spruce & ugly chairs

Hey good morning! Have you seen any of the blog tour Amanda Brown from Spruce is doing for her new (awesome) upholstery book? Well now you have :) 

I met Amanda last year at Alt where we were both teaching classes (textile design and upholstery, respectively), so I was very excited when she asked if I'd like to be part of her tour. And then when I got the press materials (and book!) I heard about the Ugliest Chair contest, and I realized Amanda is truly a girl after my own heart! I'm sure you can tell from my own labor of love how much the stories and histories of special objects mean to me. So I am thrilled to offer a runner up prize for the Ugliest Chair contest!

When I looked around the facebook page where entries are posted, I saw some really ugly chairs with really great stories, and I realized I had to offer a prize for the runner up. You know that when you re-upholster grandpa's favorite old chair you will be really glad that you can now proudly position it in the living room, but there will be a tiny piece of you that is a little sad that the weird smelly scratchy fabric is no more (but who wants to sit on it?!) so I'm offering to create an illustration of one of those hideous old chairs so that you can fondly (and with no weird smell!) have a remembrance of what that chair used to be before you made it all beautiful and stuff.

All you have to do is keep submitting your ugly old chairs to the Storey FB page until Dec. 1, and then when Amanda picks the winner (for the upholstrey kit & awesome prizes) I'll choose a runner up who will receive a custom illustration of their old chair so that they can always remember the good ol' days. I'll announce the runner-up here in conjunction with the launch of custom illustration orders on Nottene. (yes, that's right I will be offering custom illustration services of your heirlooms and souvenirs starting Dec 2!). Now let's see some ugly chairs!

P.S. A bunch of fun sites are giving away copies of this excellent upholstery how-to book (here, here, and here for example).