Design Inspiration. Planet Stencil Library.

Stencil inspiration using VN5 Shadows, an optical Illusion stencil.

Our VN5 Shadow stencil must be one of our simplest stencils and it is one of my favourites, we were inspired to design it after seeing some knobbly, rubber floor tiles. There are two layers to the VN5 Shadows stencil and they repeat so that you can stencil large areas with speed and accuracy. After painting the base colour onto your surface mix a darker and lighter shade of it to apply through the stencil. I went one stage further with my application and applied white acrylic paint through one of the stencil overlays then applied Raw Sienna acrylic over it. I faded out the colour to expose areas of white paint. This method further accentuates the illusion of a highlight. I could have applied a stippling of white highlight after stencilling the Raw Sienna but I found this way round looked smoother.

Rachel chose Canton Green from Little Greene Paints as the base colour for her hallway.

She mixed some of the Canton Green colour with white acrylic paint for the highlights, then, for the shadows she mixed Black and Burnt Umber with the green.  I think the effect is gorgeous. Rachel did not do the same 'arty highlight bit' that I had, it was not needed. So, with a little patience, a little paint and a stencil you can create some fabulous effects. I would recommend two of our extra large stencil brushes for a similar project or our large double ended brush.

Helen.

Are We Ahead (no pun intended) of the Trend Again?

We get the excellent Domino Magazine's newsletter pinging into our inbox and were intrigued by this title:  "Why Stranger Art Is The Design Trend You Need To Try Now".  No, not strange art, stranger art referring to collecting and hanging portraits of complete strangers in your house.  According to Domino, "Yes, you should have weird portraits of random people in your home". 

photograph The Vintage Rug Co (from the Domino site)

Well, I am right there with you because I have several portraits of complete strangers in my home.  I could not tell you why, I just liked them. 

Mine are quite well executed.  The only one you could class as weird is the one where the hands have been left until last (being tricky to get right) only they were never finished.  You can pick up portraits at antiques fairs, car boot sales, flea markets, or on ebay, etsy and other sites if you are prepared to hunt.  And some of them are by less than accomplished artists.  But in a way, now have come into their own, if your tendencies lean slightly more towards the weird or creepy.  And you can still find bargains if you look.  I know I had fun sourcing mine and it took time.

I stencilled my bedroom walls precisely so I could hang loads of art by going for a random placement of an art deco floral pattern stencil.  I just tended to gravitate towards portraits.  I could still add more.  I am always looking and buy when something speaks to me (as long as it is within budget).  Choosing art is, as it should be, very personal.  And if your taste it for weird portraits of random people, well then you are bang on trend (and you can tell anyone who Lady Bracknell's at your choice of art that). 

Rachel

Dimore.....d'amore

Hotel Saint Marc Paris

Swoon.  Recently I have been clocking interiors by Dimore Studio from Milan.  They do commercial and residential commissions.  I scan the various home/design magazines and every now and again, something will stop me in my tracks and my heart will beat a bit faster.  It turns out that recent things that had this effect on me were all by Dimore Studio.

Image dimorestudio.eu

(Note on the previous two photos their "skirting board" effect.  Simple but effective band of matt black paint maybe 30cm deep with a metallic gold band of about 2cm.  Easy to achieve with some low tack tape, gold stencil paint and a stencil brush).

That is saying something because I am hard to impress.  I have a very particular style and even am very picky about what I like.  My love of Dimore style was further cemented when I walked into the small but gorgeous Cire Trudon shop in Paris to buy a scented candle recently. 

I immediately noted the colour combination and the cabinets and asked the manager if they were vintage and he said no, they had been custom made by Dimore Studio ("Did I know them?") from Milan.  I would imagine most people wouldn't know who they were, but not only did I know, but they are my current design crush.  How kharmic. 

How can I describe their style?  Well it is that perfect combination of old and new.  It is definitely mix and match which is so important to make interiors not seem either clinical or that they are out of a shop catalogue. 

Hotel Saint Marc Paris

In their own words, they combine "different materials and eras, maintaining a dialogue between the past and the contemporary".  They favour the 1920s art deco through to the 1970s.  Using antique items means that there is always an element of the unique.  They combine this with bespoke designed items so there is an element of new as well. 

Image elledecor.it

They like to be creative with colours.  Scan through google images of their work and white walls are nowhere to be seen.  Like me, they have used magenta and lilac carpets, teal and dark inky blue walls and more. 

Hermes Maison Showroom Milan, photographer Andrea Pisapia

They just seem to have a talent for putting things together in a particular way that to me is very modern and full of personality. 

Casa Fayette Guadalajara

"What is modern now?" is always the big question being asked about any kind of design.  Well to me, the most successful modern still is the ability to mix and match eras, textures, colours, patterns in ways which will only ever be personal because there is always ingredients that are one-offs whether they are bespoke or antique.  In other words, noone else could possibly have the same.  And if you use bespoke or antique in your house, it is there because you have specifically chosen it to be there and this adds soul to your scheme. 

I just find everything Dimore do inspiring and am so glad they are fans of colour and pattern.  At the risk of sounding very precious, I would never thought I would let anyone design Egglestone Manor, but I think I would let them if I wasn't doing it myself (I am sure they would be thrilled to know that :) I know I thought the cabinetry in Cire Trudon would look marvellous in my kitchen (love the curved edges).

And I love the gloss painted curved ceiling in this bathroom.  I am making a mental note to do something similar in my bathroom (when we get around to redoing it as it is still 1970's avocado hell - this on the other hand is 1970's scrummy).

Image elledecor.it

Yes, it is love.  And I look forward to seeing future projects and am hoping a book may appear at some point so I can swoon at my leisure.   I must say I have really enjoyed writing this post and immersing myself in Dimore world.

Rachel

Yes, Cake Can Be Inspiring

These days, if I venture into Newcastle city centre I visit Fenwick's amazing Food Hall which was completely redone a year ago (if you have not been, I can recommend that you do).  Honestly, I could move in. 

(photo source unknown)

It is full of food and drink that you won't find anywhere else.  I was about to buy some Christmas mince pies for my husband when I was almost knocked flat by the sight of a stack of panettoni from G Cova & C  of Brera, Milan. It was the packaging. 

The same style and print used in 1930 (the same recipe too).  I was seduced and decided that my husband really wanted a panettoni for the Christmas season (even though he has never had one before).  The ones wrapped in paper were divine but then I spied the ones in boxes.  Needless to say, one is now sitting on top of the microwave in my kitchen.  The more I saw it, the more I started to think about the graphics and colours of the packaging and how amazing they would look on the walls of my tiny kitchen.  It is the combination of cornish blue, orange and cream that is setting decorative plans in motion.  And then the art deco graphics, the angular and linear shapes (which you can really see in the cafe photo).  A similar vibe can be created with stencils of course and we have similar designs in both our Art Deco and Modern Design ranges.

(photo from postcards from milan, photographer unknown)

So I decided to write this post just to say that inspiration can really come from anywhere.  In the course of finding some photos, I found the site of the G Cova & C. that makes these panettoni (and more).  And then I really thought I had died and gone to heaven.  All the products are wrapped in the most amazing art deco papers in beautiful colours. 

Fuschia, red and off white.

Chocolate brown, taupe, grey, burgundy.

Orange, red and gold.

Mint Green and chocolate brown.

I want them all!  Just to look at.  And then I could decorate and stencil an entire house using the colour combinations and art deco graphics for inspiration.  Yummy in more ways than one.

Meanwhile, my box with its panettoni sits on top of the microwave oozing inspiration (slightly in the dark in this photo).

I don't know where it will take me yet and the kitchen is not an immediate project so it might be a while before there are any results to show you, but you'll see it here first.

Rachel

(all photos G Cova & C unless stated, except the last which is mine).

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Why we decorate

A very useful list of colour combinations that work well together by Abigail Ahern, one of Britain's top interior decorators.  You can even change the tone if the darker version isn't to your taste, and they still work.  Instead of charcoal and magenta, pale grey and pink is a lovely colour combination (as done in Christian Dior's swoon worthy new flagship fashion and interiors storeon New Bond Street in London).

After weeks of dry (which does not always equal nice) weather, the heavens opened yesterday and the temperature dropped as we had a day of low cloud and rain.  Much needed for the garden but it was dank and chilly.  At the end of the working day, I rushed home, walked into my house, kicked off my Hunter rubber lace-up brogues (for the wet, but still cool looking) and took off my waxed parka (also for the wet) - we British are well versed in fashion for the wet, put a few gentle lights on, switched on the heating (yes, in England one occasionally has to pop the heating on for an hour or so to take the chill off even in the summer), and made my husband and I cheese on toast with a big mug of tea for dinner (pretend there is an arty pic here of melted cheese on perfectly done toast and a steaming mug of tea).  Some days you just need comfort food.  It never tasted better and I was as happy as could be watching the rain fall outside and feeling warm and secure inside.  As I had walked into my partially finished house this particular evening, I was reminded of something I read written by interior designer, author and style guru Abigail Ahern in her book "Colour" that really stuck with me.  She wrote,

"The ability of colour to transform surroundings, to excite, inspire, tantalise and calm, is second to none.  It has changed my life.  I know this sounds super dramatic, but it's true.  Colour has given me a home that I never want to leave.  It has made me happier.  When I put my key in the door at the end of a long day I get this squishy feeling of contentment that envelopes me, and it is all because of colour.  I can assure you, a white hallway just wouldn't have the same effect!"

 

Painted in Canton by Little Greene with black eggshell wood trim and an art deco door from ebay.  My non-white "enveloping" hallway which is STILL not finished after 3 years, but still gives me joy as I walk in the door.  Or is that because the well stocked cocktail cabinet is right there.....

She has a point about having a home that "envelopes" and makes one feel happy, secure and....at home.  That is exactly how I felt when I walked in my door.  And the truth is, I feel the same whether the weather is bad or not.  This, in a nutshell, is why we put time and money into our houses: decorating, furnishing, accessorising and have done ever since we started to build homes.  Ms Ahern has three rules: 1) Make it personal 2) Take risks (I translate that to "ditch the rules") and 3) Be curious.  This is interesting.  Sometimes people worry about decorating and are not sure what to do.  Somewhere along the road, there were whispered rules about how one should decorate and this has had the effect in many cases of inhibiting people and stop them from creating something truly personal, taking them away from creating a home.  As Ms Ahern says, "The more you ditch the rules, the more intriguing a room becomes".  And more personal of course.  If you look through her book you will see that Ms Ahern is totally at peace with using dark colours for decorating. 

