Sania Pell

i heart home

January 10, 2012  in interior styling, news

I’m sure many of you will be aware of Heart Home magazine that launched in September last year. It’s a new quarterly digital publication founded by Arianna Trapani, Carole King and Daniel Nelson and showcases British homes and designers. Snippets of my home were featured in the Winter issue last month in a story called ‘A little something from nothing‘.

I wanted to create a different slant to the shoot so I styled mini displays around my home using the objects around me, each with its own little story. Many of the objects are inexpensive car boot sale finds, holiday treasures and trinkets, but I wanted to show how pleasing displays and vignettes can be made from very little. Small pockets of detail, where everyday items can become stars. It is about embracing a pinch of handmade, a touch of homemade, nature, new items and vintage treasures – mixing them together to create new scenes, all of which should feel very personal and give joy when seen.

This shelf is in my bedroom. An empty picture frame creates a focal point and gives height to the display. You can see an earlier incarnation of this shelf in a previous blog post here.

In my living room I evoked a 1950s sculptural feel with objects like old polo and billiards balls and vintage geometry sets in different woods and neutral tones.

This is an Ikea chair that I revamped a while back with a fun skirt in St Jude’s fabric and a giant silk bow.

Vintage flea market perfume bottles sit with contemporary vases and bottles and a necklace by Emma Cassi.

Here a painted canvas acts as a backdrop to vintage clay bottles used as vases for flowers painted with fluorescent paint. Old books with the pages facing out add height and natural finds in similar tones add quirky interest – a deer skull that my husband and young son found on a walk in the countryside and beach-combed pebbles with holes in simply strung together.

Here my collection of old chemistry and laboratory equipment become unexpected vases for interesting flora and fauna. All of these were items were bought at car boot sales.

In my work room, displays of objects I use and work in progress become inspiration in themselves. For more tips on how to achieve interesting, fun displays in your home head over to Heart Home to read the full article.

The day of the photo shoot was a pleasure with lovely photographer James Balston taking all of these images. You can see James’s work over on his blog.

If you haven’t seen Heart Home yet do go and take a look at the Winter issue and the first issue and the Heart Home blog. I’m looking forward to seeing what the Spring issue has in store!

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handmade treasures

January 6, 2012  in handmade goodness

These little items are my new pride and joy – small things to make a girl happy and add some new interest to my displays at home. My family and I visited Selvedge magazine‘s Christmas fair last month and my husband bought me these as Christmas gifts (I heavily hinted that I would love them). They were wrapped and hidden away until Christmas day and I thought I had to share them with you as they’re something I treasure.

These sweet fabric balls set in real, dried acorn cups (Oak nuts) were made by Susi Joel. I love the combination of natural and patterned, especially the Japanese print, which could look wrong but it looks so right. On the mantlepiece in my living room, it will add just a pop of colour and interest and give me joy every time I glance that way. I photographed them on pieces of vintage Japanese fabric that I had bought at the Hammersmith vintage textiles and fashion fair.

I also adore this hand-woven wire bird nest by Helen Thompson of Holy Smoke. I had seen it at the Selvedge fair the year before and had wished I had bought one then and luckily they had a stand again this year. I love the delicacy and the tiny off-shoots that look like buds. This too will take pride of place on my mantlepiece, a touch of organic amongst the rigidity of my ceramic vases.

Holy Smoke also make the most adorable wire-framed, fabric dogs oozing with character covered with linen that my son wanted to take home with him.

The Selvedge fairs are well worth a visit if you are in London and like unique, handmade products. I also bought lots of little gifts for family and friends; jewellery from Emma Cassi, rubber stamps from Noolibird, paper twine from Paperphine and soft toys from The Black Rabbit among others.

I may need a bigger mantlepiece for all my treasures!

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message in a bauble

December 23, 2011  in diy craft projects, homemade

As Christmas is almost upon us I wanted to share the last few photographs of my collaboration with photographer Uli Schade. This is another simple idea to update plain glass baubles.

We finely shredded pages from an old book using a guillotine to cut between the lines of printed text, creating slivers of paper that we simply coiled into the baubles after removing the top. You could use scissors or a craft knife with a metal ruler on a cutting board to cut strips too and tweezers can help position them within the bauble. If you don’t have an old book then you could photocopy or print out your favourite carol or a passage from a Christmas-themed story book instead.

I also collected a few natural objects from the woodland floor on a walk with my family: pine cones, acorns and dried leaves that I sprayed a matt off white colour as additional festive decorations.

Wrapping gifts in a creative way makes a gift feel extra special for the lucky recipient and will look wonderful on display in your home until to is time to give the gift. Beautiful old metal cake tins like this one make wonderful, unique boxes for gifts with their tarnished silver patina. Keep an eye out for them at flea markets and car boot sales.

