So if you are a
twitter follower of mine you wouldn't have failed to notice that I am launching a new offering to the book world next Thursday 11th April; Girls' Night In, craft, cakes and cocktails for the ultimate party, is my third book and first solo project ( away from the Everything Series with the gorgeous Christine Leech). As this is my first solo project it is incredibly close to my heart, it also includes many of my best friends.
Writing a book is comparable to launching a space rocket, (now hear me out) before it gets to your local bookshop or sold online there are a series of challenges one must succeeded to make it a success and launch it into the stratosphere.
Girls' Night In for me was a fairly natural progression from
Everything Alice and
Everything Oz, I seem to go for big ideas and big concepts, which is where my work as a stylist helps. This book seemed like a great way to incorporate all of my favourite things, craft, cakes, cocktails, friends, parties, beauty, games and more. Since I was a little girl I have loved hosting parties, and as a midsummer baby my birthday always used to be a great excuse for a big celebration. We have two main parties every year in our house; one for my birthday and the other at Christmas, I’m so glad I have a dining room and a long table (plus the garden table at the end) where I can squeeze in our guests for a meal, maximum being 23 people, shoulder to shoulder, all on random furniture from the house, garden and next door! It’s a squash, but that’s the fun of it.
The idea for a girls night in came from exactly this, some of the greatest times I have spent with my girlfriends has been at each others houses, gossip and secrets have been shared, cocktails consumed, party games played, movies watched and lots of fun has been had! The great thing about a GNI is that you don’t need to splash too much cash to have a fabulous evening, and with the boys out of the picture you can have some real quality time with your girlfriends.
My friends naturally feature predominantly in this book, I am lucky enough to have remained close to my school friends and I can honestly say there is no one else in the world I would prefer to spend my GNI with.
So inspiration for this book was not a problem. The way I work is to go away and create mood boards of ideas divided into sections of the book, these all all images found on the internet, hand drawn or scraps from magazines. This book has so many facets it was important to get the right, contents include ideas for Party Preparation Craft Projects, Boudoir Beauty, Savvy Savouries, Sweet Treats & Cocktails, as well as games, movie suggestions and more. For me it is important ideas are original, fun and interesting. As I needed to create craft projects that were designed for groups of friends to make in a reasonable time scale, achievable make-up, hair and nails designs & inspiring food.
Once all my ideas were created, I went through them with the publisher
Quadrille, showing them a preview of the craft projects, with the food they just had to trust me!
This book had two wonderful photographers;
Tiffany Mumford for people, who shot lovely Everything Alice & is an old friend of mine, we used to share the same agent years ago &
; Verity Welsead for still life, who shot Everything Oz & who I genuinely think is amazing, especially to be around for weeks on end. The first day of the shoot was with my girlfriends Rebecca, Flora, Jessica and Alexia at Flora's parents beautiful & generously proportioned home in Sussex. Sadly Alexia was ill on this day so the make-up artist Nina stood in for her, lucky for me she is so gorgeous!!
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| From left to right; Jessica, Rebecca, Me (Hannah), Flora, Nina |
Alison and Rachel also feature in this book, who couldn't take part in the above photo as they both had their first babies within a month of the shoot, they feature later on. It was fun shooting with my friends but a weird & fun experience, as I was styling, posing & art directing its quite hard to be in all places at once, you are concentrating so hard on what you are doing & I'm so used to using models, that when you look up and its one of your best friends saying, where do you want me to stand? It can be a shock! They loved having their hair and make-up done & I know I'm bias but I think they all look pretty stunning. A close friend of mine,
Fiona Fletcher helped with the make-up looks creating the Vintage, Pretty In Pink and Smouldering Eye's looks, what was great was to get everyone involved, it really feels like our book.
Verity and I shot the still life between Flora's parents home and in my home studio, we both put on about a stone over the course of the shoot sampling all the food & she would come over every day saying right, I'm not going to have anything bad today, remember the food in this book is party food so more delicious than diet, but every day we would both fail, when confronted with a Leggy Frill Cake or a Rustic Pizza you've got no chance! Its a hard life...
So once all the photos have been taken, the recipe & method write ups have been done, they get sent to the publisher; edited by the lovely Louise McKeever & designed by the amazing Claire Peters. I am unusual as I get very involved in the photographic & design side of the book, most authors write the projects and may less often style them, but never get involved in the design, as Christine designed Everything Alice & Oz we worked directly together on this & this makes things look exactly how you want them, which is important to me. The photos are then selected and retouched, actually this more to do with the way they print onto the paper than anything else, often what you are seeing on your screen is not what comes out on paper.
I then sat down and created the illustrations, I really love
George Petty, the original pin up girl illustrator & the pictures are a bit of a homage to his work. The front cover was actually an after thought as we thought the above photo was going to be the cover for a long time, but apparently we looked quite young? Publisher persuasion or truth?... Anyway it made it to the back & I'm glad that there is an illustrated cover as it now sits well with my other illustrations for the covers of Everything Alice & Everything Oz.
Now, you would think after this that was it. Well no, you have got to remember promotion... If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound... This project has been interesting for me as I am a strong believer in the undeniable power of the internet & not only felt it essential to design a fully fledged website for the book, which will host competitions, has a free series of videos & demonstrations, a music playlist & much more. Verity doubled up as a DOP for the filming & we shot an incredible 8 videos in a day, it was a bit of a marathon, but I am pleased with the results, you can see them all
here - I think I was a little tired when it got to the
Pink Lady Cocktail as I make some weird comment about Tom Cruise!
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| Me and my Girls' Night In book |
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| Fiona & Verity, like the orange socks! |
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| Obviously I only work with blondes! |
Have a look here & let me know what you think,
Girls Night In Website. I am hosting an incredible launch competition give away worth over £200, you can have a
look here.
Other promotion includes working with magazines doing interviews and giving sample project to them. So far I have had a wonderful article for Living South, my local magazine, where my Cupcakes in a Jar made the front cover, & I was described as " The Cake Queen of Peckham," (love it). There will be other features coming up in a selection of great mags, I am working closely with
Mollie Makes, so check out their May issue. I will also be hosting a workshop at the prestigious
Make Lounge in late May, so check their website for details.
You can buy Girls Night In here on Amazon & you can keep updated on events on Facebook. Show your support and keep in touch. Best wishes, Hannah x