My dark living room, walls painted in Farrow & Ball's Blue Black and my gorgeously comfortable sofa (Rupert range) from Habitat in emerald green velvet.  The room is even more cocooning at present as the curtain rail is broken and the curtains have to remain closed.  My husband and I totally unwind here binge watching box sets (currently "Game of Thrones" - are we late to that party or what?) cutting ourselves off completely from the outside world for short, precious, spells, recharging the batteries.

This would send many running to the hills, but, to digress slightly, in fact she is right about them.  They are underrated and seriously gorgeous to use.  We wear dark colours because they are flattering.  Well, the same applies for walls.  But I am not about to tell you to use dark colours.  Colour is your choice and I couldn't agree more with Ms Ahern: just make it personal.

Ultimately, we all gravitate to making a nest and there is no better feeling than walking through our front doors, breathing a sigh of contentment and feeling a shiver of pleasure at being home. 

That, in a nutshell, is why we decorate.

PS.  Ms Ahern does have another recommendation and since we at The Stencil Library are all about pattern, I feel I should pass it on :)  As she says, "Pattern is a fundamental part of design"

Rachel Egglestone.

 

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Unapologetic Interiors

Is the brilliant subtitle of a new book called “Would You Like To See The House?” by Lorraine Kirke, interior designer and style guru.  Lorraine has a particular style, it is not for everyone, but she has to be one of the best at it.  Her interiors full of colour, verve and wit, are created from nothing but antique and vintage finds and treasures. 

Her talent lies in how to combine these finds and make them work together in a way that looks casual and easy.  Her many fans all say they would love to trawl flea markets with her and I can understand why.  To live this style, you have to have “the eye”: the ability to see beauty in something old and most likely battered (this is how my husband claims I found him and I think he may be right).  Seriously, if you like antiques and vintage then you can totally appreciate Lorraine’s interiors. Q:  why do we like old things?  A: they are totally personal. 

When you are looking at antiques and vintage, there will only ever be one.  We antique hunters can still list in detail the finds we left behind and still regret.  When you buy it, it is for no other reason than you love it.  It might be stylish, but probably not in style.  It might even have financial value and could even be considered an investment, but true vintage lovers think of all their things as priceless simply because they love them and see beauty in them. 

Vintage lovers see themselves as custodians of things that are fast disappearing but have unknown stories attached to them and therefore an air of mystery and personality.  In most cases, and I can totally testify to this, vintage lovers are always on the lookout and always collecting.  Their houses are always evolving.  They might enjoy something for a while and then pass it on to the next vintage lover.  As decorators, they are quite fearless and yes, unapologetic.  Colours and patterns clash yet work.  Mix and match is what it is all about.  They might have a strong understanding of historical styles and dates but will think nothing of mixing stuff from different eras. 

Lorraine has a vast collection of art.  Some of it may be valuable but a lot of it is not and the valuable and not so are parked right next to one another simply because they work.  Her art is there because she likes it.  She gets creative in ways we rarely imagine.  She didn’t like the doors as doors, but they were panelled and beautiful.  So the doors came off, were chopped up and used as wall panelling.  Nothing fit an awkward corner, so an old sofa was sawn in half.  A chandelier that didn’t quite work as is got sprayed with black paint, crystals and all.   Non-vintage people who see vintage-lovers’ houses would not live the same way at all and yet can still enjoy looking at all the wondrous finds and creativity like being in the middle of something that is part living museum, part circus and all home. 

And these interiors, whilst they might be a cleaner’s nightmare (how to dust!), there is nothing precious about them, they are meant to be lived in and used.  Some people might scoff and think that everything was just randomly thrown into place, but I can assure you not.  Everything is thought out and has its place.  The only rule, and this is the rule for all houses, is that the décor is a true reflection of the personality and taste of the people who live there.  That is all that matters in decorating.  Lorraine’s book is proof of that.  It is all pictures (200+) and very little text, which I like.  The photos do the talking.  And she cannot “teach” you how to do this.  If you like the style, you know how to do it.  It is a yummy book to jump into, page after page of wonderful nooks and crannies throughout the homes she has decorated.  It is fun to see her unique finds and think, “I wish I had come across that”.  One of the contributors describes her style as: “layered, deep, colourful, rich, storied, interesting, dark, rock’n’roll, eclectic” and I love it all.  And just as she does not apologise for her style, neither do I. 

All photos Patti Stoecker from "Would You Like To See The House?" by Lorraine Kirke, published by Rizzoli.

Rachel

Painting Wood Trim

This post is not particularly pretty to look at so I shall insert a photo of a vase of lovely flowers that I had saved to my phone years ago here just to liven it up (I am sorry I do not know the source of the photo).

This post is about one of the more boring and tedious aspects of decorating, but will show you a useful and practical technique that we have used to great effect several times in our various, usually old, houses.  Once it is done, it is quite exciting, trust me.  It has been on my brain recently because I am having all the woodwork (doors, door frames, skirting boards, stairs and bannister) painted in my hallway.  My problem is that my house was built in 1935 and the woodwork has been systematically repainted ever since (who knows how many layers of paint are on there).  Also the walls have been plastered, artexed (textured thick plaster wall covering), stripped of artex and replastered over the years.  The result is that where the wall meets wood work is no longer straight or tidy. 

There is even evidence of old telephone or electric doorbell wiring running around the edge of doorways, now under layers and layers of old gloss paint. 

I could go to the effort of stripping the many layers of paint off of the woodwork, but this is difficult, messy and time consuming and may not fix the problem.  Also, there is the potential problem with old houses that when you strip things back, you might create/find bigger, messier problems.  It may be the case that it is the layers of paint that is keeping the woodwork in good order.  This is something that plagues all owners of old houses.  But there is a way to tidy things up with paint and it is simple and incredibly effective.  It involves painting a section on the wall, no bigger than a couple of centimetres (but can be less or if you want more of a feature, more), the same colour as all the woodwork.  This effectively disguises where the wall meets the woodwork and any bobbly, wobbly, chipped, wonky, or rough bits disappear.  This can be done by simply taping off a stripe with a low tack tape, but in the case of my hallway, I had another problem.

For some reason I am still trying to get to the bottom of, the wall paint has not adhered to the newly plastered walls particularly well.  Yes, the plaster had completely dried and yes, we sealed them with a coat of watered down PVA as most painters would recommend.  But the paint has still not keyed well and has on occasion come off with the use of low tack tape.  So rather than risk possible damage using loads of tape, I came up with a stencil-like solution.  This involved designing a few simple shape stencils that I could hold in place up against the edge of all the woodwork. 

There is a straight bit

and two different corners for outward and inward corners. 

None of these stencils are big so I can simply hold it in place with my spare hand negating the need for any tape or spraymount, butt the edge of the stencil up to the doorframe or skirting, and stencil small sections, slightly overlapping each repeat so that you keep straight.  It means lots of repeating, but it is very, very quick.  It took me about 2.5 hours to do the top floor and just a bit longer to do the bottom floor - although our hall is not big, it does have 9 doorways as well as the stairs, bannister and skirting board.  I did most of this before the painter did the woodwork so that I didn't have to worry about being too neat and neither does he (hopefully it will save him quite a bit of time "cutting in" which is the skilled technique painters use to paint a clean crisp line along the edge of things), but the rest had to be done after he had painted.  In truth, either was fine. 

The woodwork is being painted in black oil based eggshell and I have stencilled my edge with acrylic paint.  Acrylic has a slight sheen so should look the same, finish wise, as the wood paint.  There may be a slight discrepancy in shade, but as my hallway is quite dark, hopefully you won't notice. 

Here is the finished result (apologies for the quality of the photos.  They were all taken on my phone and the hall does not have a great deal of natural light). 

Much more tidy and streamlined. 

It is quite amazing how crisp looking woodwork in a room makes the whole space look better. 

The stencil in my hall is VN5 Shadows from our Vintage Stencil range.

Here are a few more examples in other schemes we have done over the years:

Under the ceiling coving (this is stencil MD35-L Chrysanthemums from our Modern Design range)

Around a door frame

Around a fireplace

Whilst the photos show darkly painted woodwork, it does work with any colour.  Very effective and one of my favourite decorating tricks.  If you want to do similar using some of our stencil tools, please contact us. 

Rachel

 

The Biba Look

(Biba poster, photo by James Wedge)

No, not clothes, interiors!  I have just finished devouring two books on the 60’s/70’s iconic shop Biba.  It was a bit before my time, but such was its popularity that somehow I was still aware of it well before I started reading up on it.  It is a fascinating story.

In a nutshell, Biba was the clothing boutique started by Barbara Hulanicki and her husband Fitz.  Barbara had her finger on exactly what young people wanted at the time (because she felt it really didn't exist), and even better, provided it to them at a price they could afford (and for a spell, by mail order).  Someone said to me recently that teens in the 60's quite often had to dress as mini versions of their mothers because that was all there was available, especially if you lived outside of London.  This may seem strange now, but to get super cool clothing at the time cost money and was out of reach of your average girl even if you did live in London.  Within a short space of time, Biba grew and grew.  Such was its popularity that they realised they could sell just about anything with the Biba name and it would fly off the shelf.  And so the first lifestyle store was born.

The Biba style: Barbara Hulanicki was a master at reinterpreting the past.  Whilst a lot of clothing at the time was pale and pastel, she loved the deep sludgy colours like plum, brown and russet.  At first, her fabrics were very reminiscent of the dark Victorian look with an art nouveau twist.  Her now famous logo was actually an adapted celtic knot design paired with an art nouveau style font.  We do a stencil of the original (DE228 in the Art Nouveau section).  Aubrey Beardsley was a huge influence on the dark swirling design of both the printed fabrics and the shop.  And the shop….it broke every retail rule in the book and customers loved it.  The walls were painted deep colours or covered with dark patterned wallpaper.  The fittings were usually old wood Victorian counters and shelves that noone wanted. 

(photo Barbara Hulanicki from "The Biba Years: 1963-1974")

Clothes hung from bentwood coat racks that people were chucking out considering them old fashioned.  Palms in art nouveau jardinières were in abundance.  Lighting was low, keeping the shop deliberately dark.   Photos of Barbara’s house at the time showed that the shop was an extension of her home style. It is full of art nouveau and art deco furniture, fabrics and homewares piled up and mixed together in an effortless overblown Victorian/Edwardian style.  It looks so unique and personal. 

(photo James Mortimer for Vogue magazine)

This was the antithesis of the 60’s light and bright modernism that was favoured by many.  She was a maverick (although I am not sure she set out to be – she just knew what she liked and stuck to it).  She lived what she sold. The style of the clothing was also a reinterpretation of the past with the 1920s and 1930s being huge influences on the cut and shapes of ranges all throughout Biba’s existence.  Eventually Biba was so huge – they would get 100,000 customers a week - they were able to take over the 1930s Art Deco building that was the Derry & Toms department store on Kensington High Street.   Big Biba was created.

Over the course of 18 months they designed interiors like no others.  By now, art deco had become a strong influence, but still using the dark smoky colours as before. 

(from kasiacharko.wordpress.com - Kasia Charko worked on most of the illustrations and graphics for Big Biba and has a fascinating blog about Biba and working for it)

Bespoke shop fittings were made for every department.  Masses of mirror were put up everywhere. There were ostrich feathers in abundance.  

(photo Tim White)

Bespoke deco style carpets covered the floors.  Furniture was made and upholstered totally in keeping with the concept. 

Everything was bespoke (all designed by Whitmore-Thomas).  This is the tights display unit.

(Photo Tim White)

It was like stepping into a massive boudoir: black and gold with peach mirror, leopard spot and deco fabrics.  They restored the Rainbow Room on the top floor which was the venue for lunch, drinks, or just hanging out.  It had a stepped ceiling with different coloured recessed lighting in rainbow colours and a pink marble floor.

(Photo from the book "70's Style & Design", photo by Tim Street-Porter)

The building was (and still is) famous for its huge rooftop garden (the largest in Europe until 2012).  They revived it and added real flamingos. Of course, they sold the look so you could recreate it at home.

(illustration by Malcolm Bird - advertisement for Biba)

Note the pattern everywhere: Beardsley style swirls, victorian lace, deco zebra and leopard spots.  The furniture is mirrored, ostrich feathers and fringed lampshades are in abundance. 

They wanted it not just to be a shop but an Experience.  It must have been something else and I wish I could have seen it. 

Strangely it is only recently that I studied Biba in any great depth.  Yet when I look at the interiors of Barbara Hulanicki’s houses and shops, there are very strong similarities to my personal style.  In fact, my current bedroom could almost have been decorated using homewares from the Biba store but are in fact mostly original to the 20’s and 30’s.   My walls are a deep dark grey – I favour low light for atmosphere.  Satin cushions in peach and aqua take over the bed.  There are fringed and ruched vintage lampshades.  Antique piano shawls are scattered about.

(photo Stephen Egglestone)

The feel is definitely deco-decadence which is a term used to describe Biba.

Sera Hersham (Sera of London)

(photo Gisela Torres for the book Seductive Interiors)

and Pearl Lowe (who has just launched a website selling homewares and fab circus themed clothing for children) are two designers who “get” the look as well.  In fact, Pearl has the infamous Biba advertising poster hanging in her living room in this shot.

(photo by Debi Treloar from the book Pearl Lowe's Vintage Craft)

And House of Hackney is the only company today I can think of who are bucking the trend and building a large range of fabrics, wallpapers, furniture, other homewares and clothing with that eclectic antique feel that can be mixed and matched and layered for the total look. 

This is on a smaller scale, but touches upon the same "live it, wear it" aesthetic that Biba took to such heady heights.  I love this company for their use of colour and pattern. 

It can be used in small doses or you could go the whole HOH hog and put the same pattern on your walls, fabrics and furniture. 

I covet their fringed lampshades and velvet cushions.

(the last 4 photos from House of Hackney)

I do recommend you read about Biba.  I read “Biba: The Biba Experience” and “The Biba Years: 1963-1974”.  It was quite extraordinary as a shop that had a huge lasting influence on fashion today.  Totally inspiring.

As Biba was such an advocate for pattern, it is only fitting that I finish with a selection of stencils inspired by Biba either to get the look (start with dark coloured walls) or just because they feel so Biba (just click on any of the titles to take you to our website for more information on that stencil:

DE334 Art Deco Alphabet - Big Biba signage

DE333 Art Nouveau Alphabet - Biba signage

DE263 Art Nouveau Peacock Feather Motif - feathers showed up everywhere in the Biba world

DE232 Delicious Art Nouveau All Over Repeat Pattern - a nod to the patterned wallpapers used and sold

DE82 Victorian Floral All Over Repeat Pattern - again, in reference to the dark abundant pattern used on fabrics and paper

DE158 Aubrey Beardsley Peacock Ladies Panel - just amazing

DE224 Art Nouveau Swirl Pattern Tile

DE335 Art Deco Lady with Sun

VN57 Art Nouveau All Over Repeat Pattern

VN165 Palm All Over Palm Repeat Pattern - in reference the the palms that were in every shop

VN77 Fabulous Art Deco All Over Repeat Pattern

VN214 Fan Dancers (with Ostrich Feather Fans) I like to think that BH would have liked this in the Mistress (lingerie) dept.

349 Leopard Spot Repeat - such a wonderful neutral pattern.  It does with everything.

VN146 Flamingoes - because they had flamingoes in the roof garden!

VN139 Feathers All Over Repeat - ostrich feathers everywhere

VN142 Feathers All Over Repeat - a more art nouveau interpretation

VN300 Swallows - BH makes reference to using a swallow pattern on one of the fabrics.  It was a favourite and sold incredibly well.

Rachel

I have tried to credit all photos to the best of my ability.  If there are any ommissions or corrections please let us know. Any oversight is unintentional.

 

Stencilled Sisal Gorgeousness

I wrote recently on this blog about the "China: Through the Looking Glass" exhibition at the Met.  My sister sent me the Vogue Special Edition Met Gala 2015 magazine which arrived this morning.  The magazine was filled with fabulous photos of the exhibition as well as behind the scenes shots of the Met Gala, a star studded affair celebrating the exhibition's opening.  As usual, the events design team Raul Avila Inc, excelled themselves, but what really caught my eye in particular was this:

An amazing stencilled sisal rug that goes up the main staircase.  It has been made even more dramatic for being flanked by over 6000 massive stalks of bamboo.

You can see the stencilled floor in this photo too.  You can easily create a similar version with our designer blossom stencils, specifically CH24 Designer Sheet No. 1 for the stalks and branches, and CH25 Designer Sheet No. 2 for the flowers.  These stencils are two sheets of a set of four that were designed based on chinoiserie hand painted wallpapers so are very much in keeping with the oriental style.  I like the way this is done quite sparsely in light shaded colours so it isn't too dense or bold of a design.  The flowers are stencilling in what looks like white with hints of blue, lilac or green on top.

  This meandering look is quite simple to achieve because there is no real measurement involved.  You just decide how you want it to look, start with a frame of stalks and branches, then add flowers and leaves.  The only thing to decide ahead of time is how sparse or dense you want your design to be.  If you were doing a large space like this, I would suggest ordering the stencils at 150% of their normal size (just email us for details)for larger scale.  You will always have something unique as no two people will use these stencils in the same way.  You decide how you want your design to "grow".

Sisal is easy to stencil if it is a lightly textured, tight woven sisal (lumpy seagrass would be more challenging).  It does take the paint quite well.  We just use our standard acrylic paints which are great on fabrics, sisal included.  Keep in mind that the paint will wear off over time especially in areas of high traffic, although this does take quite a long while before it starts to happen.  If you find this starts to fade, just get your stencils out and touch it up when needed.  You can read more about how to stencil it in our post on stencilling the sisal rug. 

I am totally inspired.  I am now wondering where I could put a sisal rug, stencilled in a similar fashion, in my house.  If you have been a regular reader of the blog, you will know that my house is very much a work in progress.  I have a 3 phase plan and am only partway through phase 1.  Phase 2 involves putting a small old style orangerie/greenhouse/conservatory on the back of the house.  The type that is more greenhouse than conservatory with a victorian patterned tiled floor and drain so you can water the plants and not worry about water on the floor.  But there would be a small corner for some old style whicker furniture, wood burning stove and maybe a stencilled sisal rug.  But I am leaping ahead of myself.  Phase 1 first.

If you are wanting to recreate chinese bird and blossom panels like the ones on the wall hanging in the photos, have a look at our extensive Chinese Style stencil section, we have several large panels amongst our many oriental stencil designs.

Rachel.

Photographs by Eric Boman for Vogue Magazine

Stencilling on Normal Street

And where is Normal Street?  Well might you ask.  Normal Street exists in the world of "Gortimer Gibbon's Life on Normal Street" an original series made by Amazon for Amazon Prime Instant Video. 

Series 1 came out last year and a second series is being filmed now for release in November.  Kristan Andrews production designer and talented art team recently created a new set for the Normal Street Record Store using our stencils.  And this is where I get very, very excited.  The reason is that they not only chose VN7 Chain Lightning, the art deco chevron style stencil I used in my living room, but they did it in the same colours as my living room.  My living room:

The Normal Street Record Store:

My living room walls now also exist as a record store on a TV program.  How cool is that?!?  From a work standpoint, it is always great when one of our stencils is used in a professional environment and we get to see the results.  Personally, it is way beyond that.  It is proof that something I have done has inspired someone else and that tickles me no end.  Especially as my job is office based and I am not usually on the creative front line.  The stencilling was done by scenic painters Johnmichael Hall and Chris Bodine.  They applied 2 coats of Old Navy paint by Benjamin Moore in an eggshell finish for the base coat and used Pale Gold by Modern Masters for the stencilling and woodwork. 

The stencilling looks fantastic but so does the whole set.  What a stylish record store. 

I love that it looks like a living room. 

In fact, my husband is going to take one look at this and ask why our living room cannot look more like this record store.  We have a windy up gramophone and a radiogram, but the records are all hidden away.  Mmmm.  I might have inspired the set designers, but they have inspired me right back.

Look out for Gortimer.  You can watch the first series now only on Amazon.  The second with the record store, is due out in the US in November.  I am sure it will be available in the UK either at the same time or shortly afterwards.  A big thank you to the Gortimer Gibbon production and art team for sending us the photos of the finished set. 

Rachel

P.S. For a great source of vinyl records, try Jane Delawney Rare and Collectable Records.

All images courtesy of Amazon,  except my living room image by Stephen Egglestone

China: Through the Looking Glass

Whilst it would be nice to jet off to New York City to see the latest exhibition “China Through the Looking Glass” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, unless Mr E wins the lottery, it is not going to happen.  So I ordered the book instead.  It just arrived.  What utter gorgeousness!   Possibly one of the

most drool worthy books ever.  I admit, I am biased.  I love Chinese style, especially the Shanghai look of the 20’s and 30’s that was influenced by the Westerners that flocked to the city to experience its heady delights.  Combine art deco and Chinese imagery and I am in heaven.  This is exactly the sort of

combination I intend to use in my dining room when I can get around to decorating it.  Finding references in books or film is an ongoing passion of mine.  There is nothing worse than a disappointing book and nothing better than something that exceeds expectations.  This beauty falls into the latter

category thankfully.  The exhibition explores the influence and reaches of Chinese style in fashion, art and film.  It is so easy to see why it is so influential: the colours!  The patterns!  What was once terribly exotic is now at once familiar and thank goodness for that.  Had we not had the gall to explore

the limits of the globe all those centuries ago, we would have lost a wealth of outstanding decoration for fashion and interiors and more.  The book has an extensive bibliography and filmography.  I can see my Amazon wish list getting bigger.  I collect piano shawls, robes, vintage Chinese tunics, cheongsams and

more.  My house is full of vintage Chinese items – mostly chinoiserie, the European interpretation of Chinese style.  One of the most coveted wallcoverings has been, for centuries, Chinese handpainted wallpaper.  So much so, we designed an extensive range of stencils to create the look yourself.  I

intend to give these panels my own interpretation in my Chinese deco dining room.  It is a scheme that has been stuck in my head for the best part of two years and the only reason I haven’t launched into it is because the dining room needs a bit of building work first, but it is the room I am most excited about

decorating. This book has me all fired up again (but unfortunately it won’t make the building work happen any quicker).  If you are in NYC any time until mid-August, visit the exhibition (and tell us what it was like).  I am sure it is a feast for the eyes and mind.  If not, order the book, it is entirely yummy too.

