I Won! All The Details of the Amara Interior Blog Awards 2016 Where I Took Home An Award!!

If you follow my social media feeds you may well have seen that on Thursday night, at the Ham Yard Hotel in London, I won an Amara Interior Blog Award for Best DIY & Crafts Blog!

Earlier in the year Amara opened up nominations for this annual celebration of interior bloggers, and this blog got nominated for the Best DIY & Crafts Blog Award, along with around 30 other blogs. The next part was the voting stage, so I campaigned furiously to try and get into the final 5 blogs that would be shortlisted to attend the ceremony, and be assessed by the very capable judges who are at the top of their game within the interiors industry. Completely and honesty I thought I had no chance of getting shortlisted as my blog had only been going a few months back then and I was still learning.

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How To Buy Designer Interiors And Homeware For Less Than Half Price

If I was a EuroMillions winner, my house would be kitted out in Jonathan Adler, Se Collections and Julian Chichester furniture and accessories in every room. Since i'm not a gambling person (too tight - 'money down the drain' etc) then the EuroMillions dream is definitely not happening any time soon. Instead, to obtain designer homeware and investment pieces that I love, I am always on the lookout for a sample sale.

Most top designers do a sample sale at least once a year as it gives them an opportunity to shift ex-display, discontinued, sample, excess and returned stock over the space of a few days. Expect heavily discounted items at around 80% off their recommended retail price. If someone brought a lamp that was £800 and returned it because it had a light scuff on the bottom, it could be yours for around £100.

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How To Choose The Right Paint Colour In Your Home, with Farrow & Ball Colour Consultant Joa Studholme

I think it is always the greatest DIY dilemma - what colour should we paint the room? I know myself I 'ummm' and 'ahhh' for weeks, buying tester pot after tester pot of virtually the same colour, until I am completely confused. Then, I often pick a colour completely different to what I had in mind originally, cross my fingers and hope for the best. If there is one thing that I do know about paint, it's that Farrow & Ball are the best in the business. I know so many people who have used this paint and then just can't ever conceive of using another paint brand again. That's why when Red Magazine invited me to their Smart Women week of workshops to hear Farrow & Ball's International Colour Consultant Joa Studholme talk about how to choose the right paint colour in your home, I jumped at the chance to lap up all of Joa's expert advice.

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Review: DIY Made To Measure Shutters - Are They Worth The Risk?

As far as window treatments go, shutters are the clear winner for me. Curtains can look overly fussy and fade; blinds often look cheap and remind me of being in an office. Shutters can really block out the light, are easy to clean and should last you a lifetime. They also look GORGEOUS! If you have a period property or pretty sash windows, shutters will really compliment the windows detailing.

When we moved into our current home, I was hellbent on having shutters on the vast majority of the windows. We had solid, Victorian-style shutters fitted on a difficult hallway window in our old house, and they were literally one of my favourite things in that house. We got solid shutters installed again on the bedroom windows and the living room windows, but that really blew the budget. We left the bathroom window as it was, as it had a blind installed and that would do for the time-being.

A year and a half on,  I was hating the bloody bathroom blind. It was this crummy brown blind that got so dusty, but was impossible to clean. It left awful watermarks, and I was petrified with the cord hangings around my toddler son as he loved to play with them. Our bathroom window is lovely in the afternoons as the sun streams in, so I would always pull it up out the way and out of sight. Trouble was it was too much hassle to keep putting down every time someone wanted the loo (and the bathroom faces the street!)

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"Get An Absolutely Fabulous Interior, Darling.." - All The Key Interior Pieces From The Movie

A double blog entry for me this week as I was lucky enough to attend the premiere of the Absolutely Fabulous movie last night! To be honest I'm still buzzing today about drinking bolly in the same room as Kylie Minogue, Kelly Hoppen, Kate moss, Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley, but I did get over being star-struck enough to lap up all the key interior pieces featured in Eddie's home for 2016.

I'm a huge Ab Fab fan, growing up I dreamed about one day having a beautiful London pad like Eddie as a base to come home to after a drunken party. In the film the layout of the house is still the same but grander, where Eddie has bled ex-husband Mitchell dry for a huge basement excavation....

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Review: Hemsley - The Own Brand Paint To Rival Farrow & Ball?

A few months ago after having an internal door replaced, I went into Homebase to buy some eggshell paint to paint the new door with. Needing to buy an eggshell that matched my already existing heritage cream skirting, I begrudgingly headed over to the Farrow & Ball paint section. Even though I'm all about doing up your home on a tiny budget, I LOVE posh paint. I'm a die-hard Farrow & Ball fan. I have a box with about 60 sample tins of Farrow & Ball paint in under the stairs. There is no contest for me when it comes to choosing F&B over cheaper brands such as Dulux or Crown. F&B paint gives a beautiful depth of colour due to its high pigmentation and the chalky matt finish looks expensive and elegant. Cheaper paints do not have this depth of colour, they fade over time and glossy paint looks cheap. F&B do a wide range of interesting colours (132 to be exact - check out 'Charlotte's Locks', an intense orange, and 'Vardo', a 50's style teal). You can get any of these colours in different finishes such as eggshell and floor paint rather than just emulsion. The paint is thick, creamy and easy to apply. It is water based and has low VOC's, so it does not smell nor pollute your house with chemicals and it's simple to clean your brushes. It is made in England.

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Lets Talk About: High Street Lighting

For me, when styling a room the two most important base elements are the colour and the lighting. Statement lighting can transform a room and is the key focal point that often pulls the room together.

Interesting, contemporary lighting has been popular for a while now, and in recent years the high street has been absolutely killing it with their own ranges. Alongside their usual middle-of-the-road pieces have been collections inspired by current lighting trends and high end designers...

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