Je t'aime, mon petit chou — Why My Best-Selling Redbubble Design Is a Cabbage

Je t'aime, mon petit chou — © John Corney

The most popular piece in my Redbubble shop is, somewhat improbably, a cabbage.

Not a metaphorical cabbage. A literal one. A soft-green ornamental cabbage, photographed head-on, sitting quietly at the centre of a Valentine's Day design that has genuinely surprised me by outselling almost everything else in the shop. It turns out that if you offer people a chance to call their sweetheart my little cabbage in French, a certain kind of person will jump at it.

What "Mon Petit Chou" Actually Means

To English speakers, calling your beloved a small cabbage sounds mildly ridiculous, and that's part of the charm. But mon petit chou is one of the most common and affectionate terms of endearment in French — the rough equivalent of "sweetheart," "honey," or "darling." It's the kind of thing a French grandmother says to a grandchild, a lover says quietly in a café, a mother says to her son when she's proud of him. Nobody in France finds it strange. Nobody, in fact, is thinking about vegetables when they say it.

The word chou in this context is a shortening of chou à la crème — the small round French pastry filled with cream (what English speakers call a cream puff). So the term of endearment isn't really about the leafy vegetable at all; it's about the pastry. Calling your beloved mon petit chou is closer to calling them "my little cream puff" than "my little cabbage." Which, in fairness, is only slightly less peculiar. But the French have a whole tradition of food-based endearments — ma puce (my flea), mon canard (my duck), ma biche (my doe), mon lapin (my rabbit) — and mon petit chou is perhaps the most universally used and warmly regarded of them all.

The full phrase in my design, je t'aime, mon petit chou, translates to "I love you, sweetheart" — with the small warm foreignness of the French making it feel like something more considered than a supermarket card.

Why the Cabbage

Given that the endearment is really about the pastry rather than the vegetable, I could have designed the piece around a cream puff. But there's something more visually striking about the ornamental cabbage — the ruffled edges of the outer leaves, the tight rosette of the centre, the soft cool green of the whole plant. It reads as a flower more than a vegetable. And there's a knowing joke in the literal translation being my little cabbage, playfully leaning into the strangeness rather than away from it. The design is a small piece of language-humour: French speakers will smile at the phrase; non-French speakers will learn something delightful; and everyone will get a Valentine that isn't just another red heart.

Perfect for Valentine's Day — and Order Early

This design has quietly become my Valentine's Day workhorse — most sales come in the six-week window before February 14th each year, from people looking for something a bit different for a partner, a mother, a friend, or that specific person in their life who takes small delights seriously.

A word on timing: Redbubble prints each product on demand and ships from a network of international print partners, which means production plus shipping takes a little extra time during the busy pre-Valentine's rush. If you're ordering for February 14th, mid- to late-January is the safe window. Leaving it until the first week of February risks a card arriving on the 15th, which is a small disappointment for everyone involved.

A Companion Piece

If you like this piece and would like something softer and more minimalist, I've also made a line drawing of two small cabbages holding hands under the same French phrase — the same idea treated as a hand-drawn note rather than as a botanical portrait. The two pieces work as a pair for anyone who likes both approaches.

Available on Redbubble

Je t'aime, mon petit chou is available at my Redbubble shop across the full product range — greeting cards, t-shirts, mugs, tote bags, art prints, throw pillows, stickers, notebooks, and more. The greeting cards are the most popular choice, understandably: a card in this design does the whole job of a Valentine's card while being noticeably more considered than the standard supermarket options. But the t-shirt and mug versions are just as good, and both have their small devoted followings.

Je t'aime, mon petit chou on Redbubble

You can find all my work at my Redbubble shop, KornKob Art — or search Redbubble for kornkobart (one word).

À bientôt, mes chéries.