Year after year I stroke a check to Elle Decor, House Beautiful, Coastal Living, Southern Living, Traditional Home, Martha Stewart Living, the subscription list goes on and on and now that we have Pinterest and Houzz at our smart phone fingertips, I can be connected to the world of home design 24/7. While I am certainly no interior designer (no degree…..no real talent), I absolutely love decorating my own home. I’m not exactly sure how to explain my style. I would definitely say it is traditional, but I I like a good balance of eclectic, vintage and shabby chic in there as well. Certain pieces like fabric covered headboards will never fail you, while a chicken crate can create the most interesting table to balance out a room and add some fun to it!!! I have never had a real budget, if you will, for decorating my home, so I have gotten quite creative over the years attempting to get the “look for less”. Scouring the magazines, internet and I would be remiss not to mention my hoarded collection of Pottery Barn catalogs, I see things that I like and I do my best to recreate the look in some way. I am not a fan of empty spaces in rooms, so I tend to fill the walls with collages and fun flea market finds.
I recently shared this grouping of pics in my Bathroom Renovation post where I found some antique nautical bookplate prints on eBay and matted and framed them at Hobby Lobby. I think I paid about $5 for the prints and then caught the 50% off open back frame sale. I have a thing about mats. I just think it looks a lot more finished and polished if you mat something be it a print or a picture and then frame it. I also think that a double mat can really amp up your look.
Sorry about the crooked pics, but in this collage I framed sand from different beaches where we have vacationed. I love that the sand is a different color based on what ocean the beach led into. If you are a fan of the beautiful white beaches of the Gulf, I bet you can guess which one is from Seaside. I got this idea from Katie Brown’s Outdoor Entertaining.
In our little office/hobby nook I found some really pretty scarves in my closet that had belonged to my grandmother. They were the short scarves that you wrap around your neck with a little clip, so I was likely never to wear them……..at least in the next 3o or so years, but they were so pretty that I wanted to do something with them. I bought a pair of matching frames and folded them neatly and framed them! They look so pretty hanging on the wall and are a lovely reminder of my Nana.
There isn’t a wall in the guest room that we can put the bed against, so it is placed in front of the window, which kind of keeps us from being able to have a headboard and definitely keeps us from hanging anything above the bed, so the wall hangings have to flank either side of the window. The top floor of our house is a 1/2 story, so there quite a few different ceiling and wall heights. A staggered collage of pictures helps to balance out all the angles of this wall. A few years back in a frantic tear to get our house ready for the Boogeyman’s first birthday party, I found this mis-tinted paint at Lowe’s and loved it for that room. With the color being so bold and the other colors that were in the bedding, the wall art had to be a little subtle, so I googled “free silhouette images” and found the floral silhouette that reminded me of the botanicals in my bedroom. The tree silhouette was just too cool and reminded me of the big oak tree in our front yard. The silhouette of the little family of three goes without saying as to why I loved it so much. Put together in various frames and this became quite the trio of impression!
Turning Hunter’s room from a nursery to full-on big boy room has been an emotional (and slightly drawn out) process. Gone is the gorgeous handmade crib bedding that my mom and sister made and in it’s place is vintage baseball bedding for his twin beds. The glider has found a new home for another baby boy and the last and final thing to come down were the adorable oil paintings that were the last and final sign that his room was once a nursery. If you have a little boy you know that tastefully decorating their rooms can be a little tricky. With little girls your options are endless, but with boys you are limited to trains, planes and automobiles, Star Wars or some kind of sports theme. Luckily I found the bedding at Pottery Barn Kids, but the wall art was a little tricky and took some time. I found vintage baseball images on Etsy and at the lovely rate of $1 a piece, buying several was hardly a stretch, but finding the best way to display them took some thinking. I found matching white frames with white mats and after looking through my card stock treasure box, I decided it would give them a cool, vintage feel to print on paper bag brown. The white mats were just too white, so red craft paint came to the rescue. One quick coat would do and voila my wall art dilemma was resolved.
If you would like a copy of the vintage baseball images, just leave a comment below and I will email all four images to the first 10 people who comment.
What are your favorite DIY wall art tips and tricks?
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