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I’m not sure which is more shocking. The fact that it will be Christmas again in just over two weeks or that I haven’t blogged since March!?! Both Christmas and blogging are stressful and time consuming and involve a lot of preparation behind the scenes before the final reveal. Are you ready for Christmas yet!?

Anyway, as you can see, Christmas has come slightly early at Obsessilicious Towers. I was already in the process of doing my Christmas decorations, which are the hand painted wooden balls below, when I was asked by Pinterest if I would like to do a Christmas lunch table inspiration board for their Pin Picks. Of course I said yes straight away. Any excuse to do more pinning.

You can view the ‘Your best ever Christmas Dinner’ Pin Picks board here and you can view my Christmas board here.

I LOVE Christmas but it has to be a minimal affair. I’m still haunted by the abundance of tinsel and miles of foil decorations from my childhood. My mother had the attitude of it’s Christmas so we must cover everything with tinsel! I now hate it with a passion.

So yesterday it was carnage in our apartment because I decided to do a mini photo shoot. The mess off camera was horrific! We still have our old corner unit which we need to get rid off before Christmas because I’ve only gone and got my hands on my absolute dream sofa…a grey B&B Italia Charles corner unit! It’s one gorgeous monster! More pics very soon…I promise!

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I’ve gone for a black, white grey and copper look this year. I came across the copper baubles on Cox & Cox and couldn’t resist them. The grey tray is by Hay and I bought the wooden candle holders from the MoMA store in New York last year. The napkins are from Ikea, crockery by John Rocha and the cutlery and glasses are Alessi.

A special shout out has to go to my friend Helen who got her hands on the small taper candles for my Nagel candle holders in the background.

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The balls are so simple to do. I bought them from Craftshapes and they are very inexpensive at five for £5.97 for the smaller ones and the larger ones are £3.97 each. All you will need is your chosen paint colours, gaffa tape and some small paintbrushes. I used a grey match pot, black and white paint that I already had and I bought a tube of copper acrylic. You could use masking tape but I found I got a much cleaner edge to each section of colour using gaffa tape. I will be adding small eyelet hooks to others to use on the tree.

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I made the wreath on the sideboard. I first saw them on Etsy and then by chance whilst trawling the internet for pics to pin on my Christmas Pinterest board I came across a great tutorial on Vintage Revivals on how to make one using plastic drinking straws.The wire and straws used to make it came to a grand total of approximately £4. I may make another one and spray it copper to hang on our front door.

Good luck and have fun if you are going to try your hand at creating your own decorations.

Have a fantastic Christmas everyone!

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mid century modern unit 1

Well we have at last taken the plunge and invested in a new unit for our lounge to house all of those pesky cables and ever growing collection of gadgets. The unit I cobbled together about eight years ago from left over wall cabinets from our kitchen and mdf had served us well but was overflowing with game consoles, an amp, bluray player, Freeview box etc and miles of cables.

I started designing the new unit early last Summer and had imagined it in every conceivable way over the years but I always went back to the idea of a very long low slung sideboard. From wall to wall it’s five metres wide so it was going to be one hell of a sideboard! It had to be minimal with a Mid Century vibe but ultimately a look that was timeless and wouldn’t date. Hopefully that’s what I’ve achieved.

Below is the final image I came up with. There were other ideas along the way, it originally had three separate units which each had two sliding doors but I ditched that idea in favour of three very large doors that can run from unit to unit. Our carpenter did a great job of interpreting it, it’s almost exactly the same.

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The image below may well shock you to the core. Yes we did indeed own those vile magenta pink leather sofas! Well, when I say “we”, what I mean is is that they belonged to my partner before we got together. Did you seriously think I would ever consider buying something as monstrous as those abominations!? My partner loved them and it took me quite a while to wear him down but eventually after a drunken lunch he agreed to get rid of them. What a huge sigh of relief that was!

