I’m so excited I could crush a grape!

At last ….

I am revealing my TOP SECRET PROJECT!!!

I know …

Many of you have been waiting for months.

So let’s not …

beat about the bush any longer. Here it is, the grand reveal ….

Introducing …

my very own product designs!

Oh yes …

I have been working very hard on a series of designs, and am very pleased to announce that they are now available to purchase in the form of blinds from fantastic company Creatively Different Blinds.

I would …

be honoured if you would go and take a look at my designs on their web site by clicking here. I would be more honoured if you would tell  other people about them, and I would be knocked over backwards with delight if you decided to buy one.

I guess …

it would be fitting to show you some of my work now wouldn’t it? Ok, here you go, I hope you like them

Owl Be Watching You

Trouble and Squeak

Paperchain Polka

Loopy Butterflies

I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles

Laughing Pop

Bright and Beautiful

Zigga Zig-ahhh

Barking Rings

Love Spoons

I would LOVE …

to hear what you think of my efforts and if the wait for the grand reveal was worth it. If you blog, I’d love it if you would think about featuring my designs. Take care Flame Fans – you rock!

Fiona

Interior Designer, Flame Interiors
Interior design solutions for you in Bath, Bristol and the rest of UK

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for my absence. I have a good excuse honest (and if you follow me on Twitter or are a Facebook fan you’ll already know why).

I guess…

the blog title might give it away. Baby Flame, aka Noah Hefin Davies, arrived at 20:26 on Easter Sunday. He is my best design project ever!

Mother and baby …

both doing well. I can’t believe he is almost 6 weeks old! Where has the time gone? Anyway, I will be writing blogs and designing stuff again at some point (as soon as my head stops being like jelly – when is that exactly?), so please keep looking here for more stuff from me. You might want to look here next Friday (10th June), as I will finally be revealing my Top Secret Project (ha ha to all of you who thought Noah was my Top Secret Project, oh how very wrong you were…)

In the meantime …

I shall leave you with some photographic evidence of this not so top secret project. Enjoy!

Noah Hefin Davies 3 days old with his mummy

Mummy and Baby Flame

Fiona

Interior Designer, Flame Interiors
Interior design solutions for you in Bath, Bristol and the rest of UK

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I thought I’d feature another classic in the history of chair design. It’s not necessarily about wanting to fill my blog with a history lesson. Design classics are classic for a reason, and that’s a good enough reason to want to feature them. Nowadays we are spoilt for choice with the amount of products available for our home. Sadly craftmanship and investing in beautiful pieces are often overlooked, with many people buying reproduction and two-a-penny products shipped in from China.

I remember …

having to do a presentation for my Interior Design course at university on this particular chair, so I’m just a little bit excited about re-visiting it today. Allow me to present the Red Blue Chair, which was the brainchild of Dutch cabinet and furniture designer Gerrit Rietvelt way back in 1917/1918.

Gerrit Rietveld 1888-1964

The Red Blue Chair

It might look …

a little ‘Ikea’ to you – that’ll be the primary colours and the fact it it is reminiscent of the Poang chair (actually that should be the other way around).

Ikea Poang Chair in red

In fact …

moving away from more traditional design, like Thonet’s chair (which I featured last time), Rietveld was exploring our idea of comfort when he created it. You can still sink into this chair, but rather than engulfing you in cushions, it’s designed to keep you alert so you can have a good think, yet still comfortable.  Furthermore Rietveld’s colours were inspired by the De Stijl art movement – very du jour at the time – and still looks modern today. In fact you can still buy them from places such as Design Icons. Some people have had a play around and created their own version, such as this ‘mini-me’ Red Blue chair and one made from fluorescent lights!

'mini-me' Red Blue chair

Fluorescent Red Blue Chair

The question remains …

is it furniture? Is it art? Would you want to sit in it? I think it’s a beautiful chair to look at, but I am a bit of a cushion lover at heart. I think I might get a numb behind if I sat in this chair, but having said that, I do love to look at it. What do you think?

