Don’t play it safe

Morning, thank you to everyone who came along to the book signing on Saturday in my store, and to everyone so far who has brought the book. The response to this second tome has been a little overwhelming and taken us all by surprise, in a very good way. I didn’t want this book to play it safe – there are way to many design books that do that, just like there are way to many homes that do that. I wanted this book to be different, mirroring my interiors. I want to be different (not to be gimmicky or on trend) but because I want your heart to skip a beat when you enter my house or my store, or open my book. You won’t feel that if I play it safe, infact you won’t feel anything – and that’s my point I want you to feel EVERYTHING. To have sleepless nights over paint colour, a vase, or wallpaper, I want to quicken your pulse rate so you feel alive, inspired, elevated.

I know its only 7am – a little early for this sort of talk no?

When you come along to one of my classes (either the online one starting in May) or to the master classes in London or abroad, I take you on a journey of discovery. It’s the most fabulous part of my job; the teaching part especially as we break rules and push boundaries. My job is to give you guys the confidence to go for it – whether that happens to be DIY project that you’ve been considering or a paint job, or re configuring a furniture layout.  I want you to think differently and not play it safe because I promise you, promise, promise, promise you its life changing!  Creating interiors that feel unpredictable, edgy and unexpected makes you feel alive!

Once you start pushing it (the only way to do this by the way is considering things you normally wouldn’t) your confidence grows. Yes mistakes will be made, I have made them and I do make them (bedroom wall still not up and finished so can’t tell you if its a success or not quite yet) but take the plunge. Its mood altering stuff – I guess it’s a bit like suddenly discovering you like oysters or some other food you’ve dismissed for yonks. You’ll be like, why didn’t we become buddies before?

Promise!

Photography Graham Atkins Hughes

Couple of images from the book – where colour palettes and accessories have been pushed.

Tres chic!

 

Lifting a space out of the mundane

The antiques market was rubbish, too much shabby, country peeling type stuff terrible. No need for a van could have taken my bicycle with the things we came back with. Even worse we brought a trolley for outside the store as a prop to house flowers and we completely forgot about collecting it.  Might have been something to do with the extreme cold, blizzard esq conditions. That I guess is the thing with markets, one day you find tons, next day you don’t. When you don’t its the biggest pain in the ass, especially when you are on the hunt for specifics. Had a list as long as my arm for things required, I should be upbeat with a more hey ho never mind type attitude, but I’m not. In protest I have ditched early morning Pilates. So there!

Before I forget two things – book signing tomorrow in store from 1-3pm if any of you guys are in town and fancy popping in, please do and also our Open Call is open to the whole wide world. So if you are a designer, artisan, supplier and you want to send in images of products for me to highlight the email is opencall@abigailahern.com. Way more details on my blog post two days ago.

Right then, I have big expectations for this weekend. We, that is the Royal We by the way (not me) are building a fake wall to cut the bedroom into a third and turn it into a closet. Then on Monday it’s going to be papered in the beautiful black tin tile paper and everyone should be happy! So happy I reckon that I may never ever leave the bedroom!

With just the two M’s as assistants I’m a little concerned with the schedule, Graham and I do things in very different ways. I just want to bash the thing up and who cares if the wall is about to fall down I’ll prop it up with a cool table, but he on the other hand has to do things precisely and to the book, measuring, standing back, measuring again. It takes years his way – my way its up in 5 and we’re all dancing around the room with the sausages (the two M’s favourite toy) being happy!

Shall I get to the point – OK so this morning I wanted to talk about lifting a space out of the mundane. How? By accessorising of course. The good thing is that you don’t need any formal training or complicated understanding of the principles of design. No Sir. The trick, simply buy would you love. Could be as simple as flea market art (if the flea market is any good that is)! Could be a collection of cool books, or ceramics or jewellery it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it is personal to you and has a back-story. My pad is full of stuff that tells a narrative of our life – things we’ve picked up aboard, found locally, had commissioned – so it reveals something about who we are and what we like. Mix up flea market, high street, higher end all together and it gets even more interesting. It won’t just be a space you want to hang out in – it will be a space everyone will want to hang out in.

