Ready to escape to the country? We consider ourselves very fortunate to live here in this beauty.

Charlottesville real estate agent Murdoch Matheson is thrilled to show off this custom home available, Edges.

The home showcases the brilliance of local builders and craftsman, from materials to construction to finished gardens around the home.

Constructed by Shelter and Associates using Mountain Lumber’s 100 yr-old cypress wood…

5,700s.f., 4 bedrooms 4.5 baths on 21 acres overlooking a 30-acre lake and the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Copper roofing, terraces, porches, fenced gardens, car barn and shop, meandering wooded trails, open land and beautifully sited.

15 min. southwest of Charlottesville and UVA

Charlottesville fashion cornerstone, Eloise, has relocated to a fabulous new space at The Market Street Market Annex.
505 West Main Street · Charlottesville

We asked mother-daughter Owners, Cyd & Amy…

1. What inspired you to choose a new location? How did you find the new place?

2. How have you benefitted so far from the new space?

 4. Do you have new focuses now that you have moved? Any new lines or products?

5. What was the aesthetic you went for in designing and decorating the new place?

6. We’d also like to know what it’s like to work as a mother/daughter team (we are featuring someone in New Orleans that is the same): Do you have different styles? How do both of your styles add to the store/business? How do you influence one another’s style?

7.  What is your favorite thing about working together?

We loved attending the Main Street Market Annex House Warming Party!

Find Eloise at 505 West Main Street · Charlottesville or www.shopeloise.com.

Tell them SCOUT sent you!

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We are so thrilled to announce The Scout Guide San Francisco… now on the streets of SF and for your viewing pleasure online. Subscribe here to get all the latest updates!

By way of introduction, we want to tell you all about one of the coolest businesses in SF, April in Paris.

April in Paris is where you need to go to find the most amazing handmade leather goods around. Béatrice Amblard, the owner, designer, and primary artist, is a Parisian who found her way to San Francisco–after 24 years there she is officially San Franciscan.

Amblard started as an Hermès craftsman, working originally to make the legendary Kelly bag. In 1987 the company asked her to move to San Francisco to educate clients about their brand, only the second Hermès employee in the United States. After several years, she decided to branch out on her own and start a business. April in Paris was born.

The name, she hopes, evokes the feeling one gets of being in Paris in the month of April.

“I wanted a name that sounded French but wasn’t French,” Amblard says. “Something easy to pronounce and had some French connotation that people would remember. I was talking with a friend when April in Paris came out. People love April in Paris so that name seemed like a good fit.”

She specializes in handmade, custom leather accessories. Amblard is best known for her custom handbags, usually finished with the classic saddle stitch, in the same tradition it has been done for over 200 years. All of her bags are marked with her logo, an 18-karat gold or sterling silver bee. The bee represents the shortened version of her name, Béatrice, and it is what everyone calls her.

For many years she worked for her studio, designing custom bags. In 2000 she opened a store front at 55 Clement Street. To date she is the only Hermès artisan in the United States designing under her own label with her own boutique.

She is a person with many gifts and seems to always have a new idea in mind.  She runs a program for kids with learning disabilities, giving them the opportunity to learn the trade and express their artistic side. As they grow, they learn more than just the craft, with lessons on work ethic, accountability, and timeliness thrown in. She finds it extremely rewarding as the kids go away with these new understandings and smiles on their faces.

“My life changed when I started doing leather work,” she says. “I had a major life experience with this craft. So I am very, very attached to it. It is more than a job for me; it is a life long love story. I feel like giving these kids something…giving them this opportunity, to put them in a positive environment. They are not being judged, it is not about accomplishing, it is about having fun.”

In January 2012, she opened a school open to anyone who desires to learn more about the craft. The goal is to keep the craft alive and pass on this handmade tradition. To learn more about the school, visit the website here.

Amblard continues to produce exceptional, beautiful accessories and still find time to work on her other projects. Be sure to check out her website and all that she is up to.

Welcome April in Paris and The Scout Guide San Francisco!

It’s popping up everywhere–gorgeous shades of Indigo Blue for fall. Check out some of our favorite picks from around the country here…

Top left and right, from Capitol in Charlotte. Second row left, from Eloise in Charlottesville. Center: GRAY Aspen dress from The Gallerie in Aspen. Middle right, Mark and James from Alexandria’s Bishop Boutique, which also has the lounger shoe seen on the bottom left. Finally, on the bottom right, the Mara Hoffman from Coral in Charlotte.

See the GRAY Aspen Cove dress in The Scout Guide Aspen’s The Gallerie spread here…

Check out this bag at And George here in Charlottesville:

Check these out this weekend… and tell them SCOUT sent you…

Have you heard of Arzberger in Charlotte?

We are so excited to tell you about this amazing business. A unique quality of Arzberger–when it comes to stationery, Arzberger covers the whole process. Every step of the process occurs under that one roof. They have their own line of paper so that they can achieve a special thickness and color. The paper is part cotton and part pulp, and the cover stock is 100 percent wood pulp, which makes for a firm card with a great feel. They design in house, and of course print in house. You can know that the Arzberger feel and quality will be there from paper to print–that is what makes them stand out not just in Charlotte but nation-wide. Arzberger offers a return to tradition–retaining that classic feel, look, and trusted quality. No wonder they have been in business since 1922!

Ninety years later: “The power of the written word has never been greater,” says Owner Luther Dudley. Arzberger strives to capture and enhance this power with their beautiful stationery. In an age full of email, texts and facebook posts, receiving a beautiful invitation or letter means more than ever. Technology is certainly powerful, a fact Arzberger does not deny. Instead, they use recent technology to their advantage while retaining the printing traditions of old.

Flat print, letterpress, engraving, foil stamping, calligraphy or type style. Does this mean anything to you? Elizabeth Edwards, the designer at Arzberger, will help you sift through the details. “Some people have an idea of what they want already,” she says. “But if not, we pull out samples and get an idea of what they want. Traditional is our specialty but we can do contemporary as well. The contemporary design focuses more on design than on process. We are really process-oriented.”

Here are a few glimpses of the process at Arzberger.

Clearly, there is a lot of precision, talent and focus going on in that press room!

Arzberger focuses on the heritage of paper. “I have brides come in and they have their mother’s and their grandmother’s wedding invitation in hand,” Elizabeth says. “They say, this is what is meaningful to me and I want to do something like this.

“For an invitation we’re going to keep it reverent–a wedding is a reverent event–you’re committing your life to someone. We serve the market of those who feel that way. The wedding is ultimately a ceremony. We feel strongly about that and are really dedicated to serving the market for people who want to continue with that tradition and be cognizant of the heritage of it.”

While they serve the many brides and grooms of Charlotte and cover a multitude of social stationery needs, Arzberger also does a lot of corporate stationery for Charlotte businesses. “It is a way for them to make a statement that they are serious about their business,” says Elizabeth.

Want to really make your wedding invitation personal? They will do it for you.

“Sometimes we embellish based on what clients want,” says Elizabeth. “They want something to make it theirs, such as envelope liner, wax stamps, or ribbons. But we want to know that if you take off the bells and whistles they will have a traditional invitation they can frame and be proud of 50 years later. We appreciate what other people do but we just want to remain classic and traditional in our style.”

If you’re not in Charlotte, Arzberger has hundreds of agents across the country that have albums of their work, allowing you to directly order Arzberger paper and product from wherever you are… shopping locally at home and in Charlotte.

Check out the amazing work of Arzberger… Don’t forget to tell them SCOUT sent you…

Photos by the wonderful and talented Chris Edwards, TSG Charlotte photographer. Check out his site here.