Danielle Proud

Danielle grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in America where her craft obsessed mother taught her patchwork, needlework and stenciling. Her father restored antique furniture in his spare time and Danielle caught the bug.

Her interest in homecraft remained a hobby until she started writing a “how to” column for The Guardian Weekend Magazine. These were fantastically 70s style pages, where she’d write about age-old Women’s Institute skills for a new, younger reader. Rather than showing people how to make corn dollies, Danielle would craft cushions from designer scarves, or decoupage dressing tables with comic books. The results looked hip and very "designer” yet cost next to nothing. Danielle’s work went on to cause ripples in the design world, and has been featured in Vogue, Sunday Times Style Magazine, Dazed & Confused, Marie Claire, In Style, Living Etc and The Guardian.

She is the first interior designer to be supported by Topshop, who commissioned her to design a range of craft kits for making lampshades, cushion covers and racy cross stitch samplers to launch Topshop Home.

Danielle’s first book, House Proud is due out November 2006. House Proud redefines craft and arms modern homemakers with the skills to create their own sassy designer furnishing. Many of the projects involve recycling existing furniture or favourite old clothes.

Danielle is currently working with Talkback Thames (Grand Designs, The Apprentice, Jamie’s Kitchen, Property Ladder) on a series about her work for a terrestrial UK channel.

“ Danielle Proud is the sexy blonde Nigella of homemaking”
Sunday Times Style Magazine

“Danielle wants people to realize their own abilities and become their own designers. She’s a mean macramé queen … and trendier Martha Stewart.”
Dazed

“Our own craft expert, Danielle Proud is the unofficial doyenne of the new craft movement…. Laying on cocktail and craft evenings for her friends”
The Guardian

“Danielle Proud is England’s latest super-homemaker and highly original”
Daily candy

Links:

danielle@houseproudcraft.com
www.bloomsbury.com