Christmas Party DIY’s- Bucks, Stripes, and Glitz

I realized I never posted photos for the Christmas party I did last month-

My favorite is the giant eight foot tall Buck I did. It’s just painted with kids Tempera Paint on the brown paper they sell at home improvement stores. It’s a giant roll for like 12 bucks. It’s intended to use as floor covering when wallpapering or painting, but I cannot tell you how many things I have used it for (including wrapping paper). Some of the best 12 bucks ever spent.

I also loved the DIY striped candles. I’ll do a how-to next week on that.

Verve 5 Year Anniversary Party

This weekend we had the privilege of working with one of our very favorite clients, Verve Coffee Roasters. Verve makes the best coffee on the planet (seriously, if you live in Santa Cruz, go there, and if you’re ever passing through Santa Cruz, stop there to re-fuel, you’ll be like “Dang Gina! This is some good stuff!”). On top of being the best coffee roasters/cappuccino makers/smiley happy people, they also have an incredible aesthetic that feels so inviting and unique, and matches up really well with our style here at P&C.

So this weekend Verve hosted a 5 year anniversary party at their roastery in Seabright, CA complete with fresh wood-fired pizza, ice cream from the Penny Ice Creamery (YUM), delicious espresso drinks, a DJ spinning tunes, nothing-could-taste-better-than-this-ever Mary’s Cookies, and decor by P&C!

Get ready for a photobomb of this awesome event in 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1!

 

 

Thank you Verve!  Not only did we love working with you, but we had a great time at your event!

 

Were any of you there? What did you think?

 

DIY Hallway Makeover

Have you noticed all the end-cap-of-hallways makeovers around in various catalogs, shelter magazines, and blogs? One of the first ones I remember noticing and thinking “wow, that is so simple but so impactful I’m so doing that – shoot I don’t have an end-of-hallway – I’m doing it somewhere else” is this one from the West Elm catalog-

I worked on this awhile back for a client, who didn’t have enough space to add furniture, but we still wanted to make it a “moment” (blech).

Two simple elements but we were so happy with how it came out. The wallpaper was DIYed with grasscloth and a stencil (more details here), and the mirror was from a local antique mall. Because the wallpaper texture was dull and the pattern large and geometric, I wanted a mirror that had that gilded vintage look and I was hoping to find a round one since the wall was rectangle. Duh. I wish the mirror was a tad bigger to balance out the scale a bit, but it was so perfect in every other way it won the contest. And it actually looks bigger in person.

So don’t ignore those end-of-hallways-why-dont-they-have-an-actual-name people. They can be so fun!

Pomp and Circumstance Featured on Design Sponge!

Design Sponge has been a long time favorite of mine and Miss Pomp’s, so we were SO excited when they featured one of our projects! This DIY Balsa Wood Lampshade is one of our favorites. Is it the curse of the design-minded to notice all the things in a movie/catalog/magazine that are NOT for sale or mentioned?? Like during the intense scene of a couple fighting in a movie I notice the wallpaper in the background? Or want super bad that one thing in the West Elm catalog that is not for sale, but just an awesome prop? Several comments on Design Sponge were in regards to where the pillow and nesting tables are from….so unsurprising to me cause that is exactly what I would ask. (BTW, the nesting tables were from my Grandma’s house, and the pillow is a DIY present I gave to my sis. Just an Ikea white linen pillow case and handmade stencil).

Check out the feature here. Thank you Design Sponge Crew!

 

The Un-Baby Shower

There was still a baby in there, just not your traditional baby shower with diapers and storks and diaper pins and all. I did a shower for a client who wasn’t super in to frilly girlie things (check), and leaned toward simpler cleaner non-fluffy kind of showers (check). By now you might have deduced that I do have some-what of a formula for designing food tables at events- coordinating trays + hanging things from the ceiling+ creative signage and labeling+large-scale focal point moments = pretty table.

I chose the food not only by what people would enjoy eating, but also (gasp) by what color it was. The shame.

I stuck with sorbet orange, tangerine, and grey as a color scheme, and left everything else pretty earth-toned (driftwood colors, ivory, bare wood. More textural).

I used a runner size rug on the table instead of linens, and two large hurricane candle holders that were actually supposed to be for the outside. Who cares. I wrapped an Ikea Lack wall shelf in muslin and used it to add various height to the table. You can kinda catch the corner of it in the picture above. I just put the two lanterns and the cake on it, to raise them up a bit and give them a more prominent presence.

Remember how I said I sort of loved monogramming? Well the monogram bandit has struck again.

One of my favorite ways to present drinks is on a large tray, lined up together. The grey and white pattern on the bottom I just printed out and laminated, and placed it on the bottom. It now ties in with the rest of the party. And notice how the background pattern on the labels is the same as the bottom of the tray? Booyah.

Sneak Peak: Bathroom Makeover

In a couple weeks I’ll have more pictures to show you, but here is a sneak peak of a bathroom make-over I did for a client.

Southwest Regional Barista Competition, Part 2

Now for the outdoor seating part.

That “coffee table” is technically a day bed frame. Technically schmechnically.

We stacked two side tables on top of each other to make it a bit more interesting. And clearly someone took the right side pillow up on its offer, cause it’s all smushed in this picture.

We used a shower curtain from West Elm to recover these bar stools and seat cushions on a couple of other chairs. That’s a tip a la Nate Berkus, because the fabric is made to be super durable, and they are usually inexpensive.

Then inside, along with the cardboard wall and dip dyed fabric wall, we did a big ol’ ceiling installation with paint sticks, burlap and brown paper chinese lantern things, and amazing cardboard pendant lights. We mixed lots of paint colors in slightly varying shades to achieve that ombre effect.