Fiona

Interior Designer, Flame Interiors
Interior design solutions for you in Bath, Bristol and the rest of UK

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so as you might know, I’ve been working hard to get my Top Secret Project out the door. It’s done now and I will be revealing all soon (watch this space). Sadly, it meant I didn’t have time to blog last week. Never fear, I’m back now.

So, I thought …

I might as well come back with something weird and wonderful, just so you’d remember why it is you love Wonderful World of Walls in the first place!

Allow me to present …

Warped Wallpaper by German company, Surrealien.

Warped Walls by Surrealien

Warped Walls by Surrealien

Detail. Warped Walls by Surrealien

Surrealien …

take technical plans of the walls they’re going to be designing for, including all the details, such as doors, windows, light switches, mirrors etc. They then use a computer to lay out a grid, which takes their patterns and warps them around the objects. The images then go to the printers to be printed onto stripes of professional wallpaper, which is made from fleece and can be put up in the usual way.

Surrealien use computer grids to work out how to warp the walls

Again …

I love/hate this idea. I love its creativity and the fact that something new is being done with something old. I love the effect and think this could work really well in commercial spaces. It would definitely bring a smile to your face, and as you know, I’m all for that. I think I hate it when I consider the possibility of using it in a residential space, but only because I can’t imagine many clients falling in love with it.  Although, truth be told, any potential client who would be likely to fall in love with it, is the kind of person I’m am always open to working with. I think you’re going to need to really love this concept if you wanted to put it in your home. It’s not cheap because it’s bespoke, but used in the right way, I think it has real impact. I just appreciate that is wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea – unless you’re the Mad Hatter type. If so, let’s talk!

Fiona

Interior Designer, Flame Interiors
Interior design solutions for you in Bath, Bristol and the rest of UK

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for a quick one this week. I do love writing these blog articles, and I love even more that you love to read them. Having said that, I am an interior designer, and sometimes ‘deadlines is deadlines,’ and getting to write these posts has to take a back seat. I know, “boo” right? I quite agree.

Anyway…

I’ve come to a natural pause in the project I’m working on today. It was a toss up between making a cup of tea, or writing Wonderful World of Walls. I do hope you know the sacrifice I am making for you?

If you love …

books, you’re going to love this. This is ‘bookcase‘ wallpaper by Atelier Abigail Ahern, which she describes as “depicting a bookcase with weighty tomes, this lush wallpaper turns plain jane walls into instant reading rooms.” Well, how could I not feature someone who uses the word “lush“?

'Bookcase' wallpaper by Atelier Abigail Ahern

This paper …

is both fun, yet rather grown up. It’s perfect for rooms with high ceilings, and would certainly help to break up some of that height. It could also be used in libraries or studies if you’re lucky enough to have one (yes, if your study is the spare room, it still counts.) It could also be put to clever use in alcove spaces, or any nook or cranny. Large landings would benefit from using the paper as a feature. Poor landings, they do tend to get coated in rather dull neutrals and left to act as glorified corridors, don’t they?

'Bookcase' wallpaper by Atelier Abigail Ahern

I’d love …

to have some fun using this paper in a commercial project, perhaps a cafe. The key would be not to go into overkill with it, but I think the photos show just how fabulous it can look when used right. Ok, that’s it for this week. Over and out…

Fiona

Interior Designer, Flame Interiors
Interior design solutions for you in Bath, Bristol and the rest of UK

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if you’re anything like me, it takes a minimum of three reminder letters from your optician before you pick up the phone and do something about it. Is it laziness? Is it fear of finding out you’re going blind, due to some eye-eating bug that’s somehow set up home on your eyeball, because you’ve been too lazy to go and see the optician, have left it too long between appointments, and are now subsequently doomed to living out your days in darkness, and you’ve no one to blame but yourself? Nah, it’s laziness…

