Paper Elegance

I love this! We created a beautiful elegant table all made from wrapping paper, ribbons, and small embellishments. You can do this so easily bust out your scissors and glue guns.


We glued ribbon along the edge of our favorite wrapping paper and add some beading to the ribbon to give it a nice finished look. You can see we made our placemats and table runner like this. Then we cut out images of poinsettias and put them on our candles with some ribbon as well. You don’t need tons and tons of money to have a beautiful table this year.

Recycled Giftwrap

I always bring my holiday gifts into the office and wrap them with different supplies we have lying around. I like to create a really eclectic look underneath the tree, and I love that everyone gets not only a present but a totally unique package. We had just gotten a big shipment of candles, and had tons of packing material left over. I loved the look of this recycled paper- there is so much texture and movement to it.
Once I folded it around the plain white boxes the paper popped even more and really came alive. I paired the paper with a coffee organza ribbon with satin trim and topped the whole thing off with an arrangement of silk roses and peonies accented with white berries. I use silk on all my holiday wrapping. If you are shipping any of your gifts, there is no guarantee what they will go through or when they will get there, so I want to make sure that the present will look as good when it arrives as it did when I packed it. I also like that the flowers can be reused, either to decorate another gift, or simply placed on the mantle to spice up the the room!

Napkin Tricks

With the holidays coming up, I am sure a lot of you are getting ready to entertain at home. One of my simple tricks to brighten a table is to dress up the napkin. It can be as simple as a single flower, but having something at each place setting really ties the whole table together. I love the attention to detail, and making sure each of my guests gets a little treat when they sit down. You can simply clip a bloom at the stem and arrange it in the fold of your napkin! If you are running low on flowers, you can use your extra petals and artfully arrange them on the napkin and around each plate. Here, we tucked two poppy pods into the hemstitch napkin to create a more organic look. The pods echo the color of the centerpiece and florals, but create a bit of fun on each plate!

Instead of fresh flowers, we have also decorated with dried leaves. I especially love this look for Thanksgiving, because it echos the weather and brings a touch of nature inside. We used dessicated leaves that you find in a paper or craft store, but you could just as easily use ones you find in your backyard or the park. Pick ones that still have a bit of color, or an interesting shape.

A monogrammed napkin is another wonderful way to set the mood. It really elevates the look of your table and indicates that it is, in fact, a special occasion! Don't scrimp here- you can use a set of monogrammed napkins for years! Or you can be a bit more playful and do a paper cutout. For this event- celebrating the 60's as an era- we adorned each napkin with a paper daisy. For the holidays, you can do something seasonal or something that has sentimental value for your family. You could even create your own monogram stencil and personalize each napkin that way!

A Paper Story, and A Thank You

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Learning Annex event on a rainy Tuesday night! I had a great time, and I think we had a really great discussion about this crazy business! For those of you who missed it, here are a few shots from the night:

The other big event in my week was a shoot we did here in my office for the "Paper Story". My designers and I have been playing around with paper a lot and trying to come up with new ways to use it to decorate a table. We have all seen the terrible monochromatic paper throws, but I really wanted to use it in a new way where you would never guess what it was. What do you think?

Can you believe these are all paper? The one on the left is a single sheet of paper that we folded over a chair, hole punched, and tied with ribbon. The next one is a thin paper chaircover glued together at the edges to secure it and festooned with paper cutouts. We used a flower shaped hole puncher on colored poster board. We used the thick paper because we wanted to make sure the flowers had some dimension to them. For the third one, we glued two sheets of paper together to make a chair cap. We added pom pom trim to the edges, and let the pattern of the paper do the talking. The last one is also a chair cap, this time with ruffled paper trim along the bottom edge. To make the chair caps, we took the measurements of the chair and then added a half inch to each side to make sure they fit. I really love the accessibility of paper, and also the idea that you can create something totally different with a material that is all around you. Go ahead, try it!