An Interior Design and Screen Printing Workshop @ Heal's With Occipinti and MK Design

A few weeks ago, I arrived to Heal's sweaty and breathless, having literally run from Taste of London in Regent's Park to Tottenham Court Road. Well, okay, not literally, but I did sprint up a few escalators and brisk-walked my way to the second floor of Heal's, where I was greeted by this impeccably chic and trendy pair: Ashley McDow, founder of Occipinti (a beautiful interior design house specializing in luxury wallpaper and textiles), and interior design extraordinaire, Mathilde Kubsiak of MK Design.

Flustered didn't even begin to describe how I felt, but Ashley and Mathilde were warm and chatty, as were the other participants in the workshop. I'd never been on any sort of interior design course before, so I was super interested to hear all of Mathilde's tips, given her incredible experience in the interior design industry.

Before getting our hands dirty mixing paint for the screenprints, we learned about different paints and color palettes from Mathilde, which was so helpful and interesting! I usually leave painting to the professionals, but after hearing about Mathilde's favorite colors and her penchant for statement walls, I felt inspired to be a little more adventurous in undertaking our next house project.

Feeling ambitious and yet slightly spaced out from my earlier rushing around, I somehow thought it would be a good idea to design and cut my own pattern. Right. Luckily, Ashley was kind enough to lend me her iPad for tracing, and - inspired by the monstera plants neglected growing in our house - I proceeded to make my own leafy pattern.

Mixing the paint was another story: I accidentally dropped in too much yellow and was left with a rather ... for lack of better words ... baby-food looking green. "You don't like it," Mathilde declared, at my elbow. "I can see it in your eyes!" She patiently helped me add more blue and white to my mixing cup until it became a more acceptable avocado green.

Here's Ashley's deft and expert hand demonstrating the color mixing process:

Summoning my courage, I eventually made my way to Ashley's position at the front of the table, where she talked me through each step. Of course, she had made everything look incredibly easy and I kind of froze when it came to committing to making the actual screenprint.

But with Ashley's guidance, I tentatively scraped the paint over the screen and my pattern, before walking away with this cushion cover and tea towel, which I'm pretty darn proud of:

Do you have any experience in screenprinting? Would you ever like to learn? Let me know in the comments below!

My attendance at the workshop with Ashley and Mathilde was complimentary (thank you!). All opinions and monstera-inspired screenprinted cushion covers my own. Find more information about similar workshops here.