We clothes pinned all the paint sticks in my ever-so-organized-and-not-clutterd-at-all garage to an extension cord for drying. Which I really like using because extension cords don’t slip like rope or twine, so they are easy to keep pulled tight.

This thing sort of looks like a hot mess in pictures, but in person it was the bomb if I don’t say so myself.  In person you didn’t see or notice so much of the cords and the lady-parts so to speak of the piece. Part of what I loved was the size and scale. It was just really big.  And that is 200 paint sticks no joke.

The paint sticks were inspired by Anthropologie’s window display (don’t you love how “inspired by” is just a p.c. way to say stolen?)

Would you believe that this took about four hours to tie it all up and hang it from the ceiling?? What the heck!! Ten thousand years will give you such a crick in the neck! We had so much fun working on this and spending the two days with our new-found friends putting it all together. Our hipster circle of friends has been broadened. It’s always fun to find people who can stop in the middle of some serious decision-making to break-it-down-with-a-dance-jam to the tune at hand, then get back to business. And that was the Southwest Regional Barista Competition.

South West Regional Barista Competition, Part 1

Miss Pomp and I were hired by Verve Coffee Roasters, the hosts of the competition, to create three temporary walls, an outdoor hangout area, and a ceiling installation in a big open industrial building downtown in Santa Cruz.

Remember the sticks? That was just the beginning. Verve definitely has a look and feel that is pretty consistent- vintage, industrial, uncluttered, organic, unique. So we wanted to stick with things that felt true to who they were. We went back and forth on several ideas, one of them being this but with more neutral colors-

But then we realized while we would indeed end up with something amazing, we would also end up going coo-coo-for-cocoa-puffs-crazy with how much time this would take. Verve always has unique and creative ways of displaying things, so these walls had to be interesting and the Zoey Deschanel’s of the temporary wall world, but, also easy to transport and move for two not so buff ladies. Although I would like to add we have been taking Pilates. Uhh. And did I mention they needed to be 22 feet long and 10 feet high?? Yeah.

So we landed on dip dyed fabric walls and cardboard. I’m sure your face looks like everybody else’s did when we told them we were using cardboard. But you’ll see.

We’ll do a “How to dip dye fabric” post later, but this was the end result-

Looks dinky in the picture, but this thing is huge. It was easy to make, and the nice thing about this kind of look (organic), is that the imperfections  are what make it. That “undone” touch that is not super sleek works with it. But you can’t be too messy or it just looks, well, messy. This is ripped muslin fabric staple gunned to long pieces of wood and suspended from the ceiling with twine. It still lets light through, and by spacing the strips of fabric slightly it is more interesting than just a fabric wall.

Ok, now the cardboard wall. We had access to free sheets of cardboard and thought we could easily build something cool with the natural look of the brown cardboard. This cardboard was crisply and pristinely cut- no creases or used lookin’ stuff. That’s no good. Here’s what we built-

We were stoked with the way this came out. We made chains with zip ties, which are the bomb by the way because you can so easily adjust the height to make it level. We used metal rings to hold the panels together, and used a nail and hammer to make the holes they went it. We used spray adhesive to stick the circles on in a pattern that was similar to a dandelion being blown in the wind. I know. No sane person would realize that. We’re ok with that. We know we are delusional.

Making the circles brown kept the look toned down, and made it more of a textural thing. Very Verve.

Ok. I think that’s enough for today. Stay tuned for a Part Two, featuring the ceiling installation and the outdoor stuff.

A Little Some’in Some’in

Here are some snapshots of a party I did awhile back now. It was a graduation party for a girl (obvies once you see the pictures), so we kept it feminine, but not too frilly.

And look! I made a lolli log!

And then of course there is Miss Pomp and I hard at work

A couple tips for decorating at-home parties:

1. Pick an area and focus on it. For this party we focused on the food table, because that is what there is the most of, and everyone will go to it. Focusing on one area brings a lot of impact in one place, instead of little impact in lots of places.

2. Pick a theme, feel, or look, and stick with it. We wanted it feminine but modern, so we used a lot of shiny or sleek white surfaces, kept the lines somewhat clean (see stripes on trays and napkins, boxes and trays in rectangles or squares as opposed to curvy shapes), and stuck with shades of pink, grey, and white, and natural wood tones for warmth.

3. Think in layers. Just as in fashion and clothing, layers keep things interesting and dimensional. We hung things from the ceiling to draw the eye up and make even more of an impact and a “space”, and create a layer where there would have been nothing. Then we layered the layer with a sign in front of it. We used lots of trays and boxes to tier and add height and dimension, and threw in a couple of unexpected ways to display or show things (see cupcakes under bell jar, lollipops in a branch, and napkins on a ceramic feather tray with a wood coaster on top to keep them in place.)

4. Lighting. It might not be your first thought on a food table, but candle light and lamp light can bring in warmth and focus. It can highlight things you want to bring attention to, and make it feel cozy.

Happy partying!

Mary’s Cookies and Whole Foods

A couple of weeks ago my mom, the owner of Mary’s Cookies, had the privilege of serving her cookies at one of Whole Foods parking lot fairs. Miss Pomp and I helped her make her sign and design her booth-

 The DIY sign idea with the nails and string, I stole (with permission) from my friend Katie at Wylie Weddings. She and her team created an amazing backdrop for a wedding show with driftwood, wallpaper, nails, and string…..4 of my favorite things.

You can tell we used a lot of organic, natural elements to keep it simple and creative (hopefully). It totally reflects my mom and her cookies- she hand chops all and every ingredient, everything is organic or top of line product, and they are super homemade looking and tasting. Were talking chunky hearty cookies.

It was a super fun day and her booth was the toast of the parking lot.