TRENDS: Bubble Review

By Jo Middleton

LITTLEBIG VERY selflessly spent the day last Sunday going all the way to Bubble London to check out the latest trends for kids for Autumn and Winter. We traipsed around all day looking at gorgeous dresses, cooing over tiny shoes, and gasping with delight at hand-sewn cushion covers. The things we do for you…

The whole show was fantastic, and we’ll be bringing you more in-depth features on some of the individual brands over the course of the next few months, but in the meantime we wanted to whet your appetites with a few of our favourites.

Following the success of the Muffin Pouffe, a luxurious leather cushioned stool with a playful elegance [pictured left], Matteo Bianchi has been baking mini muffins! Yes that’s right, they’re stools that look like muffins - what’s not to love? You can create your own unique design by selecting your muffin ‘ingredients’ from a range of beautifully handcrafted solid wooden bases, buttons, and soft leathers and fabrics. So gorgeous you won’t know whether to sit on it or eat it. www.muffinpouffe.co.uk Read the rest of this article

Posted 2 February 2012 in Products, Textiles

STUFF: Things we really should have designed but didn’t

YOU KNOW IT. ALL those things you’ve bought for your wee one and all along you’re thinking “I invented this. I just didn’t manufacture it.”

Like the black out blinds with suction cups from The Gro Store (my homemade version was blackout fabric and map pins). The new ‘lead’ Scoot ‘n’ Pull for scooters below (my homemade version? child hanging onto my jacket tails). The Koodi Stroller Sun and Sleep Shade cover (well it’s an extension of the sweater perched atop your child’s buggy, isn’t it?).

Here are a few of our favourites we wished we’d designed. Because they’re all just really good….

1. Totseat. In my mother’s day this was a scarf tied around your tummy, tied around your chair. These days it’s the Totseat, a considerably safer portable fabric version, designed by Rachel Jones of Edinburgh-based Totseat, that fastens securely around any chair, and has won numerous accolades. £24 from www.totseat.com. Enter LITTLEBIG at checkout for a 15% discount. Read the rest of this article

Posted 5 September 2011 in Products

THE BOOKEND: Susan Bradley

HAVING TRAWLED the bookend market for something new and thrilling in recent years - to add to our resident collection of James The Bookend, and ENO’s bookstops - we were delighted to stumble across young Brit designer Susan Bradley’s icon collection.

These powder coated metal laser-cutouts of icons of international transport and architecture are made in the UK and are irresistible. Our only dilemma is which to choose. Eiffel Tower? London Black Cab? Statue of Liberty? La Sagrada Familia? Best let the kids decide…

*Icon bookends, £18, from Utility Design, www.utilitydesign.co.uk and direct from Susan Bradley, www.susanbradley.co.uk

Posted 18 January 2011 in Design + Decoration, Products

TRIED & TESTED: Method Laundry Detergent

IT IS SELDOM THERE’S innovation enough in washing powders / liquids for anyone to get excited, let alone to write about it.

But Method’s new Laundry Detergent has already won a design award. Not just for the liquid’s successful functioning - it doubles as a stain remover, washes equally well at 30 degrees (or even cold) as it does at hotter temperatures, and is made from 95 per cent natural ingredients and is fully biodegradable - but for the design of the bottle itself.

Super-concentrated (x 8 times) so you only need four squirts of the liquid for a complete wash, this compact pump-action bottle is designed to be used single-handedly - so you don’t have to put the baby down to get the housework done. It also eliminates the need for big cupboards to store a mega-huge box of washing powder (nor, as a knock-on effect, large trucks to transport it from the manufacturers to the supermarket, or super-strong arms to carry it from shop to car). Top marks. Read the rest of this article

Posted 10 November 2010 in Products

LITTLEBIG LOVES: Nyokki pets and friends

WHILST CHILDREN often enjoy the messier aspects of outdoor gardening, it can be difficult to get them excited about cultivation - as the process is often so slow. It’s only when those strawberries finally emerge that their interest is rekindled. And so The Balcony Gardener’s new offerings for kids are perfect for short attention spans.

The Balcony Gardener - our current favourite gardening e-shop - specialises in kits and ready made balcony gardens, and these kits for children - including the Nyokki pets, (bear, kitty or chick pots - the bear is at the right of the picture), which sprout grass ‘hair’, the i-grobot (Robot model), and Taterpots (for mint or basil, pictured middle left) - are instant gratification incarnate, and are genuinely easy for kids to do all the stages themselves: they contain peat plugs and cute little seed packets, and away they go…

The grass seeds in particular sprout within a day or two. So those mornings spent searching for signs of life aren’t for nothing. The grass then sprouts at a healthy rate so that kids can cut it with scissors just like hair. The mint and basil seeds can be grown in their cute containers until they’re ready to harvest, to be transplanted to bigger pots or the garden. All the irresistible pots are reusable as ornaments and keepsakes.

It will probably come as no surprise that these sophisticated little kits are mostly Japanese in genesis: designed as they are not just for children, but for tiny urban living spaces too. From £7.50 - £8.95.

*The Balcony Gardener: www.thebalconygardener.com

Posted 15 August 2010 in Products