Aspire to the principle, behave with virtue, abide by benevolence, and immerse yourself in the arts.  -Chinese proverb

Rachel.

Photography in the book by Platon. Photographs of the book by Stephen Egglestone,

Rachel's House: The Guest Bedroom Part Two

Welcome back to the guest bedroom story.  Just to recap, the walls were painted lilac, the woodwork and ceiling black.  The stencil, art deco border DE296, had been chosen and was to be stencilled in black with green and orange accents.  The carpet is grey and there is an art deco rug in green, orange, black and grey.  The furniture is made of honey coloured wood with ebonised bands...Come on in....

The stencil is a border which is not my usual choice of type of stencil (I tend to prefer all over repeats).  But I wanted to do something a bit different in this room and this particular border allowed me to be a bit creative.  The stencil sits just under our painted coving.  Because of its tile-like look, I could run the border vertically as well as horizontally which I did down one side of the chimney breast for some added detail.

The orange and green accents only show up occasionally and randomly throughout the border.  The other addition we made was to add our initial “E” every so often throughout.   I had a single letter "E" made to the same size as the border.  It is from 305 Modern Alphabet.

It is a bit of fun on our part and a reminder that guests are staying at Egglestone Manor.

It only shows up once on each wall so is quite subtle.

The stencilling took less than a day and something quite extraordinary happened.  When stencilling a border, we always recommend that you start in the most non-visible area in a room as you will never finish perfectly.  In other words, there will always be a seam where you finish.  I chose the right side of the chimney breast as my starting and finishing point as once the wardrobe was in place, you would have to crane your head around the corner to see the stencilling. 

The other good place to start and finish is above the doorway.  To my absolute astonishment, the stencilling finished repeat perfect to the millimetre.  That NEVER happens.  Despite 6 inward corners to stencil (which are always fiddly), the fact that the room is not perfectly square and there is a chimney breast protruding on one wall and I threw in these random “E’s”, the stencilling is seamless.  You cannot tell where I started or finished.  Luck was with me that day and I should have immediately run out and bought a lottery ticket, but I didn’t.

This was an exciting room to put together.  It is probably because I was a bit unsure as we were working on the room.  It felt better than usual when we started to put everything in place and see how well it was working out (not to mention a relief).  Luckily I had measured correctly and the furniture tucked in neatly.  The dressing table doubles as a bedside table.  On ebay, I found two 1970’s chrome mushroom lamps which have a deco look. 

I love Clarice Cliff Bizarre Ware pottery from the 20’s and 30’s but the prices are astronomical as she is so collectable. 

However, I did have some vases that were made in the same era, obviously copying the look, and they work just as well.

I found a wonderful ottoman with very art deco stepped detail.  I love that it is so worn.

The original art deco curtains that I had originally hung in the living room even though they were too small, now hang here and look much better for it.   The size is perfect for the window.

I found a geometric patterned net curtain (needed for privacy) and as it was cotton, I could dye it black (with Dylon Machine Dye) which is more in keeping with the colours of the room.

We have hung a mixture of old and new art, but it is all in keeping with the early 20^th century style. 

This painting is called "After Peploe" and I bought it at the Bywell Arts Festival a few years ago. 

This painting was found on ebay and is from the 1920's. I added a few vintage clothing pieces (you know I cannot resist) and the room is complete.

The only thing I would still like to do in the room is either find or make a fitted bedspread as I think it would look better in this room (the eiderdown could come out when the room is in use and it is chilly).

Although I am not sure I have the skill to make a fitted bedspread, it is a good excuse to head to the fabric shops and have a look at what is out there if I cannot find the right vintage one.

So there you have it.  We finished just as the garden was starting to take off and need our attention.  All in all, it only took 6 weeks from priming and painting through to completely finished  which is quite good going for a complete overhaul.  I think it helped that a lot of research and planning had gone on beforehand so that when we were ready to start, almost everything was lined up.  It also helped that we had a long Easter weekend and a bank holiday weekend which gave us a few extra days.  And of course, I couldn’t have done it without the help and patience of Mr E.  It is handy to work on something with someone else, but we were careful that we were not always working in a small space together at the same time.  Things remained quite harmonious, thank goodness, and we are still friends.

Rachel

All photographs by Stephen Egglestone

Rachel's House: The Guest Bedroom Part One

It has been a while since we had a complete room overhaul to show you, but now we can reveal our new guest bedroom.  No longer is it a storage locker or general dumping ground.  Now we can have people to stay over and not make them climb over mountains of stuff to get to the bed (it was not at it's worst in this photo.  It did get to the point where we couldn't even walk into the room). 

But before I reveal all, let us start at the beginning.

This is the room as we viewed it before we bought the house.  Like most of the rooms in our house, it had artex textured plasterwork all over the walls and ceiling.  It is a small room at only 12 feet square with a window on one wall, a door on another and a chimney breast on the third wall. 

Our first task was to chisel all the artex off the walls and take up the carpet.  We did find the original wall colour underneath which was a rather bold deep coral colour.  The walls would need to be replastered though as they were still quite rough.

You can just see the faint hint of a stepped panel painted in a slightly deeper colour on all the walls.  The floors would have been painted around the edge with a large rug in the middle back in 1935.

My plan was to create a very cubist and geometric art deco scheme, pure modernist.  It is hard to find references of original art deco interiors, but I used the excellent book: The Invention of Chic: Therese Bonney and Paris Moderne as my main inspiration.  

After much deliberation and staring at 100 colour charts,

we chose the secondary shades of purple, green and orange with black thrown in. I must admit that I struggled with this scheme.  I don’t know why.  Maybe I was over thinking it or over researching it.  Maybe it was because my research led me in one direction, but my budget and what was available didn’t always fit or follow the same direction.  We did have to furnish this room from scratch so here was my opportunity to buy authentic art deco furniture.  But the budget and small room size collaborated to limit what we could do. I settled on a dark lilac colour for the walls (Crown Paint’s High Society) because I knew it would set off honey coloured furniture best, having definitely decided that I wanted a paler wood furniture in this room rather than dark.

By this time I had found, quite by accident, an authentic art deco rug that happened to be green, black and orange with bands of gray.  It was obviously meant to be.  It has issues and could one day do with restoration (hence the reasonable price tag), but it is fine for now.  I definitely wanted to stay away from curves with this scheme and this rug was perfect as it is all lines and rectangles.

As the rug only covers about half the room, we did need to carpet the floor.  The wood flooring was just not good enough to leave alone even if we painted it.  I wanted velvet carpet which has a very tight, low pile.  I decided to go for a concrete grey colour.  It had to be grey, not silver, but Dior grey and stay looking grey regardless of the light.  I took home about 8 samples of grey carpet.  It was amazing how the light changed them.  Some ended up looking positively beige, green or lavender in different lights when I got them home and yet they had seemed perfect in the shop.  After much deliberation, I chose “Silver Birch” Prestige by Westex purchased through Dickinsons of Hexham.  A couple of weeks later, they came to install it.  My heart was slightly in my mouth.  I had been so specific about the colour.  The carpet fitter decided to employ carpeter's humour by telling me I had chosed an lovely shade of blue carpet as he was unloading the roll from his van.  I don't think he quite realised what a sensitive subject it was given the number of hours I obsessed over the minute differences between shades of grey.  Luckily it was perfect, in every way.  The colour was spot on and the carpet is just gorgeous.  Well worth it and it will last forever.  As this room is lightly used, I should never need to replace the carpet even if the walls change.

I really struggle with woodwork colours.  As per tradition, everything in our house was white when we moved in.  We went for metallic gold in our living room and the same dark gray as the walls for the woodwork in our bedroom.  In the end, black seemed the best choice for the woodwork and from there, we decided to paint the ceiling black with a black coving effect.

I employed one of Chips', the designer at The Stencil Library, techniques for painting woodwork.  If you live in an older house and the edges of the woodwork are a bit ropey because they might have 100 layers of paint or the walls might have been replastered (like us), using low tack tape, mask off between1-2 centimetres onto the walls. 

This is above the skirting board and around door and window frames.  It is a bit of a job with a spirit level and tape, but it is worth it.  Paint the woodwork and carefully up to the tape. 

When the paint is dry, remove the tape.  This gives you a nice neat line and disguises all the rough areas that meet the wall.  It really does smarten everything up.

We found original art deco furniture on ebay that was very square with ebonised black bands.  It included a large wardrobe, linen cupboard and dressing table.  The size and style fit the room perfectly and matched the bed which had come from another shop on ebay.

We chose a geometric border stencil and had it made at double the size.  It is DE296 from our Art Deco stencil range.  It was  chosen because of its echoes of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Mayan revival/textile block houses from the early 1920’s in LA, specifically Ennis House, Millard House and Hollyhock House

and the artist and designer Sonia Delaunay's geometric fabric pattern prints,

both influences on the look I was aiming for.  If you like her style, see the Sonia Delaunay exhibition at the Tate on until August 9th.

On a side note, these FLW houses were referenced in the apartment design of Harrison Ford’s character in Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner”, one of my favourite films.

The stencilling was to be done in black with touches of orange and green. 

Now all the building blocks were in place.  I didn't want to write too long a post and can be a bit of a tease, so to see how it all comes together, look for part two.

Rachel

All photos by Stephen Egglestone except the paint charts (Helen Morris), the Delaunay scarf (photographer unknown), Millard house (photographer unknown), and the photo from Blade Runner.

 

The minuscule vestibule

I love a porch, inner or outer.  We are fortunate to have a small inner porch.  The walls are covered in a paper that mimics wood panelling on the lower half of the wall and a patterned anaglypta textured paper above it.  Both were painted stark white when we moved in. 

