So, every time I visit a new city, rather than going about and just seeing the normal tourist sights like everyone else, I also want to go and see the interiors hotspots! So on my recent trip to London I thought I would take a day out and wander around a bit to get chomps into some juicy interior shops and have a peruse around their beautiful wares. I have created a walking tour of what I did and where I went so next time you have some time to kill in the capital, have a look at these places!

So above is the full "course" in the two maps (Google wont let me add the whole route on one map).  Its under 3 miles from Highbury & Islington towards Shoreditch. 

1. Aria
This is a gorgeous furniture and interiors store with beautiful unique furniture and a stunning place for gifts!
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Barnsbury St, Islington, London N1 1PN

2. Twentytwentyone
This uber stylish home wares and unique furniture shop has some absolutely stunning pieces of furniture. Each piece is hand selected and there is a vintage feel bout some of the absolutely classic pieces they sell. 
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274-275 Upper Street London N1 2UA

3. Adventures in Furniture
Now this is a stunning furniture store with beautiful white painted floorboards on the walls and a range of stunning pieces. Their collection of gold and brass accessories was a particular favourite of mine!

281 Upper St, London N1 2TZ

4. David Scotcher interiors
This store was sadly closed when I was on my little jaunt, but just a peak through the window and they have a massive array of the MOST BEAUTIFUL fabrics! Hopefully it will be open when you walk past. 
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285 Upper St, London N1 2TZ

5. Rothschild & Bickers
This gem of a shop has the most stunning hand blown glass lights. Their latest shop window was full of tasseled multi coloured ones so I just had to pop in and have a nosy around!
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62 Cross St, London N1 2BA

6. Tiles Etc.
This little showroom has the most phenomenal collection of tiles. I had a chat with the owner and he stocks such a vast range. We had a great chat on the beauty of a matt finish tile. I would definitely have a nosy at his beautiful collection!

4 Shillingford St, London N1 2DP

7. Abigail Ahern
If you don't know who she is, do you even interiors? She is pivotal in making dark interiors a major trend the past few years. Her showroom is full of gorgeous furniture and glimmering mirrors, stunning textures and fuaxs. Her distinctive dark colour pallet is instantly regocnisable. Head here for some truly swoon worthy inspo!

12-14 Essex Rd, London N1 8LN

8. Renaissance London - Marble Fireplace specialist

Now yes, these have some phenomenal marble fireplaces, but the thing that drew me into this gorgeous space (apart from the yummy purple shop front) was the stunning chandelier collection inside! Massive gorgeous vintage Murano pieces and Art Deco Pieces. Not cheap mind you, but a stunning space to get some fantastic inspiration.

​193 City Rd, Hoxton, London EC1V 1JT

9. W.A. Green
This bright and beautiful store on the beautifully artistic back streets of Shoreditch is a lovely little home wares and gift store. Their energetic colours immediately drew me in to their eclectic space. Check out those beautiful colours!

9-10, Charlotte Rd, London EC2A 3DH

9. House of Hackney
Now, when I was wandering around, I realized that shoreditch is in Hackney (I'm not from London and have never lived there), so I though surely HOH should be based here, and true to its name, a glorious showroom full of their prints form the very first upto their very last were on show here! What an indulgent array of pattern! Head here if you need more HOH in your life!

​131 Shoreditch High St, London E1 6JE

10. Monologue
This beautifully curated store has some phenomenal statement pieces. I'm totally in love with a stripy marble coffee table and their standing lamp that looks like a waving flag! GORGEOUS!
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93 Redchurch St, London E2 7DJ

I was invited to their Christmas launch (Blog here) and I was so utterly impressed and surprised by their products that I wanted to create an epic garland for the front door. We were so so pleased with our brand spanking new front door in its bright yellow that I wanted to create something pretty wow to frame it and really make a grand welcome for all our guests over the Christmas season. Did I mention we are hosting a Fake Christmas Dinner for 16 this weekend?!!! Anyway - slow, deep breaths required! Back to the garland, so above here is a little snap of the door pre-chrismassification (yes that is a word). So to create the garland this is what I did! I also created a stories collection (aka Highlight) on my Instagram so if you prefer a video then head here.

1. Measure! I measured up the door across the top and down the sides, I was shocked to discover that to get a garland most of the way round I needed around 18ft of base garland!!
2. Take a trip to Housing Units and spend a few hours perusing their gorgeous Christmas decoration section and nail down what kind of detail you want to go for. I am a classic kind of boy when it comes to Christmas so I am all about the green, red and gold! Oooh and lights!! SO important to have lights! Obviously December is the darkest month of the year so add a bit of sparkle with fairy lights.
3. Plan your garland. So when the delivered box arrived, I squealed with glee and anticipation for the actual construction, but I must say I had not been 100% sure how to construct it. My rough plan was green, lots of berries and some gold with sparkle and lights. I wanted a balanced look through the garland so make sure to get enough to spread across.... I didn't so Ill tell you what I did.

