Around the Shops at the Museums

Right up there with the cake, visiting the shop is one of the central tenets of any museum visit. And, museum shops these days offer you the chance to buy much more than an eraser and a pencil (though you can still get those too). You get things you know you aren't going to find anywhere else, and contribute to museum funds in the one fell shop - surely the ultimate in cultural snobbery.

Although I used to work for a museum shop, I still double-taked when I saw the above on Disney Roller Girl. It's a gorgeous eye palette created that By Terry’s Terry De Gunsberg has created exclusively for the National Gallery. This beauty is £150, but the National Gallery are selling everything from eye-stain pencils to nail varnishes to accompany their Making Colour exhibition. With this collaboration, I think they've possibly even topped their Artistic Bouquets.

There's beauty to be bought at the V&A too, in the form of the Exhibitionist range of nail varnish, made by Walker + Walker for the museum. The V&A's diverse collections especially lend themselves to amazing products, such as great jewellery and pretty T-shirts. They also regularly commission exclusive prints. This Rob Ryan You Are My Universe print is part of an edition of 500, produced to accompany the Wedding Dress exhibition.

Plenty other Sluttery favourites have made themselves at home in museums and galleries too. We've written about Mini Moderns and their close links to the Southbank Centre before. That combo is responsible for this fab Bartolemew chair too.

Here's the wonderful Tatty Devine for the London Transport Museum Shop. They've producing a whole range to celebrate 'The Year of the Bus', including this gorgeous bus brooch. It's yours for £35.

The Transport Museum also does great homewares, including these colourful luggage racks. Or you could go for one of these equally colourful cushions, based on tube seats (yep, this week we're giving you the tube for your sofa, as well as for your tent). They're £55 each.

Nip over to the Tate for another blast of brightness. This mug is part of their collection by Yoni Alter and is ridiculously up-to-date with London's skyline (if not strictly accurate when it comes to the colour scheme).

This sunshine satchel is another Tate exclusive. It's by Barbara Wiggins and is £99.

You could be brilliantly dressed by buying from museum shops alone, and not just the most obvious one. This scarf comes from the Science Museum and is decorated with an image of the Hadron Collider. (The Science Museum is definitely your destination if you want anything Hadron Collider inspired.)

For more not-quite-what-you-think-it-is, check out the Timorous Beasties collection for the National Galleries of Scotland. This eerie eyeball actually belongs to Mary Queen of Scots and is available, on the bowl, for only £6.50. If you're a David Shrigley fan (and who isn't really?), there's lots in store for you too.

Other museums and galleries with great shopping opportunities include Baltic, National Portrait Gallery, Dundee Contemporary Arts and the Design Museum. Have I missed any other favourites?