About Connections... and six degrees of separation

A post or two ago, I shared about connecting with someone that I knew of, before I had the chance to get to know personally, Jeanelle Dech.  Today, I am going to share another story of connections.  Several months ago Rebecca Deming Rumpf came to a WCAA meeting.  Rebecca is an interior designer here in the Charlotte, NC area, and, since I had not seen her at a WCAA meeting before, I decided to introduce myself.  We ended up having a wonderful conversation about blogging,  and social media.  Soon afterwards, she "friended" me on Facebook and we began to keep up with each other.  Recently, Rebecca won a trip to Paris from Hesler Brothers, by competing in their essay contest.  Helser Brothers is a high-end drapery hardware company, and they wanted someone to attend the Maison and Objet show in Paris and blog about it for them.  Rebecca did a wonderful job and you can read her posts here http://www.whyhelser.com/category/helser-field-bloggers/paris-2010/.  I haven't seen Rebecca since her return, but she is going to share her trip with the members of our Charlotte WCAA group at our meeting in March.  I can't wait to hear all about it.

Last year, I was asked to co-chair a Spring Event for the WCAA.  I thought it might be neat to include the Charlotte AIDP as a marketing partner in the event and so we did.  This event, March 26th,  will be an all day vendor exhibit featuring morning and afternoon workshops.  I was asked to secure a speaker and I chose Jackie Von Tobel.  Jackie is a seasoned designer, author, artist, illustrator, blogger and product designer with almost twenty years experience.  As fate would have it, she attended the Masion and Objet show with Rebecca!  I have communicated with Jackie only through emails, but I am delighted to have the opportunity to go to dinner with her twice when she comes to town, once as a member of the WCAA, and once as a member of AIDP.  It will be fun to hear both, Jackie and Rebecca, share their Paris experiences.  And once again, it will be neat to meet someone that I know of, but haven't yet met personally. 

If you are a member of the trade, you are welcome to join us for the Spring Window Fashion and Interior Desing Event featuring Jackie Von Tobel.   The morning workshop will is titled "The Latest and Greatest in Window Fashions" and the afternoon session is "How to Achieve a High End Look for Less".  To register follow this link https://events.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07e2ov0dh02e903fd3 .

For those of you not in the trade, I will share lots of goodies with you after the event. In the meanwhile, here are some of Jackie's beautiful products;

Spring Will Bloom with Color!

Each season brings a new color pallet determined by industry color experts.  This coming Spring brings lovely colors that show an optimism for brighter days.  In the first part of the 21st century, monochromatic schemes, colorless neutrals, were the design trend of the moment.  In the last couple of years, the movement toward the return of color emerged and continues into Spring.  I will admit it, I am a color fan.  I can do neutral pallets, but I would rather not! Fortunatley, most of my clients agree and we marched forward with color when the rest of the nation did not.  As you will see, the Pantone colors for Spring offer a lovely variety of saturated and soft color.

My friend, Eleanor Wirth, is a member of the Color Marketing Group.  Color Marketing is a group of international color experts that determine color for industry for up to 10 years out.  By industry, I  mean, fashion, furniture, automotive, packaging and so on.  Eleanor spoke at the Charlotte AIDP meeting in December on color trends.  In one of our pre-meeting discussions, she shared that color for the high end market is usually very saturated.  It then gets "grayed down" as it moves toward the mass market.  I thought this was facinating as I often see vibrant color offered by high end furniture and accessory vendors.  She also shared that the "it" colors, as determined by the experts, are really just a jumping off point for designers to interpret.  This is evident by Pantone's Spring Color brochure.  They asked different fashion designer's to design something for each color.  It is interesting to see how each one interpreted the color given.

With this in mind, I wanted to share some of the Spring colors that will be "blooming" at the upcoming High Point Furniture Market.  If you are thinking about re-doing or re-freshing, these are the colors that will be most available.

Thank you Nook-Sucasa for the images

It Really Is a Small World After All!

The interior design world is much smaller than it first appears!  Charlotte, NC is not Atlanta, or New York, but the talent in this city is stunning.  (I should do an article just on that, and maybe I will at a later date.)  This is a story about connections.   It's about meeting and forming relationships with folks that you have heard about and know from their national profile. Such is the case with Jeanelle Dech (pictured left).  Jeanelle is the owner of Adaptive Textiles, CFO of the Custom Home Furnishings Academy, and, the National Secretary of the Window Coverings Association of America. 
My introduction to Jeanelle was through her company Adaptive Textiles. Two years ago, I needed a specific fabric for some dining room chairs.  My client wanted her home to look like it had been plucked right off the beach.  We found some great round back chair frames and I decided to look for a coral head fabric so that I could center the image in the back of the chair.  I found several fabric options, but the color was wrong or the size was off.  I had just recently attended the World Wide Window Covering Expo in Atlanta where I discovered Jeanelle's company called Adaptive Textiles.  This company screen prints on linen, canvas or any number of fabrics that they offer.  Their work is beyond the normal screen printing that you would see at your local tee shirt store.  Their stuff is gorgeous!  I had a G. Richard Anderson take, and manipulate, a photo of a coral head.  We then tweaked it in Photoshop and adjusted the color.  Adaptive Textiles printed it according to my specifications and, lo and behold, the perfect custom fabric for our chair backs!
        Chair back fabric designed by me, fabricated by Adaptive Textiles.  Chair front fabric by Thibaut

Fast forward to just before Christmas, I get an email from the national office of the WCAA asking if they could use a photograph of mine for a national ad campaign.  Turns out, the photo that they want to use is the dining room in which we used Jeanelle's fabric! 
Jump forward, again, to January at the WCAA Charlotte Chapter meeting,  who shows up as a new local member but Jeanelle Dech.  She has stepped in to run the Custom Home Furnishings Academy here in Charlotte.  She now splits her time between CHF and Adaptive Textiles.  Over the last couple of months, Jeanelle has become an intergrel part of our local WCAA organization. It is so neat to go from knowing about someone, to getting to know them personally.  Welcome to Charlotte, Jeanelle!
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This is a copy of the advertisemet that the WCAA is using in it's national campaign.

Hot Color Combo for 2010

Every season there is a "hot" color combination that dominates the fashion industry and the home furnishing industry which tends to follow fashion.  This Spring the combination of colors that we are going to see is Pantone color of the year, turquoise, paired with a sunny yellow.  These lovely colors are paired together at Shine Home, a Californina based company that offers transitional and fashion forward design.



Shumacker is a standard in the industry for beautiful fabrics and wallcoverings, they are pairing turquoise with an organge yellow that gives this room a tropical feeling.










Turquoise can be paired with red, orange, brown, navy, and lime green but watch for yellow this Spring.  You will see it everywhere!