Back in the late 80s, in a small shopping centre in my home town, there was a shop called Nova.
From the outside it was pretty unassuming... But step through that door as an eleven year old girl, and it was nothing short of magical.
It wasn’t a large shop but what it lacked in size it more than made up for in joy. The shelves were slightly cluttered in the most wonderful way - packed with a charming collection of stickers, tiny pencils, scented rubbers, sweet little postcards, soaps, tins and trinkets… Everything was pretty and cute and my eyes would light up the moment I walked through the door.
I would scan those shelves slowly, picking things up, turning them over, my young mind quietly calculating just how far my pocket money might stretch. It never stretched far enough, of course… It never does!
Then, in my teenage years, Nova opened its upstairs. And where eleven year old me had swooned over cute sticker packs, fifteen year old me absolutely drank up the joss sticks, tie-dye skirts and dangly earrings that had taken up residence above. The shop had somehow grown with me - still eclectic, still full of character, still capable of making my heart smile.
Nova closed in the early nineties, as so many beloved little independents do. But it left its mark on me. Because that little shop taught me something I’ve never forgotten. That small things can hold the most enormous joy… That a tiny treasure, chosen with care, has the power to lift your whole spirit.  The joy of being met with a whole host of prettiness and finding that one perfect little thing - the thing that makes your heart sing - is one of life’s tiny, underrated pleasures.
I have never stopped craving that feeling.
And I suppose, in everything I design, everything I make and everything I choose to stock, I’m chasing it still. Not that Ava Loves Rosie was ever about recreating that little shop exactly. It was about honouring a feeling. The joy of tiny treasures. The warmth of pretty things. That little moment of happiness that a prettily packaged soap or a sweet postcard can bring, if you let it.
Nova was a just another little shop in a town centre, no doubt like countless others up and down the country. But the joy evoked by those shelves of cute stickers, mini tins and novelty rubbers has never left me, and never will. I’ve found myself re-collecting those tiny treasures through my adult life and their appeal is now magnified through the delightfully hazy and happy lens of nostalgia. But more than anything, it’s that feeling I try and capture here, in my own little web-shop. I hope you recognise my homage to the joyful, pretty little trinkets and treasures so popular back in the 1980s… And I’d love nothing more than for Ava Loves Rosie to evoke a little of the ‘Nova effect’.

Thank you for reading! Xx