Olive and Joy

Olive & Joy is a new on-line store that brings together the creative vision of Julie Palmer and her love of interior design. Many of you may already be following Julie's blog. I just adore Julie's style!

Here's Julie from the time she attended one of my screen-printing classes (more images here). We stayed in touch ever since, having developed a wonderful friendship and business relationship.

Let's find out more about Olive & Joy. Here is the story in Julie's own words:

We named Olive & Joy after our two maternal grandmothers who never met but whose grandchildren (Andrew and I) fell in love. Olive was my grandmother's middle name, also my great-grandmother's middle name and my mother's middle name. Joy is short for Joyce, Andrew's grandmother's middle name.

It was important to me for the name of my blog and now business had some special meaning to me. I also love the fact that the names also represent other elements such as colour (olive) and happiness (joy) so our customers can create their own interpretation on what he name means.

I hope that our business can bring some colour and joy into the homes of our customers through the items we stock. It's a lovely thought :)

Olive & Joy is inspired by handcrafted and vintage items with a ton of style thrown in! Whether it be an actual vintage item such as a refurbished chair or vintage vase or using an old method of printing such as the letterpress posters we stock in our store.

Hand printed fabric is utilised for most of our cushions from beautiful designs by Thea Samios (Julie's words) to the amazing vintage patterns of Florence Broadhurst. The quality and heart of hand printed fabric has made a great impression on me and is something that I would love to develop in terms of our own range in the future.

At the moment Olive & Joy stocks a great range of cushions, prints and upholstered ottomans. The range will expand to include lampshades, hand printed tea towels and carefully selected vintage items early next year. I enjoy the variety from screen printing fabric to sanding back an old chair and hunting down vintage items to stock in the store.

We are quite flexible on where Olive & Joy will take us in the future so we are going to go with the flow and see where this creative journey takes us.

Thanks Julie! I have no doubt that you will do very well. And I know that all you lovely readers support local and independent businesses, so off you go. Shop at Olive & Joy.

Rectangular cushion featuring Thea & Sami Marguerite design; hand-printed in black on natural linen for Olive & Joy.

All images are courtesy of Olive & Joy.