But …

what if opticians were a bit more of an alluring place to be? Maybe we’d be able to banish the fear of the eye-eating bug once and for all. If you are a glasses or contact lens wearer (or indeed an eye-eating bug sufferer), then you’ll be well aware of how uninspiring a space an opticians can be. Sure, they’ve done a lot since I was a kid tricked into wearing a pair of glasses at least three times the size of my natural facial proportions, to ensure that wearing glasses is everything from classy and stylish, to fun and funky, yet most opticians have done very little to make their space any more inspiring than a doctors or dentist’s waiting room.

That must be…

what Jason Kirk (managing director of the luxury eye wear brand Kirk Originals) must have been thinking, when he set the brief for the recent make over of his flagship store in the west end of London . Taking inspiration from retail, as opposed to the clinical feel of a more traditional opticians, they’ve come up with something completely different.

Kirk Originals Flagship Store, London

It’s the glasses…

themselves, that have inspired a shop design, which is wholly futuristic in style. Large ‘lenticular‘ eyes look out at you from the shop’s windows, winking at you as you pass by. (Lenticular technology simply means giving an image the ability to move or change as you look at it from various angles.) The store is small, and done out completely in a dark blue-grey hue with a charcoal coloured slated floor. Thus the display of glasses becomes the main focus, which kind of makes sense if you think about it. The lenticular theme continues in the glasses display itself, with each pair displayed on it’s own set of winking eyes.

Glasses display at Kirk Originals, London

In fact…

the glasses can be arranged so that when you’re in the store a whole crowd of eyes is looking at you! It’s meant to be based on the idea of some kind of art installation, but I think it would give me the creeps.  Apparently, the idea is that setting the glasses out this way would give the customer an idea of what the glasses could look like when you try them on. In my experience, nothing I ever try on in shops – be it a dress, jeans or pair of specs – ever looks like it does in the display. Design wise, I think this is an interesting and intelligent move forward. Opticians could certainly do with a little ‘oomph‘ that’s for sure. However, as a customer, I think I would run screaming past the entrance, having just been winked at by a fake eye, let alone allow myself to be completely intimidated by the dour dark decor and a hundred pair of ‘eyes’ all staring at me, telling me that this is apparently how ‘good’ I could look to, if I were just to reach into my bag and get my purse out. Maybe I’m just not cool enough? Yes, I’d like opticians to be much braver in their stores, but for me, as a customer, this might be a step to far.

Detail - lenticular glasses display, which makes the eyes wink at you!

What do you think?

Would you shop here? Do you think it’s cool? Or would it give you the heebie-jeebies?

Fiona

Interior Designer, Flame Interiors
Interior design solutions for you in Bath, Bristol and the rest of UK

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I thought to myself, “it’s Tuesday, which means it’s time to write another Wonderful World of Walls blog post.“  So that’s what I’m going to do.

I remember …

when my parents moved into their current house. It’s a good, solid, old building with lots of character. “It’s got a lots of potential,” is what most people (including me) said when they saw it. You see, unfortunately, with it they had received the previous owner’s decor (or lack thereof.) I distinctly remember how one of the living room walls had been (badly) papered in a wallpaper that was meant to look like a red brick wall. Yes, “why?” was that first thought that popped into our minds, and then quickly out of our mouths, but no one could come up with an answer. It was truly hideous, and what’s more, a rather strange choice for a living room wall (and this was well before the era of the ‘feature wall‘ too!) My parents have since rectified the horror and put their own stamp on their home, you’ll be pleased to hear.

A faux red brick wallpaper, similar, but not as hideous, as the one my parent's inherited!