We do have original parquet flooring in this tiny space.  Originally I was going to leave the porch white, but I am not sure why as I don't really do complete white (ever) and it soon became apparent that it felt like one was standing inside a fridge and I am not referring to the chill.  We decided not to attempt to remove the paper because we think the walls are probably quite bad underneath.  Both the panelling and textured paper would come off, but so would most of the walls requiring a complete overhaul and replaster.  One day we may go to that effort but for now, we just wanted to make the space more welcoming and cheerful.  Whilst the area is mainly a dumping ground for coats and boots, it is also the first space any visitor sees in our home so it deserved to be redecorated.  The porch is completely practical.  It is a space for keeping coats, boots and general outdoor stuff without cluttering the house.  It also provides a barrier to the outside.  I reckon that our house is easy to heat and holds its heat well because neither the front or back doors lead directly into the house.  There is a small space and an inner door at both the front and back of the house: this porch at the front and a utility space at the back.

We had two pieces of furniture: an art deco coat and hat rack in aluminium

and two cinema seats covered in brown velvet. 

The cinema seats have beautiful art deco sides, but they fit this space so perfectly, we had to sacrifice being able to see the sides.  We decided simply to paint the space, get the chairs recovered and stencil the light fitting.  The anaglypta and ceiling is painted in Dulux's Sulpher Springs No. 4 matt emulsion which is an egg yolk yellow.  The fake panelling and woodwork has been painted in a black acrylic eggshell paint.  We replaced the inner door with a 1930's stained glass door we found on ebay as it was more in keeping with the house.

Fionda Furnishings recovered the cinema seats in Neisha Crosland's Small Zebra flock fabric purchased through Bernhart Interiors in Ponteland. 

I had a plain, white, round, flat, light fitting and decided it would be fun to stencil a pattern on it.  I used paints suitable for porcelain and glass.  These are generally a bit translucent so won't block the light out.  I chose design DE329 an art deco tile stencil which has a cockerel and sunburst pattern but had Chips remove the cockerel and just keep the sun pattern.  He made it in two layers so that I could stencil the two colours separately.

Had the surface been flat, I could have done the two colours on a single layer stencil, but the light shade has a convex curve which meant the stencil would not lie completely flat.  I had to stencil portions of the design at a time, stencilling only the area of the stencil that was stuck to the surface, as I finished each section I left it flap free from the light shade and adhered the next area of the design.  I used a stencil sponge rather than a brush.  Any smudges could be scratched off carefully, but it went well and no corrections were needed.  Once the black stripes were stencilled, I waited a few minutes to make sure the paint was totally dry and then applied the green colour through the second layer of the stencil.

And here it is in place

 

All in all, it was quite a quick project and was completed within two weeks.  That is the kind of turnaround I like.

Stephen and I have been busy lately.  We have also just finished our guest bedroom so will be posting about that soon too.  Now it is time to turn our attention outdoors.  Our decorating flurry has meant that we have neglected our garden which has taken the opportunity to go jungle like. 

Rachel

All photos by Stephen Egglestone (except for the two "in progress" shots of the light)

Custom Rug - the finished product

Back in mid January, I wrote a post about having a custom hearth rug made by Rugmaker for my living room.  To refresh your memory about the designing process, click HERE.  Bang on schedule, our beautiful rug arrived.  As promised here are photos of said "Joel" rug in place.

We are thrilled.  It was exactly as we had specified. 

The quality is top class and it is just the finishing touch we wanted.  Tallullah (Chippendale & Morris painting) seems pleased as well.  Thank you Rugmaker!

Rachel.

(all photos by Stephen Egglestone)

Having a Custom Rug Made

Helen has mentioned this company before but as I have now had a chance to use them personally and they provided such a great and useful service, I thought I would write about the product and how it works in more depth.  The company is called Rug-Maker and they make custom rugs.  You can have them make a totally bespoke rug and I would imagine this would cost a fair amount.  But they have another service, which is a much more cost effective way to get something totally unique.  You can create your own rug using a range of styles they have:  you pick your style, pick your colours (they have over 600 to choose from), then state your size and choose your quality (knot count) and material (wool or silk or a mix of both).  The most cost effective option is the 60 knot count in wool.  They have over  80 styles to choose from ranging from traditional to contemporary so there should be something for everyone.  Their ingenious site is easy to use.  Once you choose the rug, it lists the colours used within the various sections of their sample image. 

You have a palette where you can choose and change any colours.  It is fun to play with but I must admit a bit of a challenge only in the sense that you want to make the right choice.  I am having the same problem choosing fabric for some curtains….if I am going to have something made up especially for my room and scheme, I want it to be just right. 

So to my project.  I wanted a new hearth rug for my living room.  If you have been keeping in touch with my house projects, you will know that I am working on redoing our entire house in an art deco/1930s style.  I had used an old blue and white chinoiserie rug, but as the final elements were going into the room, I felt the room was moving away from the art deco aesthetic I had envisioned.

I needed to make sure the last few bits and pieces for this room pulled it back towards the modernist look I wanted.  So I thought I would use the chinoiserie hearth rug in the dining room (which I have planned to decorate in a chinoiserie/deco style) and use a more geometric deco rug here.  Finding an original art deco rug is hard, finding one that is a reasonable price is very, very hard. There are some amazing rugs for sale out there (just look at the selection on 1stdibs), but they usually run to 5 figure prices (gulp!).  They are rare and works of art and priced accordingly. To cut a long story short, I was having no luck whatsoever and Stephen still hadn’t won the lottery.  Then Helen reminded me about Rug-Maker.  I took a look at their site and was thrilled to see that in the “geometric” section they did a rug called “Joel” that is obviously an homage to the famous art deco designer Betty Joel (she designed furniture and rugs in the 1930’s and her stuff is hard to come by and covetable).  I was sure something like this would still be well out of budget, but as I mentioned in a previous post, you don’t know if you don’t ask.  I asked and to my delight, a custom wool rug was within my budget.  They price per square metre and can do any size.  My rug needed to be 0.55 mtr x 1.1 mtr so 0.61 square metres total.  I was sent samples of the different knot counts and materials. 

Each sample is half wool and half silk so you can see the difference.  The wool is nice, but the silk is gorgeous.  However, the silk is a lot more expensive than the wool (not surprisingly) so I just stuck to wool.  Wool is still a quality rug product so I was more than happy.  Then it came down to colours.  This was the hard bit.  I sat in the living room on the laptop researching art deco rugs so I could be clear on the types of colours traditionally used.  I also thought about the colours in the current scheme.  And hardest of all, I tried to think of colours that would also work for future schemes.  I came up with two options and then stalled.  The detail would be done in off white, brick red and dark inky blue.  But I was undecided between a pale celadon green

or a beige biscuit colour for the background.

As the Rug-Maker has 600 colours, I knew I could be quite specific.  I cut up and old paint chart and sent the paint “chips” to Julian at the Rug-Maker to match.  He sent me back a batch of tufts to look at.  Honestly, I couldn’t have picked better myself. 

I was so bemused by the tufts, and being a bit 'Minion' mad, I really thought they ought to have names but managed to restrain myself.  I took these home to look at in different lights over the weekend and see what Stephen thought. After much deliberation, we decided to go for the green background.  I chose a green more celadon than jade as in my original artwork.  It was really difficult.  Both would look good in the room.  The beige was more neutral, but in the end, the green was more interesting.  Both were common colours for art deco rugs, but the green just had a bit more pizzazz.  Choice made, order done, proof approved and now we wait. 

It will take about 10 weeks for our rug to be handmade in Nepal.  I am sure it will be well worth the wait and I shall post the results as soon as it arrives.

Custom or customised services like this are becoming very popular as we all endeavour to put our own mark on our houses or wardrobes.  Full custom design work can be very expensive but a customised option on a set range is a way of getting something quite unique at a fraction of the cost of bespoke.  Surface View offer great wallcoverings, blinds and lampshades made to size from a wide selection of famous artworks and photography; Spoonflower allow you to design and print your own fabric; Converse allow you to customise your own sneakers.   Our "In Your Own Words" range of stencils offers you a chance to have your own quote, name or lettering made up from a choice of styles and sizes.  No two people will ever order the same thing. As we have a finite range to choose from, we can offer this customisable service at a great price.  It has become one of our most popular ranges. As I work on my house, I see more and more people are offering custom options which is very exciting. Who is your favourite company that offers this service?

Rachel

Possibly one of the best Christmas presents

Yes, believe it!  It is a Santa outfit for the toilet.

Stephen was given this as a "thank you" from one of his customers.  We thought it was the usual box of chocolates, but it turned out to be even better.  Have you ever seen anything like it?  I think there may be a business idea here.  Let's face it, toilets are not particularly attractive or designerly in most cases.  Especially mine which has not been remodeled yet and is sitting in the middle of 1980's tiling looking a bit tired.  So why not put an outfit on it?  It has cheered us, and anyone else who has seen it, no end.  I think people are quite envious of our festive lavvie.  Why stop there?  There could be all kinds of outfits for the rest of the year.  Any ideas?  Perhaps this is not quite traditional as far as Christmas decorating goes, but it has given us a lot of joy in our world. 

Have a great new year everyone!

Rachel.

Rachel's House: the master bedroom before and after photos

As requested, here are some before and after photos of the bedroom transformation. 

This is the house when we went to view it.  It hadn't been lived in for a while:

This is the bedroom when we'd stripped it of all the woodchip paper (well I say "we" stripped it, actually my hardworking husband stripped it).  You can see the original dark ochre stepped panels painted on a lighter ochre wall:

And here is the final transformation:

It started as a midtone colour, at some point it went to white and now it has gone all the way back to the other end of the colour spectrum and is dark and moody.

To see the full story, click HERE.

Rachel

all photos Stephen Egglestone

Rachel's House: the master bedroom

As promised, here is the story behind the art deco scheme in our master bedroom with more photos.

 

So where did the idea spring from?  Our house was built in 1935 and we are trying to stay true to the era in different ways.  Inspiration can spring from anywhere and in this case it started with an eiderdown.

We had been given this lovely peachy orange satin eiderdown as a present and I was keen to use it in this room.  I also found that I had a 5 litre tin of Farrow & Ball's paint in Railings which is a very deep charcoal grey unused from another scheme.  I like dark and seductive for bedrooms. So now I had dark grey and orange on the brain.  I then started to think of magenta and shortly after that aqua so then I had my colour palette.  I knew I would be doing something with an art deco vibe, but less of the geometric, angular or ethnic inspired deco and more of a curvy french art deco style.  I wanted to do something floral but was mindful that this was Stephen's room too so knew it couldn't be too girly.  I think I was also influenced by the vintage spanish shawls I like to collect.  I had visions of smoky belle epoque boudoirs of 1920's Paris and then the whole thing just started to come together in my head.  I wanted a stylised art deco stencil that could be made big and randomly scattered about over the walls. I chose an art deco motif, code number DE336, but it wasn't quite right. 

