{all images taken with my personal camera}

Wow, what a crazy/fun/exciting past few days it’s been! From a short trip to New York City for one of our best friend’s wedding, to the Hipstamatic pop-up restaurant event I styled on Thursday, it’s been non-stop madness!

I’m going to let the pictures do the talking on this one - so here are some of my favorite shots (all taken with my personal camera, please credit if you use elsewhere) from the event! The chef was so happy with the decor and setup, and even had an editor from Better Homes & Gardens there to take some pictures too! It was such a fun experience and I have to give a huge thanks to Hazel Bourget of Blu Bungalow for her help in setting up, Huckleberry Karen Designs for taking my crazy ideas for flowers and turning them to reality with the pretty arrangements in masons, and BluePrint Studios for supplying the rentals I requested to complete the look. Here you go!

BEFORE:

AFTER:

As the theme was “rustic California”, I really wanted to bring out the natural essence of my current home state and asked Karen to include lots of eucalpytus, artichoke and juliet roses. I brought wheat stalks with me and incorporated them in to some of the existing bouquets, and scattered them throughout the rest of the decor here and there. Karen also included some kale flowers to add some texture and pretty white/green accents. I just love the colors in the image below!

I love how the wheat stalk is barely noticeable in the picture below, but definitely gives a pretty added texture once you realize it’s there.

I also did all of the paper design for the event, from the custom embossed menus (I searched high and low for a font that came close to the Hipstamatic logo), to the pretty placecards jazzed up with gold striped washi tape. You might recognize my “calligraphy” trick - no one knew it was traced! If you want to learn how to emboss, click here for a video tutorial :)

For the bar area, I carried through the burlap strips to jazz up an otherwise modern looking white bar. I also used my own silver mercury glass votives mixed with mason jar “candles”, and gold mercury glass votives from BluePrint Studios. I liked the end result of mixing silver and gold, the mis-matched look worked well, I think! There were some flowers leftover from the first night, so I scattered some olive branches and white football/spider mums throughout the “bar” and lounge area (see below).

The coffee table above was otherwise bare, but I added some more of the olive branches and lots of clustered candles to make a pretty “lounge” area a bit more jazzed up and romantic.

I think the placecards setup (above and below) was my favorite part! I used my DIY “calligraphy” trick to create pretty placecards, and then took gold striped washi tape to jazz up an otherwise blank kraft paper card. That also tied in some of the gold metallic design I was trying to infuse throughout. As the place cards were not folded, I used mini yellow and brown clothespins to create mini “props” to keep them up. I chose yellow to bring out some of the coloring from the Hipstamatic branding.

I also shared a few other sneak peeks via Facebook, so if any of these are redundant, sorry about that :)

Hope you all had an amazing weekend! See you back here later this week!