Photography Graham Atkins Hguhes

Photography Graham Atkins Hughes

 

 

Going off the grid with colour

Off to an antiques market hours out of town hence the early start. Hired a van which is always an omen I find whenever we just rock up in the car I find tons but whenever we actually hire a van I find zero. Once before when we drove to this market I got the date wrong and the air was somewhat blue all the way home. No fear of that this morning have double, treble, quadrupled checked that its today!

Before I go I thought I would touch on something rather dear to my heart – colour. Not just any old colour mind, colour that makes your heart skip a beat. Today is not a day to be converting anyone over to the dark side (I need more time and more images to pitch my case) but I reckon it’s a day for pushing off radar, or off the grid hues. I say this a lot but no matter the colour of the your walls if you can push your colour palette through your furnishings or your accessories you really will take your space to the next level. Today I thought I would give red a shout out. Often feared because it’s so bright and out there I have pops of it all over my pad. It’s all down to the tonality as well – some reds look awful with some hues. Once an old member of staff had put some red and white flowers together in the store and when Gem walked in I nearly had to hand her the smelling salts to revive her (its an Ahern thing we start fainting when things visually jar our eyes) it was a ghastly combo the contrast was to great. We either feel faint or have to sit down immediately to focus the breath – not good!

Anyways back to red – apart from the red and white combo (this combo will work by the way if the red is deep pinky red not tomato ish red) it’s a fab colour to be getting on board with, especially with spring (where is spring btw) right around the corner. Some images to inspire below and before I dash thank you to everyone for submitting work for our Open Call segment. I haven’t had a chance to look at anything yet but I will.

To confuse you further this combo of red and pale works perfectly because first up the walls aren’t  harsh bright white there is a touch of grey in them and secondly the red isn’t bright bright red. The key with colour is that contrasting and jaring the eye is fabulous its just the contrast can’t cause a migraine! If you look at some of the  fabulous websites by the leading florists of the world you will see some amazing contrasting hues going on (check out Wild at Heart and Saipua) its a good starting place for colour inspiration.

Gotta fly

Have a lovely day

Open Call Monday’s now taking submissions

I am extremely excited to announce that we launching a segment entitled Open Call Monday’s for all designers, artists, suppliers, new, emerging and existing! With a tough economy and retailers closing down like no tomorrow its hard getting work showcased. We get approached a zillion times a day with products and its tough saying no we can’t take so I want to do something about it, by showcasing and highlighting the best. If it fits our vibe we will absolutely take your work and launch it to our international database. If it doesn’t fit our vibe (and btw that means that there is nothing what so ever wrong with it) I will do my very best to kick start your career by showcasing the coolest on my blog and through my social media channels. You never know it might even launch a few careers!

As much as I can I will give invaluable feedback on the products and convey what buyers are looking for. Things to consider before submitting images:

Consider your price point – to cheap and you make no money (no point in that), to expensive and you alienate customers.

Show variety. Often times at trade fairs I go into stands with a zillion products and only love one or two pieces. My point the more variety, the more opportunity.

Think you’ve got what it takes? Well we’re open and taking submissions, please email images to:

Opencall@abigailahern.com

The first selection of work will get highlighted on the blog, facebook, etc. on Monday April 15th, I can’t reply to all emails so please forgive that, but I will to as many as I can.

Good luck!

Final point don’t self doubt, us creatives are a self doubting lot  (me included). Lets end of all that here, now, today and believe in ourselves far more.

Happy Tuesday very much looking forward to going through all the submissions xx

 

Projects – the cool kind

Signing up for a 6.30am Pilates class seemed like an excellent idea on the weekend, but the reality of it on a freezing cold dark morning sucks! Especially as I have to cycle through the park with an icy wind. According to Farming Today (R4 super cool early morning programme) coldest March in 66 years.  If it doesn’t improve soon I reckon most people will leave me included – this last week have googled properties to buy in LA, France and Italy!

Moaning over, my coffee has just arrived from hubby (thank you honey) and its down to business.

