A crafter in Paris

Here are some of the pictures from the first part of our honeymoon, which was five days in Paris. Believe it or not we went the traditional route and left for the honeymoon on the same day as our wedding. It was tiring but I actually recommend it. If we'd stayed at home for a couple of days first we would have felt compelled to do chores and tidy up!

We stayed at a nice little hotel in Montmartre which was inexpensive but had everything we wanted. I haven't been to Paris before, so I was really excited and it turned out I loved the neighbourhood. It also turned out to be quite close to most of my favourite stores (and bakeries). We did spend hours walking around looking at all the museums and other attractions of course, but luckily Bradley doesn't mind humouring me while I looked at plenty of crafty type shops.

We were staying quite near to Sacre Coeur, which is a basilica at the top of steps above a merry-go-round and featured in Amelie. That neighbourhood happens to be the site of tons of fabric stores. My favourite was called Tissus Reine. Oddly enough I ended up buying Liberty fabric - which I love - and which is actually from England. I was wondering if it would be cheaper in London but I wasn't sure if I would find it there so I took a chance. It turned it was actually cheaper than in London, but still expensive at 21.90 euros per metre.
Here's a picture of Tissus Reine. The cute thing is that every table of fabric had a miniature mannequin with a fancy outfit made from those fabrics.
The fabric on the left was actually featured in Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazine as a backdrop and I was wondering where it was from (and covetting it of course). Now I know it's Liberty - and I have some! The pink one on the right is one of their older patterns. My first Liberty thing was a little cosmetic case made with the pink fabric. I bought it a few years ago in a London airport on my way home. The pink patterned piece I bought in Paris is actually a pair of child's pants that I found in a discount store for 1 euro!

My other favourite shopping neighbourhood in Paris was the Marais district - near the Pompidou museum. I found a wonderful store filled with felted wool items. We passed by it in the evening and I took this picture of the window display: Then we came back the next day and I saw all the wonderful felted purses, small odds and ends and giant pieces of felt. The Marais neighbourhood also had my favourite boutique, called azag. I bought a few notebooks and loved these little rabbit dolls:I have a few more pictures to show but this post is getting long...I will save the Paris flea market pictures for my next post!