Sania Pell

my styling for cox & cox: part 2

September 19, 2012  in interior styling

Here are some more of my favourite images of my styling work for Cox & Cox, taken from a cross section of categories, including Decorative Home, Wrap & Stamp and Bed & Bath. There are so many more images to see, so if you like these do have a look at their website.

Cox & Cox was founded in 1999 and aimed to be different to the normal mail order companies by personally choosing interesting products for individually-minded customers who didn’t want the same old high street items. As an interior stylist and author of craft books, I have bought many of their products over the years, especially the craft items. As they say on their website, they embrace the heartfelt philosophy that it’s possible to create a home that is both beautiful and practical and I have to agree!

I am always using their rubber stamps, such as the vintage-style numbers set (£22.50) and alphabet (£18.50) and have featured them on my blog before. My husband has bought a box of gorgeous ribbons for me in the past too, so It was a joy to create shots using them all. My aim was to give customers ideas on how the products could be used, as well as showing the actual product itself, providing inspiration to get creative and try them for themselves. For instance the blank cards and envelopes (£12.50 for 50) I felt needed to be decorated and I tried to show how this could be done with their washi tapes, stamps and labels. It is the same idea with using their tapes and tags in the images with the wrapping and tissue papers, combining their products to greater effect.

Whilst I was making the props at home, my daughter was inspired by all the materials surrounding me and wanted to help me and make her own versions. We used some of her and her brother’s little creative additions in some of the images!

A good stock of blank cards, papers, tags and tapes, means you are never caught out when you remember a birthday, a celebration or just need to say thank you.

If you love to make, have a look at the Cox & Cox Wrap & Stamp section and hopefully the images will inspire your creativity.

Photographs by Emma Lee, courtesy of Cox & Cox.

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my styling for cox & cox : part 1

September 19, 2012  in interior styling

One of the jobs I worked on in the run up to summer was styling for the new catalogue and re-designed website for Cox & Cox, the home interiors mail order company. Some of you may have seen their stylish new catalogue which dropped through letterboxes recently (if not you can request a catalogue here). I styled for three of the four weeks’ intensive shoot with a lot of prep work done in advance. Each shot was planned before hand, making sure that each item was given a little story or twist to help to make it different. I introduced creative aspects like chalk drawings, painted leaves and props, stitched cards and hand-stamped tags to give each shot its own personality. Part of the brief was to bring a new look to the collection, which includes new products for autumn and winter, and working with Cox & Cox and photographer Emma Lee I hope we have.

I thought I would share some of my favourite images and products that I styled and to begin here are some of my personal favourites from the Domestic Diva section.

My foodie assistant Chrissie baked biscuits with the C&C Cookie Cutters (from £4.50) while I made chocolates in these fab Leaf Chocolate Moulds (£10.50).

Fun Cutlery Wall Art (£50.00) for your kitchen (also useful if a giant pops round for tea).

There are lots of great products for kids too.

I will post some more of my favourite images later today, and some of the Christmas images in a couple of months’ time as it’s far too early for the C word!

If you don’t already have one then you can order a catalogue here and there are dozens more images on the new-look Cox & Cox website. They are also running a competition for a chance to win £500 to spend on their products!

Did you receive a copy of the catalogue already? I would love to hear what you thought.

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an elle decoration story

September 13, 2012  in interior styling

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of working on this six page story for Elle Decoration Magazine which you can see it in this month’s bumper October issue, a wonderfully heavy issue as a lead up to the London Design Festival and the Elle Deco British Design Awards. It started after I submitted some ideas to the editorial team and this Japan-inspired story – with my working title of origami – was given the go ahead. One of the pleasures of working on a feature like this is you are free to be inventive. Another is working in partnership with a creative photographer, in this case talented Uli Schade who I have worked with on many previous Elle Deco shoots.

This type of photo shoot is created from scratch with a location or studio researched and all furniture, products and materials sourced and created to fit with the concept. Each shot is throughly considered in advance, though there is always improvisation and flexibility on the shoot as each shot is created.

I especially love the day bed by Another Country and the pleated paper sculpture by artist Richard Sweeney in the image above left. The concrete wall is in fact wallpaper by Tom Haga which can be produced to fit your wall size exactly.

