Here is the tale of how this rather lovely footstool was created. I have been working with the lovely Holly Cook for a while now. She takes the most fabulous photographs of my work, which has made an enormous difference to my online presence and sales. Gone are the days of my slightly blurry snaps with wheelie bins in the background, my photos are now beautiful and clear, classy and magical.
Holly is a professional fine art/documentary/lifestyle photographer and I have no idea how she puts up with me and my chairs, but thankfully she does. Her Instagram account is beautiful. Take a look @hollycookphotography. One morning, sipping my cuppa as I scrolled through Holly’s gorgeous photos, a thought popped into my head. ‘What if you could print one of those fabulous images onto fabric and then upholster the fabric onto furniture? Wouldn’t that be stunning?’
I gave her a quick call, we had a chat and it was game on. The hardest part was choosing an image from Holly’s extensive portfolio. Eventually we narrowed it down to just five and we were both smitten with the white rose. Holly had taken the photo on a crisp Winter’s day back in early December. She spotted this single white rose in her garden, flowering it’s little heart out despite the weather and Lockdown. Decision made.
Teamwork …
Next, we had to negotiate the world of fabric printing. Now Holly is a whizz on Photoshop and I am not bad at upholstery, but we were speaking different languages. I knew how much fabric we needed. Where the rose would be positioned and how much extra fabric I would need to work with. But this was all Greek to Holly. She was flinging words such as ‘high resolution, pixels, cropping and re-sizing’ at me. So I just nodded in what I hoped was a vaguely knowing sort of way. We had a good laugh, placed our order, crossed our fingers and were absolutely delighted when the luxury velvet fabric arrived from Contrada a few days later. It was gorgeously perfect.
Over to me! I had this perfect Victorian footstool frame already in the workshop. The mahogany woodwork was cleaned up – ready for the rose fabric to be upholstered. A soft charcoal velvet was used for the side of the footstool, complimenting the background colours perfectly. I rescued the rope trim from the original upholstery. It was the perfect colour match and adds a touch of the shabby chic.
What a lovely couple of hours in my workshop I had. Stove roaring away, the afternoon play on Radio 4 in the background and some therapeutic hand sewing. Sheer bliss!
Back over to Holly – who took all these amazing photographs of the finished footstool.
So Beautiful You Can Almost Smell the Rose.
The result is this utterly unique little white rose footstool. The detail in the image is truly amazing. You can even see the black spot on the leaves of the rose. I almost want to lean in and sniff the rose.
The white rose footstool sold within a week of being listed for sale in my British Craft House Shop and my Etsy Shop.
Prints of the rose in various sizes are available from Holly’s Etsy shop. Go on – treat yourself!
We are already working on project number two – Dahlias!