Photography Graham Atkins Hughes

In my new book, Decorating with Style as well as tons of inspirational beautiful photography shot all over the world there are some practical easy projects that help elevate spaces. Nothing to crafty, wishy washy or girly for some reason can’t stand anything like that, I want glam, badass interiors not crafty things that look like a school project. I almost don’t even want you to think of them as a project. So you might come into my pad and say wow cool stair risers (they are simply papered with tribal wallpaper), or amazing blind (cheap as chips blind wallpapered in a hand blocked print), or cool paneling as per above. Projects that don’t look like projects in other words, they look like they are part of the overall scheme, integral to it infact. That is the trick to my kind of decorating – they don’t look like projects they look like they are part of the design. Lots more in the book of course.

Couple of things before I shoot – am book signing in the store on Saturday if you happen to be in town – do pop in (between 1-3pm). Double plus Gem is in all day on flowers so you get both of us should you also have any floristry questions. Lastly on facebook yesterday I mentioned that I was thinking of hosting Open Call Mondays. We get inundated by designers, artists, suppliers wanting us to take their products and more often than not I have to decline – because they don’t quite fit our vibe. However I thought it would be great to highlight each fortnight or once a month (haven’t figured it yet) the coolest of the bunch, on the blog, fb etc so you guys get to see some fabulous work. it helps their business and it gives you guys and me for that matter an opportunity to look at some cool work? Good plan do you think?

Have to run, haven’t spell checked so excuse all the mistakes.

Adding patina

Morning, a very good morning after the 4 day break.  I had a semi break slash semi working weekend. I slept a quite a bit, on Saturday night I actually went to bed at 8 pm (party girl not) – it was one of the most exhausting yet coolest weeks of my career last week. The amazing press for the new book had the phone ringing non stop, the book launch at Anthropologie was fabulous,  thank you again to everyone who came, we have been so overwhelmed with emails and messages, and on top of all that its been manic at the store. Flowers zooming out like no tomorrow, lamps, textiles – bonkers but bonkers in a good way!

We also came up with a solution with the bedroom this weekend. It has been bugging me for yonks half of it works, half of it feels like a car crash and the latest idea is a radical one because if involves chopping a third of the bedroom up but I have a feeling it might work. The plan is to block off the fireplace (shock horror I know its a working fireplace but when I crawl into bed I am way to exhausted to light it, then  panel across that whole section of the room and turn it into a closet). Tin tiles I think will cover the mdf fake wall with hidden doors that open up into the closet. That is the plan – it will make the bedroom smaller but it will also make the bedroom cozier. Plus the rustic tin tiles will tie in beautifully with the wooden wall opposite – I just need to soften them with a little table in the middle, bunch of blooms that sort of thing. Its taken like 6 months to come up with this solution, we originally thought of it and I was like no way can we get rid of the fireplace but having a closet on a different floor to the bedroom and bathroom as is the current plan is a pain in the butt! Enough stairs already so this weekend work starts, finishes and ends – that is the plan!

I think that is thing with decorating sometimes it takes a while. For me I want my interiors to feel lived in and loved, to feel easy going, uplifting and comforting. I have to rattle around in them a bit to get them to work (case in point bedroom) but then when they do I never want to leave. One of the easiest tricks fro me is to not make rooms to perfect because then they feel static and a little uptight. Patina is a big deal with my style of decorating – peeling old looking but new tin tile wallpaper as an example, or  rugs that are a little worn in, a wooden table that has a fabulous texture through years or wear and tear. To counter balance this I have to have glamour so some cool  lighting, art etc but I need a little wear and tear – wear and tear shouts well loved. Biggest tip I can give is that if a home looks loved it will feel loved to everyone who enters. If rooms are neglected or a little to static and uncomfortable that is the exact vibe they will give off to visitors.

Here is a good example  of patina, texture and mixing to the max.  The rug feels a little worn in, but beautiful  – the wicker blind which doesn’t exactly go with the interior sort of works, even though its shouts beachy. The sheepskin over such an architectural chair is again a little off plan the room works because its held together by a beautiful colour palette and some pieces that tell a narrative. Its not uptight, its got no ego it just feels like whoever lives here loves it. That is what decorating is all about

Happy Tuesday

Abigail Ahern sale today

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