Clearly, I love a contest — what, with the mantel and nightstand styling contests. It’s VERY strange because I’m one of the least competitive people I know. In fact when I was auditioning for DesignStar the casting agents sensed my lack of desire to hit below the belt and tried grilling me about it. (They were afraid that I wouldn’t cause drama.) I tried to act all tough with a, “Yeah, I love to … win … yeah, GRRrrr, I’ll kill ‘EM’ … yeah, heh, I’m not here to, er, make … friends … ” I was fooling no one. (Let me be clear: ambition and competitiveness are two wildly different things). And yet, despite my lack of ferocity, I like to have contests. Maybe I am competitive and I just don’t want to admit it because I think that being competitive shows innate weakness … oh dear …
Regardless, my new contest, starting today, is of the Instagram variety. For those of you not on Instagram, you are missing out on what I’d say is the most fun of all the social medias on the interweb machine. It’s a stream of pictures of what someone is doing (filtered all pretty), and then shared with a caption describing it. That’s it. You can follow Jef Holms (please do) and watch him pose in an undeniably stylish outfit with his People Water, or you can follow your little sister and see her face after she took her last test in college yesterday (CONGRATULATIONS, KATY).
So for this contest all you have to do is answer this question with a picture and a hashtag:
What one piece of furniture would you save from a fire in your house?
Clearly I don’t mean literally, and I’m in no way condoning you setting fire to your house so you can then go in and rescue said piece, but more what is your favorite piece? This can be sentimental piece of furniture, sure, but pets, photo albums, or anything that contains mementos are not what this is about. (Obviously those things are far more important than any stupid chair.) The contest is meant to be more design/style related — and don’t worry about whether or not you can carry it physically, it’s conceptual.
What do you love so much that you would save from a fire? At first I thought just one piece, but I’m changing it to up to three, because I’m already having the hardest time deciding.
IT’S REALLY HARD. I’ve been vacillating a lot. I bought my sofa (above) right after DesignStar. It was $700 and I was so freaked out to spend the money because I had never bought anything for that much, but I knew I had to step it up from my Ikea sofa and splurge on something. So while of course I love it aesthetically — it’s certainly an awesome sofa — it also reminds me of that crazy year that totally changed my life and made my career.
BUT, friends, my cognac leather and rosewood Brazilian safari chairs are superior pieces of furniture and frankly way harder to find vintage. They are so comfortable and just look like “me.” Everyone loves sitting in them, everyone loves looking at them (I know because I make people look at them with admiration), and they are pretty much perfect.
So the challenge is to take a photo of said favorite piece (or three) and use the hashtag #emilysaveme (emily save me). There won’t be one winner with a prize this time, instead I’ll take my top 20 and feature them on the blog with crediting and linkage if you are a blogger or have a website of any kind, of course (leave that info in your caption). It’s for fun, no real winner, just lots of pretty pics and a peak inside other peoples lives. In order to look at other entries just search in your Instagram browser #emilysaveme and all of the entries will come up. It’s the most legal way we can spy on other people, so I’m all about promoting it. And sorry I have to put my name in the hashtag, otherwise a lot of other #saveme ‘s will come up, so it has to be more specific.
Also the contest ends next Friday, 4/26.
Here are some Instagram tips:
1. Download the app “Afterlight.” With this app you can lighten the photo, saturate the colors, add contrast, all on your phone, straight from the photo. Then save the edited photo to your camera roll. Then open up Instagram and select that edited photo from your camera roll … rather than going directly from Afterlight to Instagram because you can’t change the crop that way. (You’ll see what I mean when you do it.)
2. Shoot it in daylight. Turn off your flash and shoot it with natural light. It will look 20 times better.
3. Keep the shot fairly simple — don’t have four pillows on your favorite chair; we won’t really be able to see it.
Don’t worry about styling anything. This is really just for fun so we can all satisfy our inner voyeurs and see what real people love in their homes. Keep the shots simple and easy. Although, if your picture is good you are bound to get more followers if you want them.
Come and play, friends. I want to see what you love the most (and OK, you can do three if you can’t decide :)).