So I asked Chips the designer to remove the stamen, but in doing so it no longer held together as a single layer stencil.  Bridging the design took it farther away from the stylised deco flowers I was looking for. 

So Chips and I turned it into a multi-layer design. 

This would be more laborious to do, but would have exactly the look I wanted.  For the stencilling, I chose 4 colours: 720 Cadmium Orange, 500 Medium Magenta, JL551 Pewter and JL548 Old Brass. 

To get this look I had to stencil the orange, then on a second layer put the gray wall colour back in, then Old Brass , then another layer to put the gray back in then finally the magenta with the pewter on the leaves.  Five layers in all.  

I like using metallic colours because the light changes them all the time.  There is no reason why you cannot use a combination of metallic and non-metallic colours on the same stencil.

I thought it would take a long time to stencil because of all the layers, but in actual fact, it was quite quick, probably because it was a random placement rather than anything that had to be meticulously planned and measured out.  I wanted to keep the motifs quite sparse.  Although I had no furniture for this room yet, I knew that wardrobes would probably fill the alcoves either side of the chimney breast so there was no point stencilling flowers in areas that couldn't be seen.  The same for the lower half of the wall where the bed would be.  Because this layout was quite informal, I stencilled the whole room easily within a day.  I decided that I wanted to do something different on the chimney breast.  As the flowers were quite round, a geometric spiky contrast was needed. 

I chose a border from out very first stencil collection in 1988.  It is code number 21 Art Deco.  I intended to stencil bands across the chimney breast from top to bottom.  Then at work one day, I played around with some cutouts and realised they slotted together quite nicely so decided to do two sets of three borders. 

From my cutouts you can see I was toying with the idea of using different colours, but in the end thought it was best to use the Old Brass paint alone.  This is a lovely colour if you don't want something too bright. 

It looks like a metallic brown in most lights but when the sun hits it, it looks like a lovely warm tarnished gold. 

The sun hitting the wall in this photo really makes the Old Brass paint sing, but the walls look blue for some reason.  And that completed the stencilling. 

I convinced Stephen we needed a magenta carpet and managed to find one at our local "Carpet Right" branch. 

We found the two dark wood wardrobes in a house clearance furniture shop (The Kasbah in North Shields).  The carved floral detail echos the floral stencilling.  When we bought them, we didn't realise they were solid oak and had quite a time getting them up the stairs as they weighed a ton.  No matter how we might redecorate in the future, I think these wardrobes are staying upstairs!  We inherited the display cabinet from Stephen's mother.  It was handmade by his grandfather.  The chest of drawers also came from a house clearance shop.  We found the bedside tables on ebay.  They were originally bits of a dressing table that had been salvaged.  They are perfect because they are narrow and also have carved floral decoration on them which looks exactly like the wardrobes.  It was all going swimmingly.  We were sleeping on a mattress on the floor because we didn't have a bed.  It was a new mattress so wasn't remotely uncomfortable, just a bit difficult to get in and out of if you had had a serious gardening session and all your muscles and joints were protesting.  It is super kingsize which is 6 feet wide (bliss).  So we needed a wide, dark wood art deco bed.  To cut a long story short, it took us 20 months to find one.  We had absolutely hit a brick wall, but we persevered and eventually we got there.  Ebay came up trumps again (eventually). We think it is French art deco so is appropriate for the scheme as well.  It does dominate the room as it is large, but not so much that the space looks crammed.  Despite all the furniture being found bit by bit, it all seems to work together quite nicely.  It pays to be patient although that still is not my strongest point.

The main accessories of the room are the collection of 1920's/30's portraits I have been amassing and the cushions on the bed.  The paintings I collect from ebay (I use ebay UK, US, France and Belgium), shops, fairs...wherever I see them.  They have to be of a certain style, vintage and original.  I wrote a post about arranging them last year.  My most recent aquisition is Bette which we bought on our recent trip to Brussels. 

I walked into a shop and there she was and I bought her a couple of minutes later.  The shop owner had only just hung her and hadn't even had a chance to investigate whether this was some major work of art.  It doesn't matter to me, I just loved her and my feeling about art is that you just know if something is right instantly and you should only ever buy what you like.  She is nearly a metre square and I had no thought as to how I was going to get her back from Brussels.  I don't let such practicalities get in the way of a vision.  Stephen is very patient with me.  He had gone off to take photos whilst I was shopping with a friend.  All he saw upon our return was me walking up the street hidden behind this huge painting.  I asked he if he was angry with me (as I had broken the rule of only buying things that would fit in the suitcase - it could be anything as long as it fit in the suitcase).  He only smiled and said he was surprised I hadn't bought something bigge (I nearly had...there was this rather splendid art deco dressing table....).  Anyway, she is home (thank you UPS) and in pride of place. 

 

My other favourite thing in this room is the cushions. 

I had bought a book by Sera Hersham-Loftus called "Seductive Interiors".  Sera is an interior decorator.  I had known of Sera's work for several years and was pleased to see she had a book out.  She is well known for glamorous, eclectic, vintage interiors with a touch of rock and roll and has a list of famous clientele.  Within this book I spied one of her "house jewels", the fan cushion, and knew I had to have a couple for the bed.  I knew they would be the real statement piece and finishing touch for the whole room.  To be honest, I never thought I would be able to get any.  It just goes to show, you never know if you don't ask.  I sent an email to Sera's company and Sera herself answered.  Yes, they were available.  Fantastic.  We discussed colours as I knew exactly what colours they should be for this room and 3 months later a large box arrived with my room jewels.  They are my pride and joy.  I am very protective of them and Stephen teases me mercilessly about my attachment to and obsession with them.  If he wants to wind me up, he'll make the bed and arrange them in some bizarre fashion knowing I will immediately have to rearrange them the way I like them.

So that is the end of the tour of this room.  We are getting our loft floored out for storage soon so it will be onwards and upwards with the spare bedroom or dining room next.  I shall finish with this photo.  The arrangement is entirely unintentional, but it is rather cool how it worked out.

Rachel.

All photos by Stephen Egglestone

A sneaky peek at Rachel's bedroom

This is just a bit of a teaser.  At last my art deco/belle epoque bedroom has been classed as finished (well, as much as anything is ever truly finished in our house). 

To be honest, it was pretty much done a long time ago, but Stephen wouldn't let me have it photographed and blogged as we didn't have a bed (just a mattress on the floor).  It took a long time to hunt down a large, dark wood, art deco bed, but we finally found one and after delivery of a divan base yesterday, could put the bed together.  Hurrah.  Of course, we got the worst night's sleep ever....I put it down to the air being thinner being higher up than we have been used to.  I am sure we will get used to it though.

So watch this space, more detailed photos and the story to follow soon.

Rachel.

photo: Stephen Egglestone

Summer happiness is...

...aside from ice-cream, a bunch of gloriously scented sweet peas (in yummy colours - great inspiration for interiors colour combos I think) from the garden sitting on one's desk.

Especially on a warm sunny day as we are having at the moment.  My life's gardening ambition was to have a dedicated sweet pea patch so I could indulge in weeks of sweet pea scent when they came into bloom.  I finally got a garden (last year) and planted my first dedicated sweet pea area this year

and these are the fruits of my labour.  It is too exciting. 

When my mother-in-law was a young girl, she thought sweet peas looked like butterflies sitting on leaves.  Looking at the photo above, I can see exactly how she would think that. Should anyone know of a perfume that is pure sweet pea scent, please let me know.  The closest I had was Kate Spade's Beauty perfume which I still miss years after it was discontinued.

Rachel 

Top photo, mine.  The rest by Stephen Egglestone

The Hallway, Part 2

About 1000 years ago, I wrote about the start of decorating of my hallway.  I got a bit farther with my VN5 Shadows stencil, enough to move the grandfather clock into place in the lower hall, and then stalled not long after.  Seriously.  I had not progressed at all in months and that is not like me.  I dislike unfinished projects.  The problem wasn't lack of motivation, but the gaping hole above the stairs which meant I could get no higher than the lower hall.  As I wasn't sure how to deal with it (as mentioned before, vertigo means nothing precarious like ladders and planks was possible), I just buried my head in the sand and ignored it.  But no longer!  A solution at last presented itself in the shape of scaffolding loaned by a friend with a scaffolding company. 

And so this past weekend, my own mini platform went up and I could, at last, carry on. 

I won't say that I was completely comfortable on it nor leaping about like a gazelle from end to end (more scooting and clinging in a very unglamorous fashion), but it meant I could reach parts previously unreachable. 

The finish line is in sight and I should have the whole hall stencilled by the end of the coming weekend.  Hurrah. Please note that I took great care to be specific about the stencilling being finished, not the hallway in total.  Whilst the walls will be done, the flooring will still have to wait.  Here is a peak of the finished area without the scaffolding.  I just have to finish the upper hall, but you get the idea.

So part 3 of a fully decorated and accessorised hall still to come. Walls are painted in "Canton" by Little Greene paint (the stencilling colours were mixed to make a lighter and darker shade of the wall colour).  This project's audio accompaniment, "Classic Chandler" audio plays by the BBC starring Toby Stephens as Philip Marlowe (I like to decorate to audio books or dramatisations). Photos by my sweetheart, Stephen Egglestone, who patiently stood by me, letting me cling to his hand when I first struggled to stand upright on the scaffolding as there was only so much I could do sitting down.  I think he is just beginning to get the feeling back in his fingers now. 

Rachel.

A Last Minute Stencilling Project for the Festive Season

Got a couple of hours?  Not for this post, but for a project.  I needed to amp up the festive decoration in my dining room and didn't have much time to do it.  I decided to make a stencilled table runner as the table is the focal point of the room so I thought it would be most effective.  You will need a length of fabric that will cover your table with a bit of overhang (the width can be anything you like but mine was cut to about 16" wide), a stencil, brush, stencil paint, spray repositioning adhesive and paper towel or kitchen roll. 

I chose a small version of CS57-R Five Point Star repeat (75% of the standard size so it had a 3" star - contact us if you need custom sizes.  I wanted something that would be suitable for Christmas, but also New Year's Eve and any other dinner event throughout the year.  I had a length of lovely vintage velvet in my fabric stash and chose metallic silver to stencil with as I thought it would look a bit like lamé.  I was inspired by an amazing 1930's style frock in a gorgeous mid blue satin with silver stars.

(Stella McCartney, worn by Madonna. I am sorry, I do not know who the photographer is).  

If you have new fabric that you will want to wash again, you will need to allow time to wash and dry it before stencilling.  If, like me, you have a fabric that cannot be washed, you can get stuck in straight away.  Cut your fabric to size allowing for seams to be folded under and sewn if necessary.  Stencil your fabric as per the general stencilling instructions.  This star stencil is a repeat pattern stencil with drawn on registration marks so that you can match up your next pattern quickly and easily. 