There is a conscious mix of items in this story to appeal to all budgets, some are of a higher price, some high street and others can be made or customised at home. The desk legs in the shot above for example are simple £5 Ikea trestle legs but repeated at varying angles to create a geometric pattern under the untreated pine £35 Ikea table top painted with Fired Earth paint. I always like to make some unique objects too, to give the story its own personality and to encourage readers to do the same. Items that can be made or painted at home that cost little but create individuality. The photos below I took at home and show some of these items.

Some of the simple, untreated wooden blocks were placed in water first and then into indigo ink to create a two tone ombré look. Others were painted with acrylic paint in different flat colours on their sides as a contrast and to complement the overall colour palette.

The canvas above was painted spontaneously and freely with indigo ink and a Chinese brush that I bought in Hong Kong many years ago. The large canvas below from London Graphics was painted with Fired Earth emulsion and then I stitched an origami folding diagram through it with embroidery thread, an easy way to create art at home.

This rug took a few hours to make with the help of my assistant Polly Ord, and transformed a simple £20 Ikea rug into something unique that fitted with the story. It creates a graphic but fun optical illusion on the floor.

To read the full story, see Uli’s images at their best and find details of all of the products, you can buy the October issue of Elle Decoration in newsagents now. You can get the lovely subscriber-only covers like the one above if you subscribe. Elle Deco also has a Facebook page and you can follow editor Michelle Ogundehin and the team on Twitter too.

And as we roll into the fabulous London Design Festival I’m looking forward to hitting the shows. I hope to see some of you there!

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afternoon tea with remodelista

June 30, 2012  in food styling, interior styling

A few Saturdays ago I had the pleasure of top interior design blog Remodelista, the sourcebook for contemporary living, as guests at my home for afternoon tea and a photo shoot. London Editor Christine asked if I could create a tablescape for them to feature, and with casual family summer lunches in mind I decided to create a look that was simple, colourful, informal and relaxed and based around growing vegetables and having raw ingredients on your kitchen table to make your own sandwiches as you sit. These are some of the photos from the afternoon, taken by talented photographer Rahel Weiss.

As it was a Saturday my children were at home and involved too and one of their favourites is egg and cress sandwiches. I chose a selection of eggs from my local Waitrose – quails’ eggs, lovely soft blue eggs and white eggs – which I grouped in pastel bowls. I hard boiled them all, so they could be peeled and sliced to make DIY egg sandwiches. The children grew watercress from seed the week before in pretty pastel egg cups. I sliced the farmhouse batch bread, buttered it and let the children peel the eggs and crumble and slice them onto the bread. They snipped and added the cress and sprinkled a few grains of sea salt on top and them devoured the crusty sandwiches with crumbs all around.

To decorate the table I painted terracotta pots from my local garden centre with emulsion paint in shades of grey, and used them as bowls to display radishes with their foliage still attached. I did the same went with organic carrots as they look so lush with the long stem and leaves still attached, adding to the display. I only have herbs growing in my little London garden at the moment so I bought growing lettuce still in soil in my local Sainsbury’s and replanted them in the painted terracotta pots, washing the leaves first and leaving scissors on the table nearby to snip the required amount off. The idea was you could harvest your own salad right there at the table. A painted wooden fruit box from my local market was used as a tray to contain some of the pots. It is one of the projects from my book The Homemade Home for Children.

Fizzy drinks were bought in old fashioned looking glass bottles, which I bought from Marks and Spencers. Striped straws add fun but in grey and white matched my kitchen decor. Fruit such as strawberries, blueberries and blackberries, and mint leaves too, were added to ice cubes creating a sweet little detail to our drinks.

I made the centrepiece simply with water-filled glass milk bottles (yes, we have a milkman!) with garden flowers and vegetables pushed down into the water, their foliage acting as greenery.

A Victoria sponge cake with whipped double cream spread over and strawberries generously piled on top is an easy pudding that looks and tastes delicious. The three little letter pebbles spell the word EAT and are from another project in my book.