 6. I then laid the berry garlands on top of the green and  tried to make sure they are as centred as possible, so if you have any lengths of bare green garland, these are at the edges and equal in length (Approximately). I then attached the berries to the main garland again winding the branches around each other to get them to stay how I wanted and I also kept the lights on at this stage so that I can appreciate where the lights were in relation to the foliage and berries, also it looked pretty and motivated me!
  7. Next step was applying the sparkle, as I didn't have enough length of the gold sparkle fronds (not sure if that is the correct term to describe them) I took each one apart by unwrapping the ribbon around the wire frame and basically pulling each separate frond apart, this left me with two piles of different sized fronds (and a lot of glitter). I then went around fitting the individual sparkly fronds onto the garland in a relatively balanced way. Again each one has a metal wire backbone so relatively easy to wind around and attach to the garland. This created a really bespoke and expensive looking garland for a fraction of the cost!
  8. Hang it! So this all depends on what type of house you have but we have crazy hard bricks in this house so a while with my percussion drill and some heavy duty screw eyes gave me the sturdy base to hang the garland off with some extra wire. Plug it in and enjoy the visual feast! Et Voila! you are done!

As always pleas let me know what you think and comment below! xoxo

Good evening everyone! I just wanted to pop on here and speak to you lovely lot about how I created my gallery wall. In this house we are very lucky to have a Double- L shaped staircase. This creates drama and volume to the hallway and is such a lovely feature that made us fall in love with the house when we came to view it. Although it can be quite a tricky space to dress. Here are some before photos from the estate agents website. 

I wanted to create something showstopping and at the same time a place that would showcase our family and passions. I didnt want it to be too controlled and impersonal. I drew inspiration from many places, Pinterest was a firm favourite and I scoured the internet pinning all the photos that I loved and thought would work in the space. I also drew from a fellow blogger Lisa Dawson who created this fabulous gallery wall pictured below. 

The evolution of the space that I created was very organic, we had en-massed a lot of prints and photos from holidays and trips abroad. I also bough some prints of my favourite artworks and had some bespoke framing made for oddly sized pieces. The lay out I took was to decide on a main piece for each wall, and then build around it. Selecting other images that work well next to and around it. I went for a very eclectic frame collection, from brand new to vintage. I also liked using different depths of frames to create volume to the wall so that not all the pictures were at the same depth. I also wanted to hang a beautiful vintage obi (the traditional belt worn around a kimono) which I bought in Kyoto, Japan. This is around 3.5 long so I had to find a specific site for it to be shown off in all its drama, which was to be on the top staircase. The thing about putting pictures all the way down just above the skirting boards is that on a standard wall it might not look well and you wont really every appreciate the art there, but on a staircase as you are constantly on a different level with each step you eye is on level with another piece of art or picture  and therefore even at skirting board height, its visible from the landing just below, so why not put some art there?

As a backdrop for this artwork I was torn between gorgeously dark and mysterious or light and airy. I decided to op for the latter as the hall is North East Facing and despite it being quite tall doesn't always seem so airy and bright, and with a very busy gallery wall I opted for a warm white, Great White by Farrow and Ball. It has a very delicate pink/lilac tint to it making it a warm white to use. Perfect for my hall/staircase.

So with art all framed and scattered all over the house it came down to one day to collect all the pieces together and with a lot of nails and a hammer, the gallery wall was created. So a picture says a thousand words, so Ill just shut up now and let you have a look for yourself. Here are some shots over time as it has evolved, including some with a cheeky bit of Christmas garland!

Hey folks, I realise its been way too long since I last posted but if you have been keeping up to date with my Instagram we have been working really hard at finishing off the attic bedroom which is now nearly complete. This is the biggest bedroom in the house and we stayed in it for the first few months and had it re-plastered over the summer which meant its been ready for a makeover for a while but we distracted by the staircase (see my previous post), but now we finally did it. 

My design process with this room is that I wanted to create something calming and serene at the top of the house, somewhere to escape to. We wanted this room to be versatile as a guest bedroom with two twin beds that can be joined up to make a super king sized bed. We also wanted the design to be warm and modern but still layered, characterful and cosy. It posed its own challenges which I shall discuss below but here are a few before photos. The first two are the estate agents photos, and the panorama shot is when we moved in.

I think its safe to say that I absolutely hated this room. I hated the migraine inducing wallpaper in a velvety damask and bright pink/red. I hated the black high gloss wardrobe fronts and I hated the cracked plaster work. It was not a very relaxing room but we stayed in it as it had built in wardrobes and good storage. I'm still surprised that I didn't at least paint over that awful wallpaper which caused me such upset. Once we moved out of this room we got our revenge though. 

Ripping off that wallpaper (and the 4 layers of paper below it) was so satisfying. From the pictures above you can already see how much more calming that room became without a wall screaming out at you. The other thing that struck me about this room is the lines. So many lines! The pitch of the ceiling, the joists, the chimney breasts, all at different slants to each other joined with a combination of sharp angles and soft curves. Our plasterer got to work on this room, and its fair to say that he did not enjoy it at all and one day once he finished I found him sat down looking particularly broken and said that he was going to retire as he didn't enjoy these complex projects any more!!!! oopsie!