So, what is it…

with these awful papers that are meant to look like bricks, or tiles or wood panelling? It wouldn’t be so bad if they actually looked realistic, but they just didn’t/don’t, and are rather unpalatable to say the least. Are you picking up that I am not a big fan? But that is the 1980s version. Things have moved on. In fact, when googling an image to illustrate my parent’s ex-wallpaper, I couldn’t really find anything fake and hideous enough. So there you go, maybe one day I’ll end up featuring a ‘nice,’ modern faux red brick wallpaper on here. But I digress…

Wood panelling wallpaper - yuck, yuck, yuck

You see …

I found myself having to eat my words (yes, yes not the first time, I know, but at least I admit it!), when I stumbled across this fabulous wallcovering my Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek. This is his Scrapwood wallpaper …

Scrapwood Wallpaper by Piet Heen Eek

Scrapwood Wallpaper by Piet Heen Eek

Scrapwood Wallpaper by Piet Heen Eek

Scrapwood Wallpaper by Piet Heen Eek

Scrapwood Wallpaper by Piet Heen Eek

Yes, I know …

it’s still fake wood, but this is done in a clever, and with it, stylish way. Piet Hein Eek has managed to take wood and make faux look realistic, without pretending to be something that is isn’t. The paper has no pattern repeat, so you allow yourself the randomness that comes with reclaimed wood, or even driftwood found on the beach. It’s simultaneously predictable and unpredictable, which makes it pretty special in my book.

Ok…

so you have to fork out about £145 a roll, but each roll is 45cm wide by 9 metres in length, giving you 4m2 of a unique plank layout. What’s more it’s printed on FSC certified paper (which we like a lot) and is colourfast, so you can wipe if with a soft cloth. It’s also a paste the wall, not the paper, wallcovering, which means there’s no need for a papering table and it also comes in six types – nice. So, my parent’s hideous inherited 1980s faux red brick wallpaper, might have made me think that natural or ‘building’ materials could never be re-created successfully as a wallcovering, but I for one am more than pleased to have been converted by Piet Hein Eek and his Scrapwood wallpaper.

What do you think? …

Fiona

Interior Designer, Flame Interiors
Interior design solutions for you in Bath, Bristol and the rest of UK

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considered the chair you are sitting on? Have you ever thought about the fact that someone, somewhere, designed it to look and feel exactly the way it does? If you’re sitting on a cheap ole thing, you might even laugh at such a preposterous suggestion. If you’re sat in your Herman Miller desk chair, you might be feeling smug about having invested in something “designed” over a £39.99 chair from Viking Direct? Either way, the chair – you  chair – has a history.

So what?..

you might very well say. I doubt it though. If you really thought such things, you wouldn’t have clicked a link through to an Interiors blog now would you? So, I am assuming I have a captive audience? Marvellous.

You see …

when it comes to chairs, design matters. After all, if you’re going to invest in a statement piece, you really want it to look beautiful, interesting, or both. You might never want to sit in it. Maybe you just want to sit (somewhere else) and look at it admiringly, the way some women gaze lovingly at a pair of new shoes in a shop window? However, for most of us, we want something that is going to be comfortable, first and foremost, and functional to boot. We all know what a literal pain in the backside it is to sit on a badly designed chair after all. (Come on now, I can’t believe you’d be an exception to that rule?) So I thought I’d start at the beginning and see how we get on.

Years and years ago…

the evolution of the chair had slowed right down. If you were poor you’d most likely have been sat on something you’d whittled for yourself out of wood. If you were rich, you’d have perched upon something like this upholstered Louis XIV chair.

