What Illustrator Joana Avillez Can’t Live Without

Lena Dunhamgave me one like 15 years ago as a birthday present with some other stationery things. It’s round, and you shimmy up the razor blade and then it tucks away. When I’m drawing, I don’t use Wite-Out. I’ll cut things out and then replace them. This is the perfect little tool where I could cut things out and also use it for opening boxes or really everything. I have a dozen of them on my desk and I love them.

I buy these in bulk. I’ve used so many different kinds of erasers and some don’t really erase. Some, they almost push the pencil in farther, I think, or they take away a lot of paper. It’s the perfect eraser, and I use them constantly. And I will use the Olfa Touch-Knife to cut them into smaller pieces if I want a really small sliver or a little cheese wedge with a point to erase something very small.

It looks kind of pompous if you have it, but when you’re erasing with the Faber-Castell eraser and you have all these little bits or eraser droppings all over, you don’t want to use your hand to brush them away because of the grease on your fingers. That could smudge the paper or leave oil on the paper, so I always use this brush. It’s the best thing for a drawer or for anyone making something. I have two, but if I can’t find it, if they’re under some other paper, I realize how often I am using it. Maybe I’ll put my hand in my sleeve and use my sleeve because even if your hands are clean, you don’t want them to be touching the paper.

I have a lot of cousins in Portugal I would see in the summer, and as a kid I remember the younger ones all wore this particular baby perfume. Later I asked my cousin Rita and she told me it wasTartine et Chocolat. It is just my favorite scent. I’ve worn it for years, but it doesn’t really last because, thankfully, since it’s for babies, it doesn’t have the agents to make it stay on you. But I love that smell. It’s like a musk with orange in it. I’ve chased multiple people down streets when I’ve smelled a whiff of something that got at that smell.

My mom always had ume plum vinegar, and I think my aunt had it, too. I love it so much. I have three bottles of it in the cabinet. Now my husband loves it. I use it in salad dressing, on rice, on sautéed greens or mushrooms, pretty much everything. I haven’t done it, but a friend of mine used to put a little drop in sparkling water. If we make a vinaigrette for a salad, we’ll drink the remaining part rather than waste it. It’s umami in an amber glass jar, like a magic umami potion.

Whisking eggs is very tiring. I have the same eggbeater from my childhood kitchen that I brought to where I live now. I make a lot of omelets and scrambled eggs for my son, and now he likes scrambling eggs because it’s so fun. It’s like a bicycle that’s whipping eggs. Do people everywhere not use these? My friend Isabel saw me using it on FaceTime and she was like, “What are you doing?” And I was like, “This is a very common tool.” Actually, I have to make some frosting later and I look forward to it. It makes whipping frosting something that I could do, and I’m not a maker of frosting. Why whisk when you can use a rotary hand crank egg beater? You can get such a froth.

They’re little homeopathic pellets. Every time I was sick as a kid, my mom would have me put them under my tongue. I don’t know how much of it is maybe a placebo, but whenever I take it, I feel better. I like to have that homeopathic element mixed in, even if I’m gonna take a DayQuil. This friend Valentina, we were at her house and my son was a little sick or something and she brought out this whole mini-suitcase of all these homeopathic remedies. I think it gives you this sense of control because you’re like, “Oh, dizziness, headache, take this remedy.” It’s so specific. I love all of that, but I use this one the most. I take it preemptively. Maybe if there’s the thought that I could be sick — the thought could be contagious — I’ll take it then.

Jellies have taken the world by storm thanks to The Row, but some of us have been buying jellies and paying a lot of shipping from France for a very long time. There was this French brand called La Saraizienne that considers itself the original makers of jellies. They were first made in 1946 because after the Second World War there was a shortage of leather, so they made these plastic PVC shoes as a replacement. For the past 20 years my friends and I would order them from this old website, and the shipping was very expensive. The brand closed and is now reborn, and I think it’s the same original mold. Now they’re called La Méduse. I have like 20 pairs. They’re just an all-around perfect shoe if you’re at a party, and then maybe you’re wading in a stream, or you’re caught in the rain, or you’re at the beach. It’s a utilitarian fairy shoe. I am a real shoe freak. I feel very like a Carrie. Didn’t she keep shoes in her oven? That seems very reasonable to me.

I couldn’t live withoutLittle Fur Family. This is also something that I now tend to buy in bulk because there are a lot of babies constantly being born. It’s a book that I loved as a kid. When my son was a newborn I was in a full haze, and reading a beloved children’s book when you first become a parent can kind of ground you to your own childhood, if you want that. But it also sort of gives you this compass to feel things. When I would readLittle Fur Family, I felt like I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. And it’s just the warmest, coziest book. And of course it’s wrapped in fake fur and it’s a very small size. I like trying to find the small editions, not the board book that has the little furry belly, but it doesn’t really matter because Margaret Wise Brown’s words go so deeply into you. And the little fur character when he finds another even smaller little fur character — I found it so cozy. And then at the end when they’re holding the little fur kids’ paw. It also makes you feel like having a kid is sort of an animal thing to do. It’s not just being in a hospital being cut open.