Lifting a space out of the mundane

The antiques market was rubbish, too much shabby, country peeling type stuff terrible. No need for a van could have taken my bicycle with the things we came back with. Even worse we brought a trolley for outside the store as a prop to house flowers and we completely forgot about collecting it.  Might have been something to do with the extreme cold, blizzard esq conditions. That I guess is the thing with markets, one day you find tons, next day you don't. When you don't its the biggest pain in the ass, especially when you are on the hunt for specifics. Had a list as long as my arm for things required, I should be upbeat with a more hey ho never mind type attitude, but I'm not. In protest I have ditched early morning Pilates. So there! Before I forget two things - book signing tomorrow in store from 1-3pm if any of you guys are in town and fancy popping in, please do and also our Open Call is open to the whole wide world. So if you are a designer, artisan, supplier and you want to send in images of products for me to highlight the email is opencall@abigailahern.com. Way more details on my blog post two days ago. Right then, I have big expectations for this weekend. We, that is the Royal We by the way (not me) are building a fake wall to cut the bedroom into a third and turn it into a closet. Then on Monday it’s going to be papered in the beautiful black tin tile paper and everyone should be happy! So happy I reckon that I may never ever leave the bedroom! With just the two M's as assistants I'm a little concerned with the schedule, Graham and I do things in very different ways. I just want to bash the thing up and who cares if the wall is about to fall down I'll prop it up with a cool table, but he on the other hand has to do things precisely and to the book, measuring, standing back, measuring again. It takes years his way - my way its up in 5 and we're all dancing around the room with the sausages (the two M's favourite toy) being happy! Shall I get to the point - OK so this morning I wanted to talk about lifting a space out of the mundane. How? By accessorising of course. The good thing is that you don’t need any formal training or complicated understanding of the principles of design. No Sir. The trick, simply buy would you love. Could be as simple as flea market art (if the flea market is any good that is)! Could be a collection of cool books, or ceramics or jewellery it doesn't really matter. What matters is that it is personal to you and has a back-story. My pad is full of stuff that tells a narrative of our life - things we've picked up aboard, found locally, had commissioned - so it reveals something about who we are and what we like. Mix up flea market, high street, higher end all together and it gets even more interesting. It won’t just be a space you want to hang out in – it will be a space everyone will want to hang out in. [caption id="attachment_4436" align="aligncenter" width="474"] Photography Graham Atkins Hguhes[/caption] [caption id="attachment_4437" align="aligncenter" width="474"] Photography Graham Atkins Hughes[/caption]