If you can’t visit Santa Fe‘s Canyon Road for a First Friday gallery walk tonight, just put on your moccasins and come over to the Mej Mej website for the intro of our next collection with a hip southwestern vibe, Little Feather. We think this modern group will add a spirited southwestern touch to all kinds of kids’ rooms from mid-century modern to cozy rustic shiplap.
And there are several pieces that are perfect for a grown-up room, too. I’m imagining these feathers swirling above my computer desk … brilliant ideas floating down to earth … Too much? … Yeah, you’re right … maybe a tidy row of feathers just for fun.
Julianna was the designer in charge of this Southwestern – Forest Animal – American Indian mash-up. This eclectic collection is greatly influenced by a few favorite things from her imaginative childhood and teen years.
1) THE best dress-up costume ever (made by her older sister, Ellen, when she was learning about the Algonkian Indians in 2nd grade in Connecticut). Her class even visited this impressive replica of an Algonkian longhouse! Ellen’s faux leather and bead extravaganza has been re-purposed by all three sisters through the years for everything from history presentations to Thanksgiving feasts. Plus, it was the go-to dress-up outfit when playing pretend in their beloved red teepee. When it finally became too short and lost too many beads, we took photos for posterity and folded it up for its next life in hand-made costume heaven!
2) Another influence from growing up in a dry climate: Succulents. We love them. They have always been a part of our gardens, both inside and out. And the girls have added them to their own homes, as well. Here’s a little cacti-love post that Ellen made from sunny California. We like to decorate with succulents so much that they don’t even have to be real. We used faux succulents to surround the outside flowers during Julianna’s winter wedding, when real ones would have turned into cactu-cicles. After the wedding, we decided to keep them, because even real succulents look sort of faux.
Below is a photo of one of the wedding succulent arrangements two years later! The middle plant is real. We change those when they begin to look pitiful. For the wedding, we filled the centers with white cyclamen under sparkly Scandinaviann paper stars. I guess you could call the aesthetic Southwestinavian. You can totally steal the idea for your next fiesta!
Happily, our fabric decal succulents will look great no matter what the season! And you can move them around from nursery to office to kitchen.
3) And finally, that super cool southwest color palette. I grew up in Midland, so the desert landscape was woven into the fabric of my childhood. And, although Julianna and her sisters grew up in Austin, we have taken many family vacations driving across the vast glory of West Texas. Many of their happiest memories with their cousins and grandparents began with a long (sometimes too looooong) drive across the plains and desert. We drove through land filled with dusty gray-green sage and milky green prickly pears punctuated with little dashes of yellow and orange wildflowers, all blowing under a clear teal-blue sky that never ended. With a stop at Dairy Queen, of course, but we didn’t include that color in our collection color story. So this group of southwest colors captures some very happy memories for Julianna … including a thick Cookies ‘n Cream Blizzard melting down her arm while driving past the sage brush paradise. Heaven.
“The sage in bloom is like perfume … clap, clap, clap, clap … deep in the heart of Texas.” (I apologize … I just can’t help clapping when I hear that tune. If you are a Texan, you are probably clapping, too!)
Hope you like our new collection, and that it will bring some happy day dreams to your brave little adventurer.
