What is a prop stylist?

A lot of times when I tell people about my work as a prop stylist, they go all 'deer in headlights' and usually say something like, 'what's that?', 'huh?', 'you do hair?' Here's what a prop stylist does:

What in hell is that, y'all ask? It's a chianti bottle and it's having candle wax dripped on it for a photograph that will eventually make it's way on a page in a major magazine...they'll be some clever service point to you telling y'all how to take your chianti bottle & reuse it as a candleholder when y'all set that effortless dinner table for your festive holiday party!

Oh, wait...y'all didn't think that those gorgeous shots of rooms/homes/people/parties just happened to be that way, naturally and a photographer just snapped a pic of it? Not always, but you're seeing smoke & mirrors, my friends...or in my case, from my shoot yesterday...bottles and candlewax...

This lovely moment was actually executed by the uber-talented, Andrea Greco, aka Candy, who's a crafting fiend!

So next time y'all are thumbing through the pages of your favorite magazine, wondering if people really live/eat/entertain like that, all the time? The answer might just be no...a prop stylist made it look that way!!!

Decorating with...Math?

Math has never been a friend of mine…and I’m not sure why that is exactly. I’ve always dismissed our dynamic as "just not having enough in common". Math is so precise and exact. So right or wrong. There’s no wiggle room with Math. No drama or intrigue, no gray areas. I thrive in gray areas…I mean, what color doesn’t work with gray, right y’all?

For me, the same holds true for decorating—there is no real right or wrong. There’s an infinite amount of wiggle room, and nothing ever has to be exact or precise. So when I was approached to create a piece for Easy Decorating Magazine called 'Instant Room' that would illustrate basic elements (sofa, coffee table, light fixture & rug) added together to equal a specific style of room, I was a little skeptical. But I was quickly backslapped by Math... despite all her exactness (1 + 1 equals 2...blah, blah, blah) I discovered there’s a lot of wiggle room, you just have to be open to it. And just like decorating, being open to the unexpected can make for one hell of an equation. Look how these rooms add up:

Now go get properly schooled by grabbing yourselves a copy, out on newsstands now! Holla!