You can cover your table in plastic so that you can apply a light layer of spray adhesive to your plastic and smooth your fabric over to stop it moving as you stencil.  In my case, time was of the essence so I didn't bother with that, but I did make sure my table was protected.  If your fabric is thin, make sure you have something underneath it so you don't mark your table. 

The stencilling took about an hour.

Then I folded the edges under and sewed them in place.

Job done.  2 hours total.  Let the festivities begin.  Yes, I would probably rather have the Stella McCartney dress to wear and look festive at the table, but this will do :)

Merry Christmas everyone!  Have a fab time.

Rachel

 

How to organise displaying pictures...

...and a sneaky peak of the master bedroom.  I was reminded of a really useful tip for planning the layout of pictures when perusing Abigail Ahern's book "A Girl's Guide to Decorating". To be honest, I should have known this as I am forever telling customers to employ a similar trick when planning a stencilling scheme when you need to know how the scale of a pattern or motif will look on your wall. It also works well for working out the layout of furniture in a room (although you will need more paper). 

I had bought a lovely 1930's oil portrait of a young lady (Miss Anne Gordon, whoever she is) on ebay.  It sparked a collection and before you knew it, I had amassed 5 paintings of a similar theme. I had deliberately left one wall in our bedroom quite plain to display art although I wasn't sure at the time, what format this art would take (please forgive the first two photos, they were taken on my old iphone in bad light):

Very simply, you cut paper pieces to the size of your artwork.  Then using low tack tape (the green tape used for stencilling is perfect), place the paper cutouts on the wall, changing them around until you are happy with the final layout.  They then provide a plan for hanging your art:

Here are the paintings in place (photo taken by my other half with a proper camera):

I have a couple more spots on the wall that I could fill should my collection expand, but if not, these 5 fill the space nicely in the haphazard and informal fashion I was looking for.  Photos of our master bedroom in full shouldn't be too far off.  The room is finished except for the fact that we do not have a bed yet, just a mattress on the floor.  We are looking for an old one which will compliment the other old furniture in the room, so have to be patient until the right one appears.  The walls and ceiling are painted in "Railings", a deep grey, by Farrow & Ball in their estate emulsion finish, the skirting in the eggshell finish.  I shall save information about other details until the room is fully photographed for the blog.

On another related note, three of these paintings are on canvas board.  I didn't want to frame them, but was unsure how to hang them.  Lesley from the fab art supplies shop in Corbridge, Delight & Wisdom, told me to use plate hanging discs.  Brilliant!  If you don't know what they are, they are canvas discs coated with glue (you wet the back to get them tacky) with a "D" ring for hanging.  They cope with the weight of plates so have no trouble with a lightweight canvas board.  Lesley sells them, but I think you can also get them from good china shops where you may be likely to buy plates to hang for decorative purposes.

If you've got any handy tips and tricks for decorating, please share.

Rachel.

Rachel's House: Starting the Hallway

It may be a while before you see the finished shots.  Here is a before shot (this was before the house was replastered)

I'm holding out for parquet flooring in the lower hall which we just don't have the funds for at the moment, but we had to start the painting and decorating because the family grandfather clock has arrived from the US.  It is currently in the garage nestled in it's bespoke wood box (which looks like we are storing Count Dracula's coffin), but needs to be reassembled and in place soon.  As this will require the skills of a horologist being a rather old and sensitive piece, we want to move it as little as possible.  Hallways are often ignored when it comes to decorating because, let's face it, they are awkward (to put it politely).  They are the first room a visitor sees of your home and is where first impressions are formed.  Our hall is by no means large, but there are loads of corners and doors and then there is the tall gaping area above the stairs.  I am not afraid of heights, but have vertigo in the traditional sense where up a height, my vision and balance gets a bit wobbly and I lose my sense of perspective.  Not the best frame of mind to be in when balancing on a ladder.  So we may need to hire something a bit more substantial for tackling that area (the ladder upon platform upon ladder combo the plasterers used makes me dizzy just thinking about it).  In the meantime, we can at least tackle the lower hall in anticipation of the arrival of our clock.  As of last night, the hall was a work in three stages.  As the walls are newly plastered they have to be pva sealed which Stephen is only 3/4's through.  He started painting the walls in Canton from Little Greene in the lower hall, but didn't quite get the two coats on.  I started stencilling yesterday at least hoping to cover the areas that have two coats of paint on, but didn't quite manage it.  It may remain in this form, give or take a bit, for a while yet so here is a bit of a taster.  Please excuse the quality of the photos, as my OH (other half) was on a charity bike ride yesterday and as he is the keeper of the cameras, I had to resort to using my phone.  We chose VN5 Shadows from the Pure Pattern section of our Vintage stencils. 

As our hall is likely to be a gallery for paintings, Stephen's photographs and our wedding photographs, we wanted a subtle pattern for the background.  I admit, I do tend to lean towards allover repeat patterns, but I definitely wanted one for the hallway so that I wouldn't have to worry about the positioning of art in relation to stencilled decoration.  We will just be able to hang pictures wherever we want.  We chose this particular pattern because it is simple, but has a certain amount of humour about it and is something a bit different.  If you think it looks like that rubber flooring with the raised circles, you'd be right.  This is what Chips designed it from, allthough in much larger scale.  Each circle is 5" diameter.  Being geometric, we also felt it had an early 20th century modernity to it which would work in our house.  The whole effect is created by using a highlight and a lowlight.  Although you can use any colours as long as one is paler than the wall, and the other is darker, I decided to stay quite traditional and use lighter and darker shades than the wall colour.

It is best to experiment first so I painted a swatch of wall colour on one of our wedding signs and tested my mixed colours there. 

As I was mixing up colours, I had to make sure I would have more than enough to cover the entire hallway as it will be a bit difficult to mix up the colours again.  I made a cup of each and just have to hope it will finish the job.  "Canton" is a mid tone blue/green.  As you can see from the photos, the colour changes with the light, but in the main, it leans towards blue. I wanted the pattern to be quite subtle so my dark and light tones are not too far away from the original. 

I knew I would have lots of awkward areas to deal with so had Chips make me a special stencil with just one circle on it.  And here is the start of the stencilling.  It looks great.  I imagine that every person who walks though the door will touch the walls because it really does look like the walls have raised circles on them. 

This photo was taken in failing light as I stencil into the corner (and the paint is definitely not that green).  How do you deal with corners if you want the stencil to go around them?  Stick the stencil on the wall you are stencilling, but let the other bit of stencil "flap".  Don't stick it down on both walls.  You will be able to gently bend the stencil quite far into the corner.  Make sure your stencil brushes are especially dry of wet paint and stencil as far as you can into the corner.  Remove the stencil and match it up on the new wall, sticking the stencil down on the wall you are working on, but not the other wall.  Again stencil carefully into the corner matching up with the pattern on the previous wall.  Don't worry if you don't quite get into the corner.  If the stencilling fades a bit, then that is fine and it looks quite nice.  Corners are generally in shadow anyway.  I am hoping to get the lower hall finished over the next week or so.  As to the rest of the hallway, it kind of depends on if we can organise something for the area over the stairs and then there is the floorcovering issue.  I hope it will be soon because I don't like unfinished projects.  More to follow.....

Rachel's Art Deco Living Room

Let's take a look around the room first. Imagine standing in the room and spinning clockwise.  You can click on any photo to see a larger version.

This is how it looked when we viewed the house:

And this is how it looked when we stripped the room of the carpet and wood chip paper on the walls.  We removed the mantlepiece after this photo was taken.

Inspiration came from my previous living room which can be seen here and my love of all things art deco, which Stephen, my partner in crime, luckily, shares.  We painted the walls and ceiling (after the room had been rewired and totally plastered) the same Farrow & Ball Blue Black as my previous living room.  Although it is a dark colour, it is warm and cosy and does not "shrink" the room.  We painted the coving and skirting board in Crown's Millionaire metallic gold paint.  Originally the skirting board was to be painted white and Stephen did start painting it, but I stopped him midway through as I knew it did not look right.  Thank goodness for understanding boyfriends.  The wall is stencilled with VN7 Chain Lightening from our Vintage Range.  I used Sunset Gold paint which is a warm slightly orange gold.  VN7 is a repeat pattern and it repeats horizontally and vertically to fill entire walls if wanted (which I did).  It took me about 2 1/2 days to stencil this room (with a bit of help from Helen).  Once you get going, it is quite quick.  It was a bit awkward stencilling around the corners, but I cheat slightly by running a strip of low tack tape down the corners on each wall so I don't quite have to stencil right into the corner.  It looks neat and tidy and saves me some effort.  Stencilling with a single metallic paint can look very dramatic even if it is just a single colour.

I am a big fan of low light so had a dimmer switch put on the ceiling light and also on the main floor lamp so that I could play with the levels of light to suit my mood or needs.

This adds an extra dimension to the stencilling because just as you can see how the stencilling almost fades away in some lights and sings in others, so it is in real life.  The walls are never the same when you walk into the room.

The ceiling is stencilled with MD73 Pulsar, a motif from our Modern Range.

Stephen and I had to work on this together because the stencil was too heavy to stay up on the ceiling with Spraymount alone.  I had the stencil cut into a quarter and on thick film for added rigidity, but it was still unwieldy.  So I stood on a box with stencil brush and paint, and Stephen stood on a ladder and we managed to get the stencilling done that way.  It took just over and hour and was painful to do (backs and necks did suffer a bit), but so worth it.

I have an extraordinary number of books and they have always been piled here, there and everywhere which although looking slightly eccentric (a good thing), made it difficult to dig one out when I wanted to look at it again.  When we saw the living room layout, we decided we wanted proper bookshelves to house them. 

It was a labour of love.  Our budget did not stretch to bespoke inbuilt bookshelves so we had 1.8cm thick MDF cut to size and used a metal bracket and slot system available from most DIY stores.  Stephen lost sleep over whether they would hold the weight of the books.  The strips of slots are not just screwed into the wall, but bolted.  We had to pop around to the neighbors several times to apologise for the noise from all the drilling.  They were most understanding though because a) they are cool and b) they refurbished their house from top to bottom so had been through it all themselves.  We painted each shelf and we sorted all the books by height.  As a shelf would dry, we would slot it into place, fill it with books of a uniform height and then work on the next one.  It took several days, but was, again, worth the effort.  It also had the added advantage that the shelves are placed to accomodate the exact size of the books, so no space was wasted.  We can move the shelf levels if needed.  I don't know what it is about books, but they really make a room very personal.  The whole dynamic of the room changed once the books were in place and it started to look like a home.