A typical Louis XIV chair

It’s not that…

chairs weren’t designed, or even differed from each other in “the olden days“, but they didn’t vary as much in design, ingenuity or invention as they have done since the turn of the last century. So, when we talk about “design classics,” which was the first chair to start turning heads? Well, it’s generally agreed to be this. The Bentwood Chair by Michael Thonet, 1859. (“Aha!” I hear you say, “the ‘Allo ‘Allo chair.“)

The Bentwood Chair. Michael Thonet, 1859

So, what’s so radical …

about the Bentwood Chair? Well, back in the day, furniture used to be made by carefully joining pieces of flat wood together (being careful to hide all the joins.) Thonet, not wanting to be held back by traditional methods, started to have a play around with other, newer ways of doing things. His eureka! came when he discovered he could steam wood and a metal strap together in such a way that the wood would not crack when shaped. Furthermore, it would also maintain it’s shape after being held together and dried out. Radical and modern for it’s time, but what’s more, it’s timeless too. In fact Modernist architect Le Corbusier said (during his lifetime some years later) “Never has anything been created more elegant and better in its conception, more precise in its execution, and more excellently functional.“

Other Thonet designs

We might …

know the Bentwood Chair better as the ‘Bistro‘ (or ‘Allo ‘Allo) chair 150 years later, but the fact that it’s still to be gracing our cafes in 2011 amongst its more modern rivals, really does mean that Thonet was just a little bit of a genius. Well done Thonet!

Fiona

Interior Designer, Flame Interiors
Interior design solutions for you in Bath, Bristol and the rest of UK

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that people are loving the Wonderful World of Walls. I didn’t even think anyone would ever read it when I began, and now I get people asking me if it’s time for another post. Thanks for all of your support. You are all awesome – and of course, a big welcome to you if this is the first time you’ve read my blog or Wonderful World of Walls.

This week …

I am going to feature some walls emailed to me by a friend. He saw them, took some photos, and emailed them to me saying I just had to feature them in Wonderful World of Walls. Well, they are walls and they are wonderful, so why not? Thank you Andy Jackson

Don’t you just love …

artists? The way that they can be so different from the rest of society, without really trying (or caring?- and yet caring tremendously, but that’s another story), and also at times, being completely off their rockers?! (I know this can be true of me, being one of them.) Well, if that’s the pre-requisite for creating some truly interesting and/or original and creative stuff, then there’s nothing wrong with that. Bring it on.

And so to …

this weeks Wonderful Walls. These images come from the home of an artist called Roland.  He lives fairly locally to me and is setting up his own painting and decorating business, as well as creating his art, amongst which contains these fabulous collages on the walls in his own home.

Wall Collage 1

Wall Collage 2

Wall Collage 3

Wall Collage 4

Not everyone’s …

cup of tea perhaps. Do you think they’re ok for you home, or perhaps someone else’s home? Maybe you think they would be better in a gallery or a public space? Personally, I love them. I think they’re great and intuitive, and what’s more, personally customised to Roland’s own taste. Yes, they might be a bit much if you like clean lines and hate clutter, but you have to admit, they are fabulous in their own right? As an interior designer, following a client’s brief is of the utmost importance, but it’s great to know that there is something out there for everyone’s taste. I am not a fan of people jumping on the fashion band wagon. Your home is just that – YOUR HOME, so it should be filled with design that makes you happy. I’m glad that Roland has decided to cover his walls with what makes him happy. Some of us could do with taking a leaf out of his book (and then sticking it on our wall!)

Fiona

Interior Designer, Flame Interiors
Interior design solutions for you in Bath, Bristol and the rest of UK

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it feels when you finish a project, and manage to get some decent ‘before and after‘ shots. It doesn’t always happen. Sometimes a client doesn’t want their home displayed on your website, but more often than not, it’s just a timing thing. After all, I am designing spaces for people to live and work in, and that’s what they want to get on and do. In order to show the full effect of a completed design, you really need to be able to take the photos the moment it’s finished and dressed.

So here’s one …

I made earlier. This has been such an awesome project to be involved with because it’s a nursery. If you read my blogs or tweets regularly, you’ll know I love colour, and having fun with my designs. Any kid’s room is therefore, the perfect canvas for me to really let loose.

