CLAD HOME FEATURED ON OH HAPPY DAY AND A CUP OF JO THIS WEEK!

Hi!  I'm finally going to interrupt the long silence known as "the summer I opened my new store and everything else just had to wait" with a fun little tidbit of news for you. 

 

One of our custom Clad Home sofas was just featured in a collaboration by two of my all time favorite bloggers, Jordan Ferney of Oh Happy Day, and Joanna Goddard of A Cup of Jo.

 

 

 

Jordan approached us a few months back with the idea of making a special custom sofa to fit perfectly within the bay window of her San Francisco living room.  Even though they're in the Bay Area and we're in LA, we worked out a good approach for designing their sofa remotely.  

 

They made and mailed us a butcher cut out paper template of the sofa footprint for us to copy exactly to get the size and shape just right.  Here it is spread out on my driveway when we received it ...

 

 

Jordan ordered a bunch of fabric swatches from us to help narrow down her choices (did you know that you can pick up to 10 free swatches from our website and we'll send them to you pronto?) ...

For a while she was considering a coral sofa for a big hit of color in the bay window! But in the end she settled on a dark charcoal grey poly linen instead.

Our poly linens are great for upholstery because they have the look and feel of real linen without the major upkeep that 100% linen requires.  Ours are more durable and stain and wrinkle resistant than linen, so they can stand up to families with kids, pets, etc.  (Plus they're safer than a lot of mainstream sofa brands out there because our fabrics are never treated with toxic fire retardant chemicals.)

This was the final fabric choice ...

We bought extra yardage so Jordan could have roman shades made in the exact same fabric like this inspiration image she'd found on Pinterest ...

 

Then we went through a few rounds of sketching and revisions in order to get the style and details of the sofa just right ...

These are the very glamorous photos we take during the construction phase at the factory...

We shipped the sofa up to San Fran (we ship nationwide these days!) and waited patiently until we finally got to see photos of it installed in Jordan's living room.  Totally worth the wait!  It fit into the bay window like a glove.  These cell phone pictures make the linen look a little darker than it is ...

(the sofa's great, but how cute are those boys!?)

And we're SO pleased with the final home tour photos that really show off the sofa in 

all it's glory ...

Jordan's entire house tour was featured on A Cup Of Jo this week and there are a lot of lovely spaces to see.  And many thanks to Jordan for giving us the chance to make such a unique and beautiful piece of furniture for your home!

xoxo

 

 

DESIGNING WITH DAYBEDS

I'm a huge fan of daybeds.  I've written before how I love using them in living rooms as an alternative to just another sofa ... there's something that works so well about combining furniture of varying heights in a space!  It allows the eye to traverse the room without getting bored because everything is too much the same or all on one plane.

(all images via) 

Daybeds are a brilliant solution for in front of large windows or in front of a fireplace in lieu of a sofa with back that would block such a great feature.  Tucked at the top of the stairs or in a wide hallway a small daybed creates an inviting resting spot.  And it's a no-brainer in a home office that doubles as a guest room because it doesn't have to look like a bed, but it is one!  They are absolutely chic, practical, and comfortable at once.

Here's a custom tufted leather daybed I made for a client's living room (see the full tour here), based on one of my all-time favorite Nate Berkus rooms pictured below.  

So it should come as no surprise to you that I'm working on designing some really good daybed options for my upcoming furniture line.  With these, as with the entire line, I'm aiming for shapes that are classic, but with an interesting design twist, just a little something different.  Sometimes just one little detail, like double-stitched seams or an indented frame shaped that molds around a seat cushion, is all it takes. 

You may have heard me share the motto I adopted from the brilliant interiors and furniture designer Charles Eames: "The details aren't just the details.  They make the design."  

I can't wait to reveal all that I've been working on for the new line!  And thanks for bearing with me during this busy time when my posts are coming a little less frequently.  And a million thanks for all your votes and support in the Lamps Plus Design Duel.  My room was the winning room ... by more than double the votes (a proud moment for me in light of the fact that my competitor has 12K instagram followers to my 650 :)  So thanks for that!