We’d been living in our flat for about two weeks when that pic was taken. You can see the faded pink shag pile carpet in all its disgusting glory, it took me the best part of a day to cut it into strips, roll it up and cart it down three flights of steps to the skip. The ceilings are quite low anyway but the artex and coving made them appear even lower. It felt very oppressive. The wall to the left with the radiator was eventually removed to make the stairs and hallway more open and part of the lounge area. The anaglypta wallpaper was an absolute nightmare to remove and I think it had even been superglued in places! What you can’t make out in the pic is the subtle shades of pink and grey in the wallpaper and that the whole lot was embedded with glitter! I often wonder if the place had been used to film porn films back in the 80’s!

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I thought long and hard about what to do with the wall above the units. One thing for sure was that it would have to come forward to hide a strange protruding corner running the height of the wall on the right hand side. I also wanted hidden lighting to run the length of the wall at the top.

A plastered stud wall was considered along with a tiled wall but ultimately carrying the walnut up from the units was the only way to go. They can be removed though, the carpenter came up with an ingenious idea of using split batons attached to the back of the six panels and they hang on a framework attached to the wall. So if we ever become bored of the wood we can simply remove and replace it with something else. There is also a gap running the whole length between the units and the wall panels enabling us to bring up a cable at any point along the wall.

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The design of the handles was a complete and utter headache and I’m sure I must have driven the carpenter insane! I changed my mind so many times. They were going to be round drilled holes at one point but it kept niggling me that they would look a bit too obvious. The final design is a simple recess, each door is the same with one handle on the bottom left and the other on the the top right. I love how the handles line up when the doors meet.

Although the entire design was left up to me (thankfully!), my partner David did have a few requests including lots of cutouts inside the units for cables. They had to be big enough to pass a plug through for the many extension sockets needed to power everything. The beast of an amp is now on a pull out shelf which makes it so much easier to gain access to the plethora of cables plugged into the back of it.

So that’s the the first floor of our flat complete…apart from replacing the patio doors and windows…updating the look of the kitchen doors and drawers…maybe changing the corner unit…oh and I may paint the grey wall in the lounge a darker shade of grey. It never really ends, does it?…

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FF3‘Twas the Friday before Christmas and panic has set in! We are going away for the night and we still have lots to do when we return tomorrow! We’ve cleared twelve years of DIY this week in preparation for family staying over the Christmas period. I can’t believe we got rid of so much at last in just one day.

We had a Christmas tree disaster yesterday which was stressful beyond belief! We now have a tree but it’s not quite what you might be expecting. It’s certainly not what I was expecting. There will be pics of my decorations in the next few days…once I’ve actually made them!

Have a great weekend.

 

TIMES BLOG 2

I was asked by the Sunday Times Style Magazine if I would like to be involved in an article on wrapping Christmas presents. How could I refuse when I’ve always had a thing for wrapping the perfect gift. I’ve even been known to rip it all off if I wasn’t happy with it and start all over again.

After the initial explosion in my head I was filled with both excitement and terror at what to come up with. The brief was to wrap a gift in a beautiful and inventive way but the deadline was short. After the initial flurry of running around getting materials and a riot of colour in my studio, I changed my whole concept and reverted back to my original idea. I wanted to do something Mid Century-ish and it had to involve wood in some way, well printed wood on paper.

I also wanted to incorporate some kind of 3D shape so I went with an Icosahedron. I made quite a few of them in brighter colours for my tree decorations last Christmas. There are two different size templates to download and they are quite easy to put together, just be careful of not getting the glue everywhere! Once the gift has been opened it can be used as a tree ornament. Two gifts in one.

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The wood paper design is available to download in three different sizes. There are six different coloured tags and one wood version. They can be cut out and folded in half or you can cut off the back and just use the printed front. All to be used for personal use only of course.

You can download the designs to print yourself here… Have an Obsessilicious Christmas.

 

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The string is just wrapped around six times. I decided to do it at an angle which is a bit tricky because you have to keep it taught. Start with securing near a top corner on the back with sticky tape  and wrap around. If it proves to be too tricky then it can be done easily in straight lines.

I hope you like the designs and if you choose to use any of them then happy wrapping!