I chose white carpet for this room to offset the dark walls and ceiling. 

It is my homage to Syrie Maugham, the "it" decorator of the 1930's famous for her white rooms.  Yes, it is probably impractical and most people think I was mad to choose it, but I love it and it does lift the room.  I just have to take care of it and if anything is spilt on it, I will clean it.  Only time will tell if I have made a mistake, but I take full responsibility.  It does look fab though.

I didn't buy anything new (or rather old as I only seem to buy old stuff) for this room except the rather splendid fringed lampshade,

the painting of Miss Irma (painted in 1927)

and the deco curtains featured in a previous post. 

Everything else came from my previous living room or other rooms. I daresay I will still manage to find the odd accessory or artwork to add here and there.  Hurrah for ebay.  I was very pleased to note that our furniture fit perfectly.  Both the sofa and chairs are quite petite, thank goodness, as it is not a large room. 

I found the tapestry cushion in RE in Corbridge several years ago.  My sister think she looks like Kate Winslet in "Titanic".  She has a point, but as this is an old tapesty, I think it preceded the making of the film.  I placed our fantastic jade painted (with original chinoiserie stencilling!) card table behind the sofa and it is turning out very useful to sit at.

 

The card table has 4 chairs and soon after we bought the house and I was starting to plan the layout and schemes, I had it in my mind that the table and four chairs would easily fit into the bay window area with space to spare.  As soon as we got the keys, I realised my mind has a horrible habit of exaggerating spaces and making them much, much bigger than they truly are.  The table and one chair just squeeze into the space.

The fire.  What can I say about the gas fire. 

I have a love/hate relationship with it.  It is very much of it's time (we estimate 60's/70's) and a bit bashed.  I love open fires.  I would love to have them back but unfortunately due to budget constraints and the fact that both downstairs fireplaces (there is another beauty in the dining room) have been well concreted in, we knew it would take too much effort, building and money to get the open fires back just now.  So we have no choice but to live with our gas fires.  I had hoped if I squinted enough, this one would look slightly oriental and pagoda-ish and I could live with that, loving most oriental styles.  But unfortunately, you have to squint so much to get that effect, your eyes might as well be shut.  On the love side, it does throw out a huge amount of heat.  I will say that for old gas fires...they do what they are supposed to.  So for that, we are very grateful (and warm). The Chippendale-Morris "Girl in a Green Dress" definitely improves the space and draws your attention away from the fire.  But when Chips looked at this photo to see his painting in place, he did say, "You need to get a new fire".  One day....

And that is the tour of our living room in our new home. What did I learn from this decorating project (because there is always something to learn)?

1) Very matt paint is gorgeous and like painting velvet on your walls (oooh, just had a vision of pasting old velvet onto the walls and stencilling it in faded metallics - make mental note), but like velvet, change the direction of your brush stroke and you will see it (ie when you touch up bits, the paint will never quite blend in).  This is the sacrifice for having such a matt lovely finish so learn to live with any touch up marks.

2) When stencilling with light reflective paint (ie metallics), make sure you have a good light source in the room, especially if working at night.

3) If you are going to work on a project with someone, best if it is the love of your life as he will be more understanding than many and forgive you most things (eventually).

4) Plan as much as you can when decorating a room.  Create mood boards, paint samples, measure and draw out...whatever is needed to get the clearest idea of how the room will work.  However, despite planning, sometimes things just don't work according to plan.  Better to put the extra effort in and redo it then and there than try to live with something that just isn't right.  It will only annoy you and take far more effort to correct later on.

5) Only work on one room at a time if you have a whole house to do.  It is far better for your sanity to stay focused on one space.  Also, it is great to get one room completely done so you have a place to retreat to when the rest of the refurbishing is all getting a bit too much.  At last, Stephen and I feel we can take a bit of time to relax and have a lovely room to do it in.

All photographs by Stephen Egglestone

The Woman Cave

What do you do with a very small room 7 feet x 9 feet?  You turn it into a dressing room (as I call it) or woman cave (as my partner calls it).

We had a spell of calling it the lady cave until my sister politely pointed out that it sounded like I was referring to some part of female anatomy which when saying something like, "I should be tidying the lady cave", doesn't quite sound like it ought to, hilarious as it was, so we've since reverted to calling it the 'dressing room' in polite society. 

Never have I seen my boyfriend more enthusiastic or quick to put a room together.  I was basking the the glow of how caring and thoughtful he was to work on this space with such fervour, zeal and single mindedness, until I realised in reality that he probably wanted a space to put me and my stuff.  And the sooner, the better.  I couldn't blame him in the slightest for thinking that.  This way he is not tripping over yet another 1930's dressing gown or dress.  I can be in there with the laptop happily ebaying away and not go near his (he calls it "ours", but in reality it is his) 27" screen iMac.  And even better (for him) he has more control over the TV remote and TV viewing schedule.  Mmmmm, methinks there might have been a plot afoot....but I digress.  Regardless of the motivation behind it, it is a really lovely space and I am a very lucky girl.  Essentially it is storage for my things, but storage can look decorative.

Most houses in Britain have what is known as a box room (a reference to a small room historically used for storing boxes and travelling trunks).  Although this is no longer the case, the small room can be used as a nursery, child's room, small bedroom, home office or storage space.  But even as a bedroom, it can only take a single bed and minimal furniture as you can see in the "before" photo when the previous owners had the house: 

We have a full sized spare bedroom so felt that we could sacrifice this room to other purposes.  

It was quite a quick decorating job.  The room was covered in woodchip wallpaper which came off very easily (in comparison to the rest of the house) because it hadn't adhered particularly well to the wallpaper underneath. 

We left the old wallpaper intact as it was smooth and secure enough to just paint straight onto.  The plasterers only had to smooth skim the textured ceiling. 

We decided to put a shelf up around the entire room just above the door and window because it is dead space up there otherwise.  That shelf is only 30cm wide so doesn't make it feel like you've lowered the whole ceiling.

This is where I can store my bags and hats.  My partner painted the ceiling, shelves and woodwork in Crown Paint's Millionaire metallic gold.  I wanted an old rose pink for the walls and chose Dulux's Pink Nevada.  A friend had given me an old swirly carpet from her 1930's house which I had used on the floor in my living room at Stocksfield Hall.  When I moved, it came with me and we used it here. 

When we ripped up the old carpets throughout the house we were able to salvage enough underlay to reuse here.  I didn't make any plans to stencil the walls because I knew most of the walls would be covered up.  However, I did think the ceiling would be ripe for stencilling but waited until the room was put together before I made my final decision.  Until all the furniture and accessories are in place, I would not be sure how I could handle extra decoration and then would have to be careful so that the decoration added to the room, not tipped it over the edge into mess.  We put a dress rail down one side of the space and my dressing table and small armchair down the other side of the room. 

 

We were also able to squeeze my vintage wardrobe trunk into one corner. 

Once most of the large items were in place, we realised we had more "dead" space above the dress rail so put another shelf up for my sweaters, t-shirts and so on. 

The shelves are budget cut-to-size MDF and metal brackets.  We spraypainted the brackets gold to look more decorative. 

My Gruau lithographs and vintage paintings adorn the walls where there is space.

Vintage satin curtains have been hung at the window.  We took the door off the frame to make it easier to lay the carpet, but also because the swing of the door took up a lot of space in a small room, basically chopping off a 3 foot by 3 foot space in one corner which is about a sixth of the entire room.  After the room had been put together we made a decision as to whether the door needed to go back on or whether we could get away with using a door curtain instead.  We opted for the door curtain and I had found a pair of 1920's chenille door curtains at Corbridge Antiques Centre. 

Importantly, they look good from both sides.  I used one here and the other at the window at the top of the stairs.  I am especially pleased about this because it does leave me quite a bit of extra, precious, space.  It does look nice to be able to peer into the room from the hallway (as long as I keep it tidy), but I have the option of hiding the room with a curtain if need be.  The room can be a private, although not soundproof, space.

Finally with almost everything in place, I could think about the stencilling.  Even with the space filled so comprehensively, I did look up at the gold ceiling and feel it could do with a bit of decoration to fill it out.  I decided on one of our new Vintage dragon stencils, VN140.

I've always liked oriental styles and decided to channel a bit of 1920's Shanghai by stencilling a couple of dragons swirling around the light fitting.  They tied in with the red Chinese lamps Helen brought back from Singapore that hang beside the dressing table.  This stencil is designed as an all-over repeat, but I simply used the two dragons as motifs.  I didn't want to fill the entire ceiling surface. 

Ceilings are awkward to stencil, but are a nice area to put pattern onto if you can manage it.  I think there is always something dramatic about a decorated ceiling because they do take extra effort to do and most ceilings are undecorated.

I am thrilled with this space.  It is warm and comfortable and I do not feel like I have been banished.  It feels like a theatre star's dressing room from yesteryear and I can enjoy my various collections.  The woman cave definitely trumps any man cave.

Speaking of man caves and just in case you were feeling sorry for him thinking he had no space that was all his...he has not one, but two spaces to call his own.  This....

And this....

Admittedly, they both need a bit of work.  Stephen's off work next week and intends to work on them.  I think he is hiding the hot tub, huge screen wall-mounted tv and dedicated beer fridge catalogues from me.  That is fine by me if that is the look he wants, but he still has to find space to store the tools, his bikes, and the garden furniture etc. as well.   

All photographs by Stephen Egglestone 

Rachel's Living Room Preview

Whilst I work on the full post, I thought I would give you a bit of a preview of my living room showcasing the wall where Chips' lastest painting hangs because it is the feature of this room. 

Photo by Stephen Egglestone
You will have read in previous posts that Chippendale-Morris have a new range of paintings.  Chips takes well known art and reinterprets it by meticulously separating the image into thousands of coloured dots which he paints onto large canvases.  Up close, the image will look like a colourful abstract image, but the farther you move away from it, the more clear the image will become.  It is very, very clever as the colours have to be just right and takes ages to paint.  I have always loved anything that puts a modern twist on something traditional so couldn't wait to have a Chippendale-Morris for my own walls.  I chose "Girl in a Green Dress" as it is so very art deco (the main theme of the room).  I saved the chimney breast space for this masterpiece and it was a thrill to bring it home and hang it in place.  We were then able to call the room "finished" (bar a few minor details) and photograph it to share.  The full post will be along shortly but in the meantime, "Girl in a Green Dress" as seen by Chippendale-Morris deserves a post of her own.  I have yet to research this painting and I do not know if the model is known, but in the meantime Stephen and I have named her "Tallulah".  You can see the hint of the stencilling in this room: stencil VN7 Chain Lightening from our Vintage range, stencilled in Sunset Gold paint, on a wall painted with Farrow & Ball's Blue Black estate emulsion.