EXCITING HAPPENINGS: PROTOTYPE SOFAS FOR SALE & HELP ME CHOOSE THE NAME OF MY NEW FURNITURE LINE!

I could really use some help here and I love love LOVE it if you would weigh in with your opinions!  

 

As you may know, I'm working on launching my own line of furniture this year.  I've been designing and locally manufacturing custom, one-of-a-kind furniture for my clients for years, and I'm feeling really ready and excited to apply all the knowledge I've gleaned during that process to the creation of a beautiful and refined collection of furniture that represents my tastes and style and will be available to order online nationwide.  Exciting!!

All weekend I've been playing around with names for the furniture line.  My interior design business will stay as it is, Rosa Beltran Design.  But we're thinking that the furniture line should have its own name too ... something that ties in with my whole design business, but also sets it apart as it's own thing (I also love my round "RB" medallion logo and I might want to incorporate it into the new name.)  In the future I'll likely be adding other items like lighting and accessories to my home line, so I wouldn't want any name that limits me to just furniture.  These are some ideas I'm playing with ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OR it could also go in a totally different direction!  I'm really wide open to suggestions.  We could eliminate the "RB" logo altogether and just use a stand alone word or concept as the name.  What do you think!?  You're the ones who I want to appeal to, so it's your opinion that I value the most!

 

I'm currently designing the collection and having my prototypes made to be photographed for the website.  Because I don't have a brick and mortar store, sometimes I wind up with a surplus of inventory that I need to get rid of quickly to make room for the next batch of furniture arriving.  These I sell on Craigslist, Chairish, etc ... and I'll also list them here just in case anyone wants to snag one for themselves!  Today it's a perfect mid-century style sofa in a blue grey.  100" long x 31" high x 35" deep. Sale price $1500.  I don't have interstate shipping set up yet, but it's not difficult to get reasonable shipping quotes from companies like uship.com. 

 

OPULENT DECOR AND A STUNNING BLACK VELVET SOFA FOR SALE

Sometimes even the best-laid plans go awry.  It happened to me last week when this gorgeous custom sofa I made for a client couldn't quite be navigated through the corridor of the 19th floor luxury apartment it was meant for.  Serious bummer.  Doorways and elevators were of course measured in advance, but this sexy beast of a sofa just did not round corners well.  Admittedly geometry was not my strongest subject in high school, but it's also fair to say that this sort of stuff is just hard to gauge in a 2D sketch on paper.  Thankfully in all the hundreds of furniture orders I've filled, this is the only time this has ever happened to me.

So!  Now I have a rush order in on a new sofa to being constructed in 2 pieces that will be joined together once they've safely made it inside my client's living room ... and I have this brand new mad sexy black velvet roll arm sofa to sell off! I'm asking $2K for it, which is far under what we paid for it.  Email me for all the dimensions and details.

 

It's definitely a unique piece ... SO amazingly soft, comfortable, well-made, and just stunning to look at.  For the right space, it would be a showstopper, I promise you that.

Here's some imagery to help you see where I'm going with the penthouse.  We loosely based the design and feel of this sofa on the seriously sexy Maddox Collection by Ralph Lauren ... in fact this black velvet skull and crossbones pillow was our jumping-off point.  Very Hollywood, rock-n-roll, luxurious and sensual with a bit of an edge ... I sort of feel like I'm channeling Martyn Lawrence Bullard on this project :)

Our design approach is definitely "more is more."  My client loves antiques and has an impressive collection of old world paintings, so we're layering in lots of luxe fabrics and draperies in deep, saturated jewel tones along with antiques, oriental carpets, chinoiserie wall murals, Tiffany lamps, giant potted palms ... all this combines to create the amazingly lush aesthetic of these "more is more" rooms ...

(all images via my project pinterest board)

That's one direction to take with this sofa, but it could go down a LOT of different ways!  

What would YOU do with it?

 

P.S. 

Big shout out to my gem of a boyfriend who took these pretty sofa photos for us (undoubtedly the least interesting subject this talented guy has ever shot) and offered to store it in his photography studio which is at all times less overcrowded and way more organized than my office ever is!  Thanks babe :)