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diy: beach table setting

When we go to the beach, I often ask Green Guide to look for nice, interesting corals and shells that I can bring home. After cleaning and bleaching, I use them as additional accessories when styling some of my interior projects.

As expected, the beaches of El Nido are like coral heaven! The white dead corals are really white. No need for brushing and bleaching! There are also a lot of rounded blue corals which we’ve never seen before, even in Coron. Sadly, taking home corals and shells is prohibited in El Nido.

Because I don’t want to put Green Guide’s found treasures to waste, I decided to use some of them to decorate our table during our group’s private picnic lunch in one of the islands. Hmmm, actually I didn’t exactly decorate the table setting because I just scattered the corals around, haha!

Although the view is more than enough to set the ‘island paradise’ ambiance for our picnic, the corals made the table look extra special.

i saw design: holiday decorating with nene tantoco

 It’s Christmas! Or, at least it already feels like it here in manila.

One place that I love to frequent during the holiday season is Rustan’s Home because of their fantastic visual merchandising and collection of christmas decor.

Last tuesday, Rustan’s hosted a workshop on holiday decorating. It was given by Rustan’s Nene Tantoco and her sister-in-law, Genie. I didn’t know about the event until that afternoon, after I was done with a photo shoot for Myhome magazine.

The workshop centered on the different themes and colors that can be used for the season. Apart from that, they also gave tips on how to maximize one’s existing Christmas decorations. Based on the displays that they had, the trend this year is going for a mixed look. In other words, no to matchy-matchy decorations. As long as you follow a concept, you can mix rustic decorations with the sparkly-shimmery ones and still come up with a coherent arrangement. This way, you can just go through your past christmas decors and mix them up to create a new look this year.

 The conceirge room was filled with vignettes showcasing different themes and decorating strategies for Christmas. Although there are new decorating trends, the classic green-and-red scheme will always be present. This is a Christmas tree and table setting done in what they called “traditional elegance”.

 The tree is filled with angel figurines, christmas balls, pinecones, berries and branches of real pine needles.

The same goas for the table setting. The garland, that acts as a bedding for candle-lit mercury glasses and other decors, was given more body with the addition of branches of real cypress and bottlebrush.

They also had an “eco-friendly” setup, where decorations are made of natural moss, paper mache, dried barks, twigs, and pinecones, and LED lights on an abaca console table. This arrangement has a rustic character but was made glamorous with the addition of metallic and crystal accents.

They also presented interesting diy ideas which we plan to make ourselves. Watch out for them here in designfolder in the coming weeks.