Traveling Around the World: Next Stop Hong Kong

This week, I’ll be going to Hong Kong for the first time! I’m very excited, and it’s had me thinking a lot about the past trips I’ve taken. The picture above is from a fabric warehouse in India. I felt like a kid in a candy store exploring this fabric shop. One of the things I enjoy about traveling is exploring different cultures and seeing what sort of unique  resources each country offers. For example, I heard that Hong Kong has the best tailors in the world. I’m not really a suit wearing person (can you tell from the pictures I post?) but I will definitely get a few made for me while I’m visiting this week.

Later, I will share more pictures from Hong Kong and post updates about what I end up seeing and doing. What’s your favorite place to visit?

DIY Thanksgiving: Handmade Fruit Bowl

This versatile container is beautifully simple, made from cardboard and decorated just with ribbons. It can be used to accessorize your Thanksgiving table to showcase your fresh fruit.



Materials:

• Stapler
• Ribbon (In whatever color you’d like—we used purple here.) 
• Cardboard container (Dig around and see what you can find in your closet. We used a circular one, but you can use a square, rectangle or whatever you have available.) 
• Scissors
• Hot glue gun 
• Tape

Instructions:  

1) To turn our plain Jane box into something more spectacular, we’re going to cover the surface area with looped ribbons. To begin, cut pieces of ribbon into 4 inch strips. The number of strips you’ll need will depend on how large your container is, so you’ll have to guesstimate on the number of strips to cut. I would suggest 50 to start.

2) Take one ribbon strip and fold it over itself (without creating a crease) to make a loop. How full you want the loops to be will dependent on its relation to the size of your container. Feel free to use the pictures as a reference point. Staple the two ends together. Repeat with all your cut ribbon strips.

3) Starting from the top, glue one loop at a time all around the box. Work in rows. After you finish the bottom, move on to the row below it and repeat.

4) Once you’ve covered the entire surface area, fill the container with fruit. We used grapes, blueberries and raspberries to match our color theme. If your container is deep and you’d like to give the contents some height, you can cut out some foam in the shape of your container and put it inside your box before you put the contents.

 5) Place on your Thanksgiving table et voila! Don’t feel restricted by using only fruit. This can make a beautiful candy dish too!

I’d love to see any pictures if you decide to make this project. Please send any pictures to my editor: Karell@prestonbailey.com.

A Big Thank You For Last Night

An iPhone picture from our talk

Thank you so much to everyone who came to the Learning Annex last night! I had such a great time speaking to you and meeting so many people who share my passion. I really enjoyed sharing stories about successes and failures, hearing everyone’s questions, and giving out tips and tricks for everything about our business. I hope the advice helps and I’d love to see you all again the next time I run a class.

Reminder: Learning Annex Tonight

A picture of me speaking at a past event.

Just wanted to remind everyone that I’m speaking at the Learning Annex tonight at 7:00pm. We’ll be talking about how to create one of a kind events, as well as discuss how I built up my business, my design process and how to transform spaces into something completely different. The event will take place at the Tudor Hotel: 304 East 42nd Street New York, NY 10017. To register for the class, click here.

Hope to see you tonight!

Past Thanksgivings

As I’m sitting down today to plan this year’s Thanksgiving, I took some time to look through my old pictures to remember the designs from years past. Thanksgiving is the beginning of the holidays for me. As I mentioned yesterday, I use this day to hand out my family’s Christmas presents. I love being the first of the pack to hand out my gifts, and I look at it as a way to kick-off the gift giving season!

When I think about designing my Thanksgiving event, I approach it similarly to how I design for my clients. I enjoy transforming empty raw spaces into something unexpected, so this is where I usually start with my Thanksgiving dinner. My family is so big that the past two years I’ve held the dinner in my studio space.

Below you’ll see a picture of the space as it normally is (click the pictures to make them bigger):

Here’s how we transformed it last year:

I get great pleasure from seeing the looks on my family’s faces when they walk into the room. The element of surprise is signature for me. It’s a labor of love to design this event for them every year, and I make sure to invest the time needed to get everything just right.

I focus on using readily available, recycled, and accessible materials. You can definitely make something glamorous with materials and objects you find all around you. It’s all about how you put the elements together that makes the impact.

DIY Thanksgiving

It’s November, so naturally there’s one holiday that’s on everyone’s minds: Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a very important holiday for me. I like to take this day to spend time with my family, design a lavish dinner, reflect on the year that’s passed, and give out holiday presents to my loved ones (around Christmas season, I'm usually traveling, designing wedding celebrations around the world). We’ll talk more about my holiday celebration later, but for today, I just wanted to let you know that throughout this whole month, I’ll be posting one new DIY project per week for a design element for your holiday table.

The picture from above is from my own holiday table last year. We took silk leaves (but you can use real ones from your backyard) and glued them on to a glass vase, layering the leaves to add dimension and texture. Then we took raffia and wrapped it around the vase as a simple finishing touch. Add some flowers and you’re ready.

Here's a close-up shot of the grape centerpiece from the table. 

What’s one of your favorite Thanksgiving decorations? Do you have any family traditions you do every year?

Stay tuned for later this week when we post our first Thanksgiving How-To...

Interview on ET

I was interviewed on ET to discuss the process of event planning, and planning Ivanka's wedding. Check out the video below.