A big thank you to Remodelista for popping by, (you can see the original post here), to Rahel Weiss for the great photos (see her folio here), to my friend Chrissie Holden for helping out and her culinary skills and to my children for gobbling it all up.

This informal lunchtime meal had a sprinkle of creativity, a dollop of fun and plenty of crumbs and was enjoyed by all.

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liberty launch styling

May 9, 2012  in books, interior styling

The book launch for The Homemade Home for Children at Liberty was a very special day for me and thank you to all who joined me to make it that way. I know there were friends who would have loved to have been there but just couldn’t make it on the day, so I thought I would show you the details that helped to make my corner of Liberty so cosy, so you too can join in and feel as if you were there.

I had two dusky green coloured trestle tables pushed together to create a making area on one side of the atrium on the 3rd floor, by the entrance to the Little Liberty children’s wear department. I brought some of the actual projects from the book along with some items I had made especially for the launch. The Floral Wall Hanging project from the front cover of the book was hung above an original fireplace – the perfect place for it – and on the mantlepiece I added the Bowl of Goldfish Mobile project, one of the dolls I made for the Vintage-style Doll project, a variation of the Graphic Boxes project and also the Butterfly Table Lamp project.  I made the flower pots especially for the event too.

Above the trestle tables I hung an adaptation of the Enchanted Branch project. I made a much larger version especially to hang over the tables using more leaves cut from Liberty print fabric.

In the centre of the tables was a pile of vintage books – props from the Liberty prop cupboard. Plant pots were balanced on top , a bird cage and vintage patterned china acted as vessels for the fabric and materials I had prepared for guests to make with.

I wanted my guests to be able to join in and make something from the book so that they would have a little gift to take home with them.

The Flower Hair Band project seemed an obvious choice as it could also be made into a brooch too. I spent the week before the launch preparing, cutting out the circles (100 in total) that the base of the flower is made from, leaf shapes, flowers for the centres and fabric strips, to save time for my guests. All were a little mismatched but Liberty fabric is perfect for this, it works brilliantly with different patterns jumbled together. So my guests just had to decide which patterns they liked. The results were really lovely and I hope people were happy with their little fabric flowers. You can see some the broochs here. If you would like to have a go at making one you can follow the Liberty video that we made.

Another simple project was the Wishing Board project. Guests could make a wish by drawing on a card tag and hanging it on the wishing board. I cut up thin strips of Liberty fabric and had a pile of labels and Muji fibre tip pens with little bits of washi tape wrapped around them. One such tape was a much-loved Merci for Liberty tape. Once the wish had been drawn the tie was threaded through and the drawn wish could be taken home or added to the wish board.

I loved that everyone got creative with these and started stitching on them and really making them personal. The full illustrated instructions for each of the projects can be found in the book which is available through CICO Books and at Amazon.

The idea behind the wishing board is that it isn’t material things children should wish for, not Playstations or Barbie dolls, but things that can make you happy; a bunch of flowers, a holiday, a pony, even a rocket to the moon. As one of the gorgeous girls who modelled in the book, and came along with her mum, said on her tag “I wish I had a Hamster”. So sweet. I think I had the same wish when I was eight.

I hope all your wishes come true. x

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a reflection on refraction

April 3, 2012  in interior styling, vintage finds

I took these photos in my bathroom a while ago and thought I would share them as it shows how a little display can bring daily pleasure. Mixing my new perfume bottles alongside vintage ones and other coloured glassware makes a pretty display by the window. I love the way as the light comes in it refracts through the faceted, prism-like bottles, reflecting off the metal and shining coloured light onto the sink and tiles. This was the inspiration for one of the shots in my story in Heart Home magazine.

My Stella McCartney fragrance and an old scent, that I bought in Japan ten years ago and kept as I love the bottle design (I think it is Shu Uemura), sit alongside vintage perfume bottles and a red glass shaker bought at Kempton Antiques Fair and car boot sales. The vintage Venetian Murano glass vase was my grandmother’s.

Glassware and polished metal make wonderful displays when positioned so that the natural sunlight enhances their qualities. And mixed with items you may use or look at on a daily basis, it can bring a little visual pleasure every day.

Simple but beautiful.

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