How to get a DIY gilding effect on black moulded furniture

Home office furniture can be so clinical and boring so for a current interior’s job, I wanted to create something with a gentleman’s club feel, very masculine yet still comfortable and warm. We designed and had made several pieces, including a large desk and some chimney recess drawer and filing cabinet sections, opting for Farrow & Ball Railings to give a deep, luxurious feel. As much as I liked the look, something else was needed to bring out the fabulous gold of the honey bee wallpaper…. a touch of gilding?

A few hours and a delicate touch later, the addition of pale gold acrylic paint gives flashes of light and a depth to the cabinet details and mouldings. Perfect!

There’s also a similar look I created using verdigris and copper on an upcycled table for Channel 5: HERE

Sunday Style Summary: Holker Hall garden festival, crafty finds & mucky windows

Sunday’s round up for last week is the usual eclectic mix of home, interiors, property and garden madness involving getting high on both paint fumes and garden scents

I visited Holker Hall near Ulverston in the Lakes yesterday for their annual garden festival, spending as usual a fortune on unusual plants!It was my kind of show, packed full of Cumbrian food produce & stalls, artisan local crafts and a sea of beautiful flowers. Purple is definitely the colour of the season and it was interesting to note the lack of allium and agapanthus which have dominated every garden show I’ve been to in recent years. Lots of digitalis, foxglove and  tall ethereal type blooms instead. All in purple.

There seem to be lots of magical forest type flowers popular with growers, bells and droplets and wisps of colour. Bit of a new trend coming through to replace the great balls of colour from recent years?

Traditional Cumbrian crafts were in action and it was fascinating to watch the dry stone walling going up, intricate lacemaking being created using about 6 million threads(!), willow weaving and fence making. My favs were the fairy cottage type gates with their curved vertical panels and the huge chunks of wood for tables & plate racks made using thin twigs of willow you can see below. Sucker for timber, every time.

Really enjoyed the event, would definitely go back next year.

Last weeks finds also included:

• A rather sexy Tom Dixon laser cut candle holder (seen with a very nosey Missy cat)
• That beautiful Shaws of Darwen ridge fronted sink which I specified for Half Built House Eastbourne seen in a v posh kitchen showroom
• A little visit to Annie Sloan supplier and gorgeous little showroom Aunty Mabel’s Seat in Knutsford

And just to prove not everything in Moregeousland is gorgeous, I also had to deal with unbelievably disgusting  mould and saw this rather curious take on window blinds

Clerkenwell Design Week 2013 Highlights by Moregeous: Furniture, lighting and pattern

There were quite literally hundreds of stands, products and designers at Clerkenwell Design Week 2013 so it wasn’t at all easy to choose favourites…. but we managed it! Here are the ones which stood out for me as exciting, innovative and yes, you know the script, Moregeous

All images taken at Clerkenwell, not stock or PR shots.

Below clockwise from top left:

• Susana Martin’s Heritage Chair for Munna Design, one of a limited edition of 12 chairs amazingly decorated with silver Portugese filigree. Up close this work was spectacularly gorgeous.
• Beautifully solid furniture by Icons made from old Venetian lagoon posts which are turned into planks and then made into furniture. Like buying a little bit of Italy, in fact.
• Stunning copper table with tubular legs by Swedese – there was a LOT of tubular work this year, this was one of the more elegant pieces.
• Stylish, sustainable and practical Uma clothes horse by James Smith Designs, which I just thought was really different and beats throwing your clothes on a chair by miles!
• Hefty almost chess piece timber stools by WorkHouse. You know how I love my chunks of timber and have been making stools like this for years but this was new take on using felled trees.
• Simple pastel dipped timber stool – lost the name card! Lots of pastels on the Scandi stands, new trend emerging?

Lighting wise at Clerkenwell we were spoiled for choice, I had to REALLY whittle down the list just to lights I hadn’t seen before. Clockwise from top left:

• The spectacular display of Foscarini lighting in the Farmiloe Building, seriously impressive within the space and not for your average living room….
• Industrial glam by brand new company Buster & Punch – look out for them, excellent stuff, beautifully crafted and surprisingly affordable for handmade designer lighting.
• Shredder light called Eliminator deep in the dungeon in the House of Detention by Merve Kahraman, how cool is this light. Just HOW cool?
• Pentagon style gold and black pendants and also Lace laser cut leather pendant by Deadgood Ltd, love  this company, endlessly innovative.
• Fabulous milking machine inspired Parlour lighting by Irish talent Donna Bates, the etched glass represents the milk filling up the bottles, so fresh feeling.

