Make it Beautiful: The Holiday Photoshoot Edition

Photo by Katie Emanuelson Photography

When we started Olive & Pop, we went back and forth so many times about what the byline should be. Events and Decor? Events & Home Org? Decor and More? What we really wanted to convey was that - if you have a space, we can make it BEAUTIFUL. Eventually, we settled on Olive & Pop: Design and Organization - but if you're familiar with our work, it has become SO much more in just a few short years!

Katie Emanuelson Photography Studio - the calm before the [Holiday] storm.

When local photographer - Katie Emanuelson - approached us (iN feBruARy!!!) about creating her photography sets for this year's Santa Experience and Holiday Minis we were so dang excited for the opportunity! Have we designed studio backdrops before? Nope. Were we worried that we wouldn't be able to do it? Also nope. It's a good thing that we are literally always in the Holiday Spirit over here! 

We visited the studio to update our notes and get dimensions and then we dove right into the design work. Katie really only gave us one design limitation: a traditional Christmas color pallet. With that nugget in mind, we were off! By May we had the initial renderings of, what would become, the 2022 Santa Experience. 

Olive & Pop’s first rendering of The Santa Experience 2022.

While planning ahead is great in theory - sitting in the studio in May, trying to imagine what the 2022 wrapping paper offerings will be like in November is a bit tricky. Accordingly, we elected to have custom wrapping paper made by Zazzle.com so that we could be sure to get it in time (the end of October!) and could easily pick the color, pattern and scale of the prints. Balancing the large & small scale prints, hard & soft patterns, stripes & solids was the key in pulling off the whole look. 

Cursing my younger-self for not paying better attention in geometry.

The great thing about renderings, is that they can be scaled to trick unsuspecting photographers into volunteering to do all of the present wrapping because it "doesn't look too bad." So with Katie on board to wrap <a lot of> presents, we finished up by picking out the perfect bows & ribbons and nailing down the logistics of installing this magical wall of presents. The fireplace got a fresh coat of dark green paint and the perfect seat for Santa and his eager visitors was brought in as well. 

This final product was everything that we hoped it would be and we have been dying over the photos that Katie has been posting over the last few weeks. So many stunning memories were captured this season and we cannot get enough. Stay tuned for Part 2 of this project - our whimsical Holiday family photo backdrop.   

Photo by Katie Emanuelson Photography

Photo by Katie Emanuelson Photography

Photo by Katie Emanuelson Photography

Photo by Katie Emanuelson Photography

While we never pictured ourselves designing photography sets when launching Olive & Pop, we are so grateful for the opportunity to design in a whole new way! We will continue to use the "Design and Organization" byline in the marketing of our business but we did introduce an alternative a few months ago: Creating Beautiful Spaces. It perfectly fits our mantra that there is nothing that cannot be elevated and beautified, and we are HERE for every opportunity to do so!

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