Mood Board To Go!

Hello friends! How are you today? Did you have a nice weekend? I got home from London and immediately went to a flea market here in my city and found some great loot (you can see it here). We had beautiful weather so I got a lot done and feel really refreshed as a result. What about you? Are you well? I'm not sure if I ever shared with you how I shop when I'm on a mission to find the things that I need to work on a project. Some of you may find this approach helpful, especially if you've not tried it before. I'm currently planning a "look" along with Sania and Leslie for the Dining Room demo that we're doing at Liberty London on April 13th at 6:30 p.m. for my book launch (come if you can!) and so I have a somewhat long punch list of things that I need to buy/work on this week. I can't believe I only have this week left, but let's not talk about that?! ha ha! Anyway, in addition to my punch list, I also have a mini mood board that is in my bag at all times -- it's in a spiral bound "to do" notebook that I picked up at HEMA. It's nothing fancy AT ALL - in fact, it's extremely easy to pull together, here's a photo of it below.

Mood board for Liberty demo

As you can see, these are the fabrics, ribbons and such that we're using as part of our table design. The shots of pink throughout provide a little healthy tension to give this palette a jolt of color which is refreshing because without the pink, it can almost go a bit too far into the neutral zone (and I love neutrals so it's easy for me to do!). The green takes it up a notch as well. There is also some charcoal and deep gray (you can see that below in the next image). Thing is, pink is a funny color and it comes in a million shades like any other color -- some with blue undertones, others with beige, and what your eye thinks is the correct pink is often not the correct pink when you come home and view what you bought alongside with what you thought it would match. A way to avoid returns or worse, buying things that don't work and forgetting to return them so you amass clutter, is to simply bring a travel mood board with you - a mood board to go.

I cut tiny snippets of the key pieces that we'll use and attached everything with small bits of tape and this serves as my reference as I'm out and about. Funny enough, when you go into a store and pull out something like this, you'll not only invite conversation (people are so curious!) but you'll get the help that you need most of the time from the sales people because they'll almost treat you with a bit more respect because you appear to know what you're doing (whether you or not is debatable I guess ha ha) and you can often get a lot farther with them when you're asking for a particular color or style and you can SHOW them what you mean vs. trying to describe it as everyone sees color much differently. Have you ever tried explaining a color anyway? It's quite a task. A mood board to go saves time and money and is exactly why I've been using them for over 10 years as a guide when I shop.

As you can see below, this is a shot I took using Sania's camera of everything piled together in her inspiring craft loft when we were together in London -- so I photographed it as well so I could keep this photo on my iPhone to serve as an additional reference for me as I'm out shopping.

Mood board for Liberty demo

And a big P.S. -- London was amazing! I had such a great time there and spent 6 hours at Liberty on Thursday sorting out and photographing what we want to do with the table, choosing everything from chairs to linens to a proper table... And then we lunched at Flat Planet next door (I highly recommend) and then visited Muji, John Lewis and VV Rouleaux for some supplies, and then I was off to Chiswick where I stayed at the posh High Road House designed by the one and only Ilse Crawford and we ate at the private "members only" club there -- it was so pretty. The next day, I walked to Sania's beautiful brick Victorian home and spent the entire day with her -- we had so much fun crafting and sorting out ideas for the demo and did what girls do best - chat and play with pretty bits and bobs. I could live in Chiswick in a second, I really felt at home there.

I can't wait until next week when I can take photos of the tabletop and show you how we've translated what you see above into a pretty table for Spring. Stay tuned!

(images: holly becker for decor8)

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Liberty Styling Demo: I'm off to London!