Not much in the way of fabrics and wallpaper (not a criticism as Clerkenwell isn’t the show for that anyway), however I fall for the below:

• Top: Gorgeous fabrics from new company Tradescant & Son, all suitable for upholstery and quite beautiful. Was way too hard to choose bewteen the peacock feathers, hummingbirds and butterflies, might have to have some of each…
• Kit Miles‘ stunning fabric  and papers featuring his own hand drawn work in my colour of the moment, purple, on this design Temple of Flora. And what an absolutely lovely boy he was too, much too sunny for a dungeon

Interiors London & May Design Series 2013 – Moregeous Review & Images

Endlessly surfing the web and gazing at flat screened images has got nothing on seeing things up close and personal, with trade shows being a great way of seeing lots of products and companies under one roof. This week’s May Design Series at Excel was an amalgamation of different events – KBB (kitchens, bedrooms and bathrooms), Arc (lighting), and Interiors London – which had a definite aimed-at-professionals feel, rather than just being a colourful Instagram-fest. For me there were a few stand out pieces which started my creative juices flowing and also some very practical innovations which appealed to my ladybuilder side. My favourite three stands are below:

• Out Of The Dark, Jay & Jade’s charitable social enterprise part of which teaches and draws out creative skills from disadvantaged young people by helping them to re-love, recycle, re-paint and redesign salvaged furniture. I love the support the industry has shown this great business, wouldn’t it be brilliant if branches sprang up in every city and town?
• Materia, full of exciting and innovative new materials which you’ll see starting to filter through to products and projects soon.
• Second Sitters, a collection of different artists textile and chair work featuring many different types of creative approaches and styles. I particularly like Hannah Stanton‘s Brass Backs chair, very talented, a definite One To Watch.

There are always amazing newly developed and launched materials if you are a creative or designer and below are just some of the images I took of the Materia stand. It was really interesting to see at least one of the Materia featured products actually in use on one of the kitchen stands, a sliver thin slate used on a kitchen door. Apparently Team Moregeous were the only ones to spot the connection #vproud. I love a bit of slate and now my mind is working overtime on where I can use it….

New and innovative products on the Materia stand

Warm metallics are still rocking the interior world as you can see below, used in everything from stunning gilded chairs ( I first saw this book chair by Nobody&co at Tent London but it was in plain white last year – looks amazing in gold for 2013) to kitchen handles, laser cut lattice work, table legs and display bowls:

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Clockwise from top: Nobody&co, Yask, the Copper trade body stand, Zanetto, Grace & Webb, and Armac Martin

A stunning twist on the Rough Luxe trend was this timber wall cladding which has a lustrous, decadent golden sheen and was quite beautifully smooth to the touch whilst retaining an unfinished look. Very clever. Betcha we’ll see this in an über cool bar or some footballer’s pad soon. I shall be attempting it with 240gsm sandpaper and some gold acrylic paint

Golden wall cladding called Rasata by Artwood

There was lots of colour but no one particular theme or trend which dominated. The colour choice for the stand in the top left image below was a break from the norm and quite unusual, and the delicate ombre effect of the Badgers of Bohemia wallpaper and fabrics top right was very pretty. Delighted to see the Prestigious Textiles amazingly colourful peacock paper I used on Channel 5′s Half Built House featuring bottom right and another stunning show display by Timorous Beasties bottom left – how incredible is that fabric?!

Some very fancy kitchens in the KBB section, glamorous, sleek and very very moody this year:

New innovations coming your way include LED lit and ever mood changing cooker hoods, rimless loos – yes, you heard it here first – kitchen cabinets with no screws, dowls or fittings and a rather futuristic looking oven from Caple which raises and lowers itself at the touch of a button from your cooker island. 

Garden Inspiration for Summer 2013 at the Heatons Open garden day

The combination of being able to nosey round Other People’s Houses, take in some inspiration from real garden spaces, get advice from enthusiastic home gardeners and eat cake at virtually every stop was fairly hard to resist so Mr M found himself dragged along to the Heaton’s Open Garden day yesterday, though I think he secretly enjoyed it He likes a big one, Mr M, and as the gardens ranged from the back of suburban terraces to the enormous wow-we-never-expected-that surprising, neither of us were disappointed.

You rarely get to see behind those front facades so, for me as a keen gardener, it was a real treat to find out what other people are growing, plus see what works and what doesn’t. I was SO jealous of other people’s tulips, what is in the water in Heaton Moor?! Mine are piddly this year and most haven’t even flowered – the ones in the Heatons were MASSIVE!!

