Passionflower Design - Store Shots

By popular demand, well actually my friend Peggy Flynn who makes, what I think are the world's cutest sachets, went to the blog and wanted to know where the photos of the store are.

So here you go -

Our mascot - the Passionflower

An array of Sid Dickens tiles behind our front counter. Plus note the fabulous Moroccan screen.
Oh and also how beautiful is the lacquered Asian screen in far left?

Jewelry world

A long view of what we affectionately call "The Cupcake Table"

Cindy of Tarte designed this to serve cupcakes at a wedding last summer.

I promptly purchased it as soon as the nuptials were done.

And here's our Bedding World.
I feel lucky to work in such a beautiful place.

And it doesn't hurt that we have almost 50 feet of northern facing windows.

Makes everything feel open and bright.
Stay tuned for more close up of store shots.

Senator Wyden Shops at Passionflower Design

Here's Lindsey with the Senator. He was here with his wife Nancy & they were shopping for a little hostess gift.

What is Sandy Wearing?

Ladies and Gentlemen - Introducing the Magnificent Sandy Raney.

Sandy is as longtime friend and colleague. She sells me ad space in the local paper. She is also one of the most outrageous and fun fashion queens that I know. As in, she dresses in red, white, and blue for the fourth of July and I LOVE IT! So we're planning to make "What Is Sandy Wearing?" a regular feature of the blog. Feast your eyes, Dear Reader on Sandy's outfit of the day.

With shrug and without shrug.

We've never seen her wear the same outfit twice.

Come to think of it her jewelry is always different too.

Don't tell Sandy we're living in Eugene. She thinks it's Hollywood in the 1950's.

Becky's Boy Wears Potluck Paris Jewelry

According to Becky, it all came together when she pulled this Potluck Paris necklace out of the jewelry case. All I knew was, she was cutting up an old Two's Company feather placemat, and making a Lone Ranger face mask out of it.

Imagine my delight when this little warrior appeared the next day.

I call him Zulu Warrior.

Jeweler Marcia MacDonald Comes to Visit

Remember Marcia, our beloved ex manager who moved to North Carolina?

Did you know she's also an amazing jeweler whose work has been published in books and magazines and who has exhibited at shows at both the Smithsonian and the Philadelphia Museum of Art? Well, we are so excited that she's coming to visit and we're going to have a trunk show of her work.

It is strong, playful, and fearlesss.

Here's a sneak peak at some of her new work......she calls this animal skin.

I think these rings are smashing. They have a great unisex appeal to me...

So, please come pay a visit - see lots more fabulous Marcia MacDonald jewelry and find yourself a beautiful piece to take home. She'll be here Friday August 28th and Saturday August 29th from 10:30 to 2:30.

The Beautiful Magnolia - more Flower Love

We are blessed at Passionflower to have great retail neighbors. Well sometimes it seems like a curse when you have this amazing antique shop called Pewter Rabbit Antiques right across the way from you.....this can be hard on the pocketbook....nonetheless, I love Shelley's store and we both seem to share a fondness for disintegrating objects......This is all a prologue to showing you this amazing magnolia bloom that was sitting on her front counter last week......

It was big and breathtaking and the browning petals looked almost like soft leather. I knew immediately - this is blog material.....so dear reader a short lesson in almost everything I know about magnolia.

The beautiful bloom starts out on a tree like this one. This is a little tyke from my backyard weed patch/ wildflower meadow. Florists take note - magnolia grows many places but if you want those really fuzzy brown undersides it is best to make sure you're getting southern magnolia.

Then the tree gets a bud like this one.

My friend told me some native people in Mexico consider the flower like a sacred egg. They bring the bud inside, put their prayers into it and then when the flower blooms the prayer is let loose on the world.

That egg idea really makes sense to me on some intuitive level.



And they smell incredible. Kind of this musky citrus scent. Really unusual.





The geometry of this flower is amazing. Check out the curls on the end of those pollen bearing parts.

When I studied botany, way back when, they taught us that magnolia ( or something similiar) was one of the most ancient of flowers and that the first flowering plants were big and came from trees that had cones. You can almost see the cone forming on the inside of this flower. So in my non linear world magnolia = ancient egg that smells divine and is soft but looks tough like leather.

Trendspotting - Kids in Sunglasses

One of the joys of working a retail store is we get to see some of the world's cutest kids on pretty much a daily basis.

More Passion Fashion - Bike Helmets

Welcome back to Passion Fashion where you get to see real live people who've walked into our store who happen to be sporting something we think is noteworthy, fun, and fashionable.

This week how could we resist?

The world's cutest bike helmet.

Looking good with those bike bells.

IThe company is called Nutcase. They're out of Portland.