First I wrapped around the box with cotton ribbon.  I then wrapped a twig in strips of Liberty fabric, attached with double sided tape. Beads were glued in place and stitched on like berries. Japanese paper was cut into leaf shapes and folded to imitate the texture of real leaves and a sprayed leaf was added too.

And that just about wraps up my creative Christmas collaboration with Uli Schade. We hope you like the ideas and the photographs and have fun making this holiday season.

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decorate with bulbs and biscuits

December 19, 2011  in diy craft projects, homemade

Why not turn old light bulbs into baubles? I bought these vintage light bulbs a while ago at a car boot sale. I had no particular use in mind, they just looked rather beautiful to me. Then whilst working on the floral bauble decorations, it occurred to me that they were similar – so why not try the bulbs as baubles? It’s a little bit bonkers but I like it. I simply used thin wire, wrapped and tied around the base, to create a loop to hang them from. The metal ring is a wreath frame used in floral displays, usually packed with moss or oasis; I love the simple bare bones of the exposed wire though.

Some of the wire is wound round with a strip of Liberty print fabric (a similar idea to the covered coat hanger project in The Homemade Home), the rest left bare. For a little extra I added old chandelier droplets too. You can often pick these up loose at flea markets and boot sales. I kept the colours muted and used a scrap of fabric I already had and the bulbs hang in the centre as an alternative Christmas decoration.

My friend Uli Schade, who took all of these photos, made the lebkuchen below to an old family recipe that she learned as a child. They’re a traditional German Christmas treat, a bit like gingerbread and make great edible decorations for your tree if they’re made with the recipe that bakes them hard rather than soft. You can buy similar baked decorations all over Northern Europe and they’re often decorated with brightly coloured icing (think of the gingerbread house  in Hansel and Gretel) though here Uli used edible gold leaf as a stylish alternative.

The lebkuchen are hung with strips of paper cut from old, unwanted books and hang on a ring made from some evergreen Jasmine that I cut from my front garden wall.

Uli bought this sweet little hand-carved wooden bird from a Christmas fair in Germany. It’s attached to a wooden clothes peg and the bird nods up and down when you squeeze the peg – utterly charming.

A few more decoration ideas to add a quirky, homemade flavour this Christmas.

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floral bauble decorations

December 16, 2011  in diy craft projects, flowers, interior styling

Why not turn simple clear glass baubles into mini vases and display beautiful little clippings of flora and fauna?

Here is Part 2 of my recent collaboration with talented photographer Uli Schade. We removed the metal tops from these Paperchase baubles by gently squeezing and pulling them off then added some water and pushed in the pretty and appropriate, pale green Christmas Rose flower (Helleborus niger) and a little Spruce fir tree cutting. We added just a touch of water so as not to make the baubles too heavy and used tweezers to position the foliage and ensure the flower faced upwards.

Natural string is used as ties and little offcuts of orange ribbon from VV Rouleaux add a vibrant pop of colour. You can add more water as it dries out or replace the flowers if they deteriorate. When packing the baubles away, remove the metal hangers, tip the water away and use tweezers to remove the foliage. Then rinse, leave to dry then replace the top and pack away for another year.

Another simple idea to make your Christmas decorations something different this year.

Pop back for part 3 in the next few days.

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christmas greens

December 14, 2011  in diy craft projects, interior styling

Why not decorate your tree decorations as well as your tree this Christmas? Here are a few simple ideas to embellish plain plastic and clear glass baubles and give them a new unique look. None take much time or effort and only use small amounts of paint and materials. You can tailor them to your festive colour scheme and they can make all the difference to the look of your tree and home.

I had some plain plastic baubles left over from a Christmas photo shoot I worked on and thought they would be perfect for personalising. I rummaged through the shed at the back of my garden and pulled out a variety of Fired Earth, Farrow & Ball and Dulux pots of paint in greenish shades along with some olive Montana Gold spray paint. Each bauble was balanced in an eggcup and painted with a flat, soft, artist’s brush, turned when dry and painted with several coats until fully covered. Other baubles were sprayed in the garden on old newspaper weighed down with stones. For an added colour pop I removed the metal tops on some and sprayed them in flouro pink to add a vivid contrast. I swapped the different coloured tops around to make the baubles more interesting and then threaded through homemade ties cut from Liberty print, suede and plain fabrics cut in strips as ties.

Clear glass baubles can be bought inexpensively in a variety of sizes, these ones are from Paperchase. The metal hanging loops can be removed by gently squeezing the looped wire at the top. Doing this allows you to add paint of your choice inside the glass. We used a pipette to add emulsion (latex) paint and left it with the top off to dry thoroughly. I also painted and sprayed leaves, picked from my garden (waxy leaves worked best) as well as wrapping twigs in fabric too.

These images are from another collaboration with photographer Uli Schade. After working together on the sugar/spice shoot we were buzzing with ideas and wanted to look at something festive but with a twist and away from the traditional.

I will be posting more images and ideas from our story over the next few days.

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