The next thing to tackle was the wardrobes. I debated ripping them out for all of 3 seconds, I just hated their colour and finish, but they were solidly built and did use the space very well, so I would only be replacing them with something very similar. The other alternative was to change the doors, but unfortunately these doors are a custom height which uses as much space as possible which is great from a storage point of view but not so great from ease of change. We did find some companies online that did offer custom doors but the cost was higher than I had budgeted for so we went for the simplest option. Paint!

Now that the painting was all finished we had to get down to dressing the room! I wanted to again create more drama in this room by creating an apex curtain across the whole wall where the window was. The idea behind this was to create a cosier feel in the room with texture and add to the insulation of the thin outer wall. To create the whole wall of curtain I fixed tracks as close to the ceiling along the whole end wall of the room. The centre portion have a draw string to allow them to be opened easily, and the two end diagonal tracks were fixed and would never really be opened or drawn (as you can see there is only wall behind them). I used dark grey Ikea curtains which are also black out and textured to compliment the look of the room. The end panels didn't really hang straight down as I had imagined they would, so I gathered the fabric in the end panels to fill out the space properly. I might live with it for a bit and see if it bothers me, in which case some inventive sewing will be in order (I have never sewn anything in my life, apart from a button, hence the fear).

After an evening on my knees with Allen keys we got the beds and bedside tables up. The room came together super quickly after that with a few lamps I already had and some cosy throws and rugs we ended up with the nearly finished room below!

I hope you like the room as I am super chuffed with it. The only thing left is to create a headboard that allows the beds to be used as a twins and also as a super king. I have been mega inspired by the fabulous headboard over at frenchforpinapple (insta) which is pretty epic and would be great in this space and would stretch the whole length of the wall behind the beds and bedside tables. So I just need to find the correct fabric now... watch this space. If you want to see the whole process in video format, have a look at my Attic Bedroom Highlight on my Instagram page.

Lots more projects coming your way soon so stay tuned. 

BTW I know there might be some comments about the fur throw in the bedroom, but this is farmed reindeer from Norway, they are farmed for their meat a cows are in this country, and skinned the same way sheep skins are used in this country (there is also a sheep skin in this room near the arm chair). I bought this when I was 16 and travelling in Scandinavia. 

Hello everyone!! Hope your weekend is going well! My weekend kicked off with a bang at the fabulous No House Rules summer party. For those of you new to No House Rules, it is the brain child of no other than Amy Wilson (@thisstyle_rocks) and Katie Woods (@comedowntothewoods) where they get like minded interiors addicts together in a members club (aka The Mob) and introduce brands to them and host cracking parties!

Yesterdays party was hosted at Katie's fabulous home in a suburb outside Leeds. A gorgeous villa which has been decorated bravely with beautiful bold colours and striking patterns. Katie's taste is eclectic and lush and with her keen eye she has created a bright home filled with whimsy and love which she shares with her husband, 4 kids (aka bin-lids) and a dog!

As we drove up to the beautiful house, we were greeted at he door by the lovely Katie and Amy. The beautiful original red door opens up into a cosy door way lined with starry wallpaper and leads onto the amazing  hallway with its own fireplace!! Portobello Road Gin in hand we headed for a nosy around this beautiful house. Each room has its own energy and is uniquely styled. The kids playroom with its vibrant green painted mantle was taken over by BoConcept (from Redbrick Warehouse in Leeds) who created a lovely chill out zone with super comfy chairs, sofas and soft furnishings. The front room (pictured above), with its rich blue walls and sofa housed the TWO goodie bags which were given to each attendant filled to the brim with fantastic products! There was also a raffle giveaway for a whole bunch of fabulous prizes kindly donated by brands. If you want to find out more head over to the NoHouseRules instagram page for the full lowdown! The whole house smelled amazing with Neom candles. Scattered around were chunky knit blankets and cushions hand made from Merino wool by the fabulous Miriam Evans from mizzknits, these were super handy for the outdoor cinema created by AOs outside projector! Wine was flowing form Naked wines and there was even a stand from The Marshmallowist, scrumptious handmade marshmallows with a variety of flavours ready for toasting on the nearby fire pit! In the teepee from Papakata a goodies table with a vast array of goodies from Dunelm and more cosiness from the Christy with their knitted blankets and cushions. You could even help yourself to a delicious sample of the Northern Bloc ice-cream flavours! La Redute took over Katie's walk in wardrobe and hosted a raffle for the chosen charity of the night Simon On The Streets. To top it all off, yummalicious tacos were served by the local Tacoporium, topping off a fabulous night!!
The partying kept on going till the wee hours of the morning (sorry Katie's neighbours), but it was so lovely to meet some amazing new and old friends, some travelling all over the country to get to this party. I had the privilege of taking over the Nohouserules Instagram account for part of the evening so head over to their stories to see my fumbling around on an iPhone, but as an android user all I can say is I tried my best haha!

Hope those photos gave you a sample of the fabulous space! So goodie bags in tow and a slight hangover I carted myself over the Pennines back to Manchester where I am just sat snuggled on the sofa with a cup of tea (no more wine for a while). Over and Out!!