The Japanese Acers on display were absolutely beautiful, in all shapes, sizes and colours:

Apple trees and blossoms were everywhere and due to late blossoming this year we saw them at their prettiest. I loved the idea of tying the branches to grow the trees together as a blossom fence, definitely going to do that in my garden to separate the drive from the garden:

Lots of people were growing their own in a variety of different ways, I found myself getting very envious of lettuce!

*Somebody* fancied koi for lunch….

Lots of different way to display flowers and planting, you don’t have to just stick to pots you know! Wait til you see my upcycled drawers done for Crafty magazine in a couple of weeks – they’re LUSH!

In lots of different gardens there were chives which had been allowed to flower (left hand image) as both young and old enjoyed the open gardens

Looked like purple was a hit for 2013, lilac and aubergine hues absolutely everywhere!

I bought a jar of honey and ate cake at the most amazing garden on Princes Road where Heaton Honey is made:

But my award for the most imaginative and eclectic garden goes to the one below which, YES, is all one garden, can you believe? Absolutely stunning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little Northern Contemporary Craft Fair visited Sunday 19 May 2013

Brittany Delany ceramics and Kate Bufton Book Transformations

Have thoroughly enjoyed my Sunday today – why can’t ALL Sundays be like this? First I had a lie in, then chocolate tiffin for breakfast, then we popped over to the Little Northern Contemporary Craft Fair in Cheadle Hulme, one of the @GNCCF satellite events prior to the biggie in Autumn. My passion for the immense skill and creative talent the UK produces is reinforced every time I go to an event like this, selling stunningly crafted and hand-produced items which knock spots of the tat found in shopping ‘malls’ up and down the country.

It’s no good going along and not buying either, you’ve to stick your hand in your pocket and put your money where your mouth is. Craftsmen and women don’t survive by people just passing by, smiling and saying “Ah, isn’t it lovely” but not BUYING it! I bought a gorgeous Brittany Delany tea-light holder and a beautiful glass fired bowl by Emma Wells – delighted with both of them

How amazing is this French knitted silver chain jewellery below, such skill involved:

Clockwise from top: Suzanne Claire Jewellery, then Goldfinch Jewellery by Lucy Ramsbottom

Loved the laser cut acrylic lighting by Kirsty Shaw and have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more of this type of work in the future:

Clockwise from top: Kirsty Shaw Acrylic lighting, then screen printed and fired glass by Emma Wells

Neon anyone? Totally on trend contemporary craft:

Clockwise from top: Wonderhaus Jewellery, then Print Garage, then Kirsty Shaw acrylic

And of course, anyone who knows me knows why I picked this image for the blog #want

Holly Levell Textile Artist

Try and get over to one of the other satellite events in the next few months and help support British craft.

P.S. Don’t forget to sign the petition which is endeavouring to help keep Craft defined as Creative – sounds obvious doesn’t it? Take a look x

Ever wanted to pressure wash the banking system…..

Back before the big crash, I transferred some property mortgages to the Heritable Bank Plc, a 132 year old Scottish incorporated Bank which had “a long tradition of providing specialist finance solutions to companies and individuals in the UK” and which had been bought by Icelandic bank Landsbanki in 2000. You used to go with who you trusted in banking, to secure the long term success and stability of your business and Heritable seemed like a good business to trust, long history and all that. Yes, yes, we all know better now. In October 2008, Heritable went into administration, due to the massive over extension of the Icelandic banking system and collapse of parent company Landsbanki. DOH.

There’s been an in limbo period of almost five years where I’ve been paying monthly ‘as per usual’ to administrators but nothing else has happened. I’ve written to them to try and redeem the loan by funding with another lender but was ignored. Then today I get a letter telling me that there has been “a change in your mortgage account” and that the mortgage has been “assigned to Mars Capital Finance Ltd”. So I go on line to look for them and the web-site doesn’t work. So I call the Heritable Bank (in administration) number for information and Mars Capital Finance Ltd answer, but moreorless refuse to give me any information about themselves, e.g. who they are, are they a British company, how long they’ve been trading, etc.

Completely bizarre and not just a little disconcerting. What a strange world we live in where people’s lives and livelihoods get transferred willy nilly across companies and you end up dealing with a business about whom you know and are apparently allowed to know absolutely nothing. But it’s ok, because, as the boy from Mars Capital Finance Ltd said, it’s “all in the terms and conditions”……. I honestly don’t think he could comprehend why I would want to know who it was I was now going to be doing a considerable amount of business with, or more precisely paying a considerable amount of money to.

If I had my way they’d all be hosed down with a high pressure jet wash to wash the bullsh*t away and then we’d all start over again doing banking the proper, old fashioned way. Well, a girl can daydream, can’t she……