Are you ready for your close up?

While most sane people are clinging on to the remaining wisps of a somewhat illusive ‘BBQ summer’, I’m chomping my way through mince pies. While others groan at the onslaught of Christmas merchandise in November, I’ve already been festive for months. To get my new Christmas catalogue ready in time I have to be two seasons ahead. Ironically, this uber efficiency does not make me a punctual person, much to the consternation of long suffering/long waiting friends and family.

The mince pie scoffing happened last week after we celebrated finishing the shoot for our biggest ever catalogue. I get so anxious in the run up to the event, I always drop pounds.
Taking a few pretty snaps might seem trivial to some but I’m co-ordinating children, food and photographs – three components not strictly within my area of expertise. I have nightmares of getting it all wrong and having a glossy brochure to remind me of all my mistakes for the next 365 days.

What I forget in the pandemonium of it all is that I do have a remarkable talent for hiring remarkable talent! Adam Ellis (photographer extraordinaire) Susannah Powell (stylist wunderkind) and my fabulous mini models (Jack, India, Willow, Molly, Emily, Felix and Helena) made the day a dream come true.

We borrowed a glorious garden for some outside shots and a supremely elegant house in Wandsworth belonging to Janine Stow for our interiors. By some miraculous twist of fate, it turns out that Janine is a seriously talented children’s photographer (janinestowphotography.com): so as the day wore on and the novelty of modelling wore off for our little starlets, Janine’s skills at entertaining and reinvigorating their flagging faces came into their own.

We had them wearing bibs and our new range of coloured personalised aprons (available for adults too!) and sitting at a table with our mats. Helena (3 ½) didn’t have quite enough puff to blow out the candles, but brought lots of enthusiasm to the party.

Emily was a last minute recruit, having come to watch events with her mum, and proved to be a complete natural. She had ‘Hungry’ written on her bib, which perfectly described her modelling work ethic. Molly wasn’t so keen to share the limelight (after all, she’d booked the job first) and just before gentle shoving gave way to Naomi Campbell-esque violence, Janine stepped in. A few rounds of childrens songs (the only one I recognised being Happy Birthday…) and a flash of her boobs (a time-honoured trick!) and harmony was restored. Molly’s pout couldn’t look more adorable in the photos – both the camera and I loved her.

We toasted our achievements by gorging on the food props, so I easily managed to pick up all the pounds I’d dropped. When you see the brochure you’ll appreciate how hard it was to resist nibbling until the end (and yes, everything tastes as good as it looks.) The mouth-watering morsels came from two places in London that I couldn’t live without. Tune in next week and I’ll divulge where they are…

Scarlett Willow