Today we’d like to introduce you to Ginger Burnett.
Hi Ginger, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
I have always been heavily influenced by art and fashion. When I was in college, I studied abroad in Italy and Paris and found myself so inspired by beautiful art, architecture and European fashion designers.
I knew I liked to create but never considered myself a designer or artist of any kind. Instead, I reserved my creativity for writing and pursued a degree in print journalism. I worked for local newspapers and later became a fashion freelance writer for the Plain Dealer.
I had a ball writing about fashion trends, local boutiques and even got to interview the late Vidal Sassoon! And then the recession of 2008 hit, and freelance writers were the first to lose their jobs.
Instead of writing about the fashion industry, I went to work in it and became a personal shopper at upscale department stores and later became a personal stylist for Anthropologie, where I really learned the art of mixing prints and unexpected color combinations. It was a great job, and I really enjoyed curating fun and creative wardrobes for my clients!
But a little voice in my head kept telling me I could do so much more. I just wasn’t sure what it was. And then one day, I was scrolling through Instagram and came across a gorgeous chair that was upholstered in gorgeous fabric. It was by a lady named Wendy Conklin, who is a “chair stylist” in Texas. I stared at her chair for the longest time. And then a little light bulb went on in my head! She is doing on a chair what I do on a body. I could become a chair stylist too!
So I started watching “How To Upholster” YouTube videos and taught myself some basic upholstery skills with some old chairs I found thrown to the side of the road. I was so thrilled when I completed my first chair! It was so exciting bringing back to life something that was old and broken and no longer wanted.
Before I knew it, I was racing home after work excited to work on my chairs in a little makeshift design studio I made in my basement. It was lots of fun, and when the lady who inspired me started offering online upholstery classes, I took every one of them and gradually honed my upholstery skills.
I began selling my chair designs on Facebook Marketplace and quickly made it my side hustle. After a few sales, I decided to give my hustle a real business name and came up with Sitting Pretty Fab: Creative Custom Upholstery for the Bold & Stylish!
When the pandemic hit and my retail job was put on hold, I seized the opportunity to build an official website and opened up an Etsy shop! I also took an online business course. And then the store where I worked reopened, and I was called back to the job. I struggled to work full time and design chairs in my spare time. It was a little crazy for a while, but I eventually decided to take a leap of faith and make designing chairs my full-time job.
And I am so glad I took that leap! I now have my own design studio, a successful Etsy shop and a custom-upholstered folding chair collection for Wayfair!
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road. I have made all kinds of learn-as-you-go mistakes. But that’s how we grow and better our skills and become better entrepreneurs. Success is a lousy teacher. But mistakes allow us to grow and give us the opportunity to learn how we can do something better in the future.
I once ruined a set of white chair frames. I wanted to give them a shiny white glossy finish so I applied a clear semi-gloss protective coat. The clear coat looked so nice and glossy going on the frames. But when it dried, it gave a yellow cast to my pretty white frames and they looked awful!
I was beside myself and didn’t know what to do. The chairs were upholstered in expensive velvet and looked so beautiful until I put that clear coat on. Nowhere did the product say it would give a yellow tint to a white paint finish. I was in tears, for I had worked so hard on these chairs and here I ruined them on the final step!
But little did I know, this mistake was happening FOR me! It ultimately led me to a fellow custom furniture painter — Anette Sullivan of Antica Modern in Lakewood. She was able to tell me just what to do to correct the yellowed frames. We ended up becoming good friends, and she now showcases my finished pieces in one of her storefront windows and we’re planning to offer a custom painting and upholstery workshop together!
It was a wonderful business connection for me and one that would’ve never happened had I not made a mistake on those white chair frames! So I am grateful for everything — even for the mistakes I make as I grow my business and improve my skills.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I specialize in creative custom upholstery on vintage chairs and settees. I am best known for using bold colors and mixed print designs to create whimsical and stylish statement pieces for the home.
I am most proud of a special collection I designed for a lady in California. She found me on Etsy and hired me to custom design a set of dining room chairs that featured mixed animal prints. She wanted each chair to feature a different animal on the chair back and a complementary animal print on the chair seat.
It took a lot of time to design and lot of trial-and-error in finding mixed prints that worked well together. But once it was all designed, the set looked pretty amazing and she was thrilled with her chairs. I named it the Jungle Boogie Collection and it is now one of my top-sellers on Etsy!
I am also proud that Wayfair spotted my custom upholstered folding chairs on Instagram and invited me to start selling them on their website! It was quite a surprise when I received their email! I actually thought it was a prank. Until I scrolled to the bottom of the screen and saw it was a member of their acquisition team reaching out to me. I had to find a wholesaler of hardwood folding chair frames and then start designing a collection of fun folding chair designs to sell on their website. It was quite a learning experience and I am still selling my chairs on their website today. They are all designed by me but are sold under Wayfair’s private brand names.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
As a kid, one of my favorite pass times was coloring. I loved nothing more than getting a new big box of crayons and staring at all the different colors in it. I would carefully pull out each crayon and read the name of the color and figure out what I wanted to color with it.
And then one Christmas, I received the greatest gift of all! It was called Fashion Plates and it was a super fun creative design game that let you mix and match different patterns to create outfits on the models you were coloring! That gift ignited my love of fashion, color, and pattern, and all the creative possibilities of mixing them in fun and whimsical ways!
And here I am now … several decades later … still playing with colors and patterns and having feeling pretty fab about it all!
Pricing:
- My side chairs range from $300 – $895 depending on the work that is required and whether custom painting of the frames is a part of the order.
- My French Armchairs range from $500 – $995 depending on the custom order.
- Settees usually start around $750 depending on the frame and the custom order.
- Benches range from $150 – $350 depending on the custom order
Contact Info:
- Email: ginger@
sittingprettyfab.com - Website: www.sittingprettyfab.
com - Instagram: https://www.
instagram.com/ sittingprettyfab/ - Facebook: https://www.
facebook.com/sittingprettyfab - Other: Facebook @sittingprettyfab