Let’s start …

at the beginning (it’s a very good place to start.) My clients had bought a home where they had “inherited” the worst kind of DIY – lucky them. The room therefore needed a lot of preparation. The previous owners had stripped wallpaper by simply tearing it off in strips, and then painted the room without removing the paper that hadn’t come away. Goodness knows what they were thinking?! The walls needed filling in order to make them good enough to paint. (We could’ve re-skimmed them, but this method sufficed in this case.) Top tip number one: you can NEVER spend too much time, money or energy on getting your prep right – it is what makes a room.

"Before." Nursery, door wall.

"Before." Nursery, right hand wall.

"Before." Nursery, window wall.

"Before." Nursery, left hand wall.

Once …

we’d made the walls good, my design was ready to go in. The brief was fairly straight forward. My clients don’t know if they are having a boy or girl, so they wanted something unisex, without it being dull and predictable. They also wanted to avoid the room being too geared towards a baby, so that their child could enjoy the design until they are 3 or 4 years old (or until a baby brother or sister comes along to enjoy the design in their place.) They both like colour, but the room is fairly small, so it was important that the room felt cosy and homely, without feeling pokey. The only other thing they mentioned is that they quite liked the thought of going with an animal theme, and that they preferred ‘farmyard‘ to the ‘jungle.’

So …

do you want to see what I did? Oh, go on then.  The first thing I did was to divide the wall space into two, using the top of the window as my guiding measurement. Everything above the line above the line was painted in a pale blue, and became the ‘sky,’ while everything underneath the line was painted in a pale green, and became the ‘field.’ Top tip number two: when painting a child’s room,  spend a little extra money on wipe-able paint, you won’t be sorry you did!

Using paint to define 'sky' and 'field'

I found …

a fab light in Ikea that was perfect for this design. I had been keeping my eyes open for a light fitting with clouds, so that I could properly define the ‘sky‘ from the ‘field.’

Ikea's Skojig ceiling lamp in white

Nursery with Ikea Skolig Ceiling Light detail

The window dressing…

was fairly simple. My client had been given a pair of off-white blackout curtains from her sister that she wanted to use. That introduced white into the design, which was perfect in keeping the design fresh and not too colour heavy. I suggest a white pole, and we were able to re-use one they already had in another room. I also put some funky white holdbacks in place. Lastly I specified a white wooden venetian blind. This finishes the look, but also diffuses the light in the day. This gives my clients the option for the middle of the day when they might not want to use the black out curtains. Top tip number three: There’s nothing wrong with making do and mending. You can often incorporate things you already own into a room’s design.

Nursery. Window Dressing detail.

I was very clever …

when I bought the blind. I bought one that was twice as long as the window. I removed all the extra slats and instructed my carpenter to make them into a ‘fence,’ which he then attached to the wall at just over dado rail height, in line with the bottom of the window. Looks easy, but it did involve A LOT of measuring on my part! I then finished the walls by adding some stylised sheep stickers from Decosticks, and a sheep light switch cover for a bit of fun. So then my ‘field‘ was full of sheep. Top tip number four: don’t forget the small details, they can be what makes a design.

Fence made from a venetian blind and sheep wall stickers

Nursery. Light Switch Detail.

Lastly …

I specified a brown carpet with a lighter brown stripe running it through it. It’s meant to represent a ‘ploughed‘ field, but also adds warmth to the room by grounding the pastels and white scheme, meaning the room doesn’t feel pasty or bland. Then all we needed was to  start adding the furniture.

A picture …

paints a thousand words, so I’ll leave you with some images of the final design in situ. Hope you like it. My clients do.

After. Nursery, door wall.

After. Nursery, right-hand wall.

After. Nursery, left-hand wall.

After. Nursery, changing table detail.

After. Nursery, cot detail.

After. Nursery, cot detail.

Fiona

Interior Designer, Flame Interiors
Interior design solutions for you in Bath, Bristol and the rest of UK

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This blog post is part of the mydeco.com ‘Pass It On Nursery series’, a collaborative blogging project. I’m passing it on to APD Interiors and Austin John Interiors