Celebrating collaboration

I love a good collaboration. That's one of the things I love about blogging, as there are so many opportunities to work with great brands as well as other bloggers, photographers, stylists etc. It's also lovely to see brands collaborating with each other to produce exciting products, and this post is celebrating just that. 

British brands Christy Towels and Harlequin have come together to combine their products and design, with Christy producing a range of towels inspired by Harlequin's Amazilla wallpaper range. It's such a great idea to work with another company whose expertise can translate your designs into a product that you might not necessarily be able to produce. This is definitely something that independent designers should be inspired by, and look at who they could work alongside. 

Christy very kindly sent me some of the towels to share with you. Harlequin's Amazilla wallpapers are based on extravagant tropical motifs, so as you can see the towels are bold and graphic too. Great for adding a splash of colour to your bathroom. 

To mark the launch of the range and to celebrate this collaboration, Christy asked me to create a craft project using some of the wallpaper that inspired the new towels - so in fact, it's a bit of a three-way collaboration!! ;) 

Enter... my chance to have a crack at making some origami decorations! I've been wanting to give these a go for ages, and I should warn you.... they are incredibly addictive!! There are some things I make and I think I really don't fancy making those again, but these, oh my goodness, I just can't stop!

Rather than sharing the step-by-step instructions for making them, I'm just going to direct you straight to where I learnt how to make them. Bog and Ide blog has a great visual tutorial which I found really easy to follow. I ended up using superglue to stick mine together though, as my glue gun didn't seem to want to stick the paper I was using. 

The diamond on the left in the above pic was made using Harlequin's Pecoso wallpaper. The one on the right was made with some papers that came with Flow magazine, which I thought complimented the other one quite well. If you wanted to make these into hanging decorations, you can easily add string or ribbon through the top before you glue it together. I quite like them as simple decorations to set around the house, on the mantelpiece or a shelf... 

Are you a fan of brand collaborations? It seems to be happening a lot these days - obviously fashion brands like H&M and Topshop have done lots which often sell out in hours and some of my previous favourites have been Cath Kidston and Gola and recently two brands I love - Liberty and Meri Meri have joined forces to create some lovely party items. Shops such as West Elm have been collaborating with smaller independent brands to hold pop up shops in their stores like the recent one with The Future Kept as well as workshops with Quill London and Geo Fleur. I'd love to hear what your fave brand collaborations have been! I'm excited to start working on 91 Magazine again and do lots of collaborating! ;) 

Oh and one last thing - you MUST enter this competition that Christy Towels are running - You can win bedlinen, towels, a Roberts radio, a Fortnum and Mason hamper and much more!! A pretty fabulous prize! Enter here now