Colourful Christmas Inspiration

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.

Firelight and Glass

Although complaining about the weather is a national pass-time, I love the seasonality of the United Kingdom. I've been on a driving weekend to Edinburgh the weekend just past, and the beauty of the landscape in Scotland at this time of year is breathtaking. With the nights drawing in and the winds and rains blowing, it is the perfect time of year for snuggling down by the fire with a dram of whisky.






I have been having a great time trying to capture that feeling in our seasonal photography. We've had a lot of new glass items in, and I've been working on the use of firelight with and without some experimental flash techniques to see what effects I can get - under exposing and then filling back in with direct flash or just letting the firelight dance through the glass on a long exposure. Because I do a lot of my photography work from home, it has been a great excuse to spend some time and money improving odd corners of the house and really getting it ready for winter so, during those long cold nights, there will be nowhere I'd rather be.

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These quirky geometric vases by House Doctor of Denmark look great with twigs from the garden in, or paint the twigs white and jazz up with decorations for Christmas















I love the combination of these fairy lights on the copper lidded box. Copper is such a warm and beautiful material, and it reflects the light magically here.

This House Doctor floor vase has been taken using a remote flash to illuminate the vase and twigs - an interesting effect and fun to try and set up.

Candle light - don't you just love it at this time of the year. The warm, natural glow looks great in this photo.

Jobs to Dwell on and Jobs to Speed Up

One of the most rewarding parts of my job is shooting photos for new stock. Choosing and buying stock is fun – we're now good friends with a lot of people from companies we deal with and getting together at trade shows to discuss new ideas and the coming season is great – but once the stock arrives I get my own creative kick by working out the best way to display items; the best story to tell with them. While the business was young and growing, most of this was done in the shop, but over the years much of that has been passed on to the hard working team I have there. My time is now often spent trying to give our online customers the kind of experience we give our shop customers. My home office is always full of stock samples and the kitchen is regularly turned into a photo studio for the day.

Although many suppliers provide stock photos, I love to do our own lifestyle shots. It gives us a chance to take items from different suppliers and put them together and gives us a stock of unique images and ideas for people. I come from a creative family and my Dad is a great photographer, so often helps out. My little sister is an artist - if I can get hold of her, Alice makes the best stylist. For me, running a small business is all about the variety, but this is definitely one job I regret having to rush when we are busy. Producing online content is my chance to communicate with our customers, provide the chat about products our real world customers get, show them ideas we have seen and loved. That's the best bit of running a real world shop, and it is also the best bit of running an online operation.

Below: I have always been a bit of a geek too – my latest fun thing to do is timelapse photography on my phone. Having had an interest in technology since I was young, I am amazed at what powerful little tools we carry around with us all the time now in the form of a mobile phone. High quality cameras, powerful computers connect to the endless knowledge available on the web. They can even speed up time, it seems.

And some of the resulting photographs for our Christmas section: