire Idées

A few weeks ago my friend Jenny arrived at my house carrying a magazine file filled with her old copies of Marie Claire Idées. I'd been longing (unbeknown to Jenny) to see this magazine ever since Helen (who like Jenny, is also fluent in French) had raved about it to me a few years ago. Stuck in bed with tonsillitis last weekend I spent several hours looking through Marie Claire. It is stunning. The ideas, the colours, the presentation - everything about it is perfection and it has none of the cringe-worthiness about it that so many craft magazines struggle, but occasionally fail, to avoid. There is no sense of there being any kind of budget to this magazine - it feels saturated with ideas and attention to detail, even the header on the contents page has not been left untouched:

So I wanted to share with you some of my favourite images from the magazines:

I love the idea of a garden table being painted ready for games of backgammon. I think this is one that might appeal to my husband too.

Mice made from radishes and cloves, and adorable lemon boat place settings. This made me want to leap from my bed and start carving right away.

Lemon mice and rabbits, so simple, but so very lovely.

More fruit goodness - I fell completely in love with these.

Jenny drew my attention to these little picture frame boxes when she brought the magazines around. She has made her own more colourful version of one of these as a gift to welcome a new baby and my own head is already buzzing with ideas too.

Doesn't this egg carton make the most wonderful sewing box? I think a child would love this too.

On a grander scale, perhaps this folding screen is a good storage solution - it has room for cotton reels, colour charts and lots of other paraphernalia...and importantly could be used to hide a thready, fabric strewn mess from impromptu visitors (who would have to be warned that on no circumstances should they venture beyond the screen).

And for those who knit, I like this idea for needle storage. Some of the pockets have the needle sizes marked on too.

Even the embroidery, which isn't always quite my thing, looks utterly wonderful. With all these ideas, at the back of the magazine full instructions and patterns are provided (in French, obviously, although like Japanese sewing patterns, it all seems fairly self-explanatory).

I love how much an attention to colour presides over the magazine. The magazine must be edited by the most divine creature as absolutely nothing is left to chance on this front: everything is premeditated. I love how the colours of the bicycle and roses are echoed in the background in the clothes of the girl walking away.

Flowers feature hugely throughout the magazine - some in the most exquisite arrangements, others in more accidental, casual settings.

There is also a lot of focus on the way that rooms are decorated and the details that pull them together.

In the absence of you having your own Jenny to arrive on the doorstep with a bundle of this kind of goodness for you to peruse (she is indeed a rare and lovely bean) then you can order copies or subscribe directly from their website here (if you can't read french, then I recommend installing Google Translate and it will all become clear). It's the kind of magazine that you don't just read once and then throw out, so definitely worth the investment. If you haven't already done so you may also like to discover the Marie Claire Idées blog here. The photos in this post are from six different issues, so really just the tip of a very beautiful iceberg.

Florence x

Please note: all photos in this post belong to Marie Claire Idées.