Notes from The Styling Your Home Workshop

Just a quick post today, I wanted to share my notes about the workshop I attended yesterday, which was run by Lisa Dawson and Dee Campling.

The workshop is called STYLING YOUR HOME: FOUR STEPS TO NO RULES INTERIOR COOL.  What I liked about this is ‘no rules’.  Interior designers will discuss with their clients certain rules about how rooms should be put together and dressed and if I were ever to hire a a BIID accredited Interior Designer I would no doubt want to follow the rules, in my luxury penthouse overlooking the Thames!

But back to my own suburban bungalow and I like the idea of ‘no rules’.  There’s been a lot of posts and discussions in the interiors instagram family about trends and rules including my own post here about whether we should get swept up in trends or not. The answer is ‘no rules’.  If you love a trend, go with it.  If you don’t love it, don’t do it in your home because it’s trendy.

So, back to the day.  Lisa and Dee met through Instagram when they started to share photos of their homes and became friends.  They then started these workshops earlier this year to share what they know and love.

What I love about these ladies is they’re not formally trained in interiors, they’ve just gone with their gut and have built massive Instagram followings and blogs, and they now get to work with the biggest brands out there to share the love of interiors – all in the space of 18 months.  And they’re lovely people to boot – so I knew a day with them in a workshop would be good fun.

The day is informal, and structured around four major themes:

STEP 1:  FINDING YOUR STYLE COMFORT ZONE

STEP 2:  STYLING YOUR PERFECT SPACE

STEP 3:  SUCCESSFUL SOURCING

STEP 4:  INSPIRE YOUR INSTAGRAM

I like this structure because we’re not trying to cram too much into the day.  Also there’s a practical task to style up a shelf with a chance to win a lovely prize and that also gets the creative juices flowing and gets you chatting to others.

The workshop this time was held at Black Lion House in Sutton which is a beautiful home often used in film and TV shoots and workshops.  We were told Tom Hardy (yes, that one!) and his team wanted to use the house on the same day as this workshop.  I’m sure the ladies on the workshop would have been pleased to have seen Tom, but sadly this was not to be!

We were allowed a little peek around some of the rooms in the house and it’s simply stunning.  Simple, clean lines, pale walls, and a dressing room and office to die for.  Talk about house envy!

The vibe in the room was friendly, it was a lovely group and I was thrilled when after introductions someone recognised me from Instagram!  That made me and my little account very happy!

I’m not going into detail on the course information, you need to book and get on a course for yourself!  Some of it is stuff we might perhaps already know, but it was arranged and delivered in such an enthusiastic and fun way to help you remember it easily and give you the boot up the behind to get cracking in your own room.

The big thing was meeting other like minded people and the practical exercise was a nice part of the day, it got quite competitive amongst the teams!

The main thing I took away from the day were their guidelines on how to decide what to keep and what to get rid of in your home and how to go about setting a room up.  In fact I came out of the course with renewed excitement about this and I’ve got plans for what’s going on Gumtree and what is staying in the two spare rooms.

The ladies made a wonderful lunch and we had enough cakes and biscuits to keep you going, together with a cheeky presecco at the end of the day.

Also Lisa and Dee put together great goody bags for everyone:

Normally a goody bag is filled with leaflets and not much else but here we got a lovely tote shopping bag, a sketchbook, pictures to frame, pots of paint, candles, fairy lights, discount vouchers and of course the leaflets and reading material.  Very impressive!

I had a lovely day and I encourage you to look for one near you. Look on Dee’s or Lisa‘s websites for more details.