My Cath Kidston Room

A couple of months ago Cath Kidston (CK) ran a competition to design a room in a shoe-box. I'd kept the email about it for other reasons and it wasn't until a few days before the competition closed that I spotted the bit about the contest at the bottom of the page and so Mum and I set about making a room in an evening! It was one of the most fun contests I've ever done, getting to come up with ideas and do little craft things in doll-house size! As creative as I am, I've sadly had to let that part of my life go, over the past 10 years with being ill. I no longer sew or draw or anything like that and it is something I miss dearly, but I know I would get increasingly frustrated at not being able to do it, so it's better I stick to things that I can do. Anyway that aside, it was fun for an evening and I was super impressed (even if I do say so myself) at how fabulous our room turned out and how thrifty we were. We didn't win the competition (we were robbed I know!), but I thought you might be interested in seeing what we came up with.

Our room was a sewing room/shop and we printed out CK prints to use as wallpaper for the walls. We covered the 'floor' in plain paper and added a 'rug' made from another print-out and snipped at the ends to look authentic. We finished off the house with CK fabric over the top and CK ribbon trim.

The centre-piece of the room was our wardrobe. It was made completely by hand from mirror card and CK paper. We made a clothes rail from two dressmaking pins taped together and even little hangers from wire, which I thought were adorable. I printed out miniature images of CK dresses and we hung them on the hangers.

Next we made a desk from an old CK tin of mints using thread spools as the legs. I printed off a couple of images of CK carrier bags and we found a little tape measure, threads, sewing machine, scissors and fabric that my Mum uses for card-making to place on the table.

Our wee worker got a makeover with a little CK sash we made from the selvage of CK fabric.

I wanted to drape some CK fabric over some dollies mannequins we had, but ended up making little dresses for them.

We used an old CK box of matches for this cabinet and rolled up CK fabric to look like bales of material. We even cut a plastic pole to size and wrapped fabric around that, which looked so 'real'.

An old wooden thread spool was used to make a little stool, we covered it in ribbon and fabric with some padding on the 'seat'.

We finished the room by adding some CK badges on the wall to look like decorative plates.

Made a little picture from card-making stuff.

Added some bunting using thread and CK papers...

and even a lampshade from mini cake cases and a cotton bud which hung from the ceiling.

What do you think? Not bad for a few hours work I reckon!  We still have the 'room' sitting in our house and everyone that visits is always very intrigued by it!