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| Owl Candle Holder by House Doctor |
I’ve become obsessed with my camera of late. In the Spring I treated myself to a Canon 70D and it has become my constant companion, my friend and my plaything. I may even be a little in love with it. Remember when you were young how certain presents at Christmas invaded your imagination with their newness and you couldn’t stop playing with them? I was like that with every set of Lego Technics I was ever bought and I’m like that now with my Camera. And like Lego, it keeps it’s newness because there is always another bit you can bolt on – lenses, lights, flashes and tripods – and always new things you can make with it.
Last week I had the opportunity to help style a Christmas photo shoot for a magazine with a friend of mine – Kirstie Young – an inspirational photographer. It was a great opportunity to combine the visual styling side of my day job with some practical experience and learning from a great photographer. The day left me inspired to put together my own Christmas shots for Fig1.
Below is a sneak preview of some of the Christmas table ideas I’ve been working on. We have a collection of more traditional decorations in the shop too, but this was a chance to experiment with colour. Working so closely with the Danish company
Rice for the last few years has been a shock treatment in the possibility of quirky and unusual colour combinations – I love throwing different colours into the mix and seeing what combinations take flight in my imagination. Some combinations come alive when you put together, seeming to tug at you invitingly. So why not? While I have the chance to play with colour and experiment with my camera, why not build, make and create something different?
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by Mark Fletcher
In the pictures: I’ve taken some of the geometric and metallic influence from our other Danish companies
House Doctor and
Bloomingville and added in some crazy, quirky Rice-style colour combinations – mostly thanks to their beautiful ceramics – to get a non-traditional Christmas look. For me, a neutral background is essential to any bold use of colour to keep a sense of calm and to make the colours you want sing out.
The presents in these pictures are wrapped in House Doctor double sided wrap, again with unusual quirky geometric patterns, the double sided nature of the wrap means you can turn back an edge to reveal a stripe of the pattern on the reverse of the paper.
Character, fun and playfulness: characters like the Owl candle holder, bird and gnome candles add a sense of fun to an otherwise sophisticated setting. I like having something in the room which makes people smile when they see it. The photo below is my favourite from last years Christmas photo shoots and it still brings a smile to my face.
Keep an eye on our Facebook fan page for more Christmas ideas as we get closer to the big day and check out our Christmas section of the site and the Rice ceramics section for most of the products used in these photos.
Competition Coming Soon….
We have a competition to win 2 Rice kids storage baskets arranged with the Green Parent Magazine – out on 7th November – grab the magazine off the shelves or keep an eye on our Facebook fan page or our blog for more details around that date.
