Archive for June, 2010
Three Ways To Pin Down Your Style
One of the most common questions that we hear nearly every day is “how do I know what style really appeals to me? I seem to like a few conflicting things and I just can’t seem to make a decision with any confidence.” Well, here are three ways to get over decorator’s block quickly and relatively painlessly:
Tip #1. Gather inspiration images and see what they all have in common. We’ve mentioned that we keep our favorite rooms organized in a nice thick plastic-sleeve-riddled binder (read more about that here). And this anthology of sorts was really paramount when it came to pinning down our style and learning what we love. It’s amazing how an arsenal of love-it-so-much images can help you identify commonalities in rooms that really grab your attention. Sure you might find that you have a million “favorite” rooms sitting in a pile (or in a binder if you’re Captain Organized like me) but it won’t be until you go through them and make a separate pile of about 15 rooms that REALLY stand out to you (read: the best of the best) that you’ll begin to notice some common color schemes, furniture finishes, and overarching style cues that many of these rooms have in common.
Take note of the wood finishes that you’re drawn to. The wall colors. The furniture shapes. The textiles and accessories. The art. The overall effect (high contrast? dreamy? tone-on-tone? pops of color?). For example, here are two images that are currently in our inspiration folder:
See how much they have in common when you really take the time to study them side by side (well, on top of each other)? Note the similar serene feeling, soft colors, and natural textures accompanied by a bit of dark wood or metal. Of course your favorite rooms might not all be this similar when you study them as a group, but just try to see what patterns you can pick up. Maybe they all have dramatic floor to ceiling curtains or dark velvet sofas? Or perhaps it’s more about patterned rugs or bright modern art on the walls? You might notice they all have neutral backdrops with pops of color in the pillows or accessories. Or a high contrast vibe (like dark wood floors paired with white walls). If you look long enough, we’re sure you’ll see some definite commonalities- and that’s how you can start to develop your confidence and create a real overarching “look” for your home.
This exercise is the single most important thing you can do to help define your style and hone in on your aesthetic, so don’t rush through it or halfheartedly select your favorite rooms without some serious thought. Heck even if you only have five cream-of-the-crop-holy-cow-I-love-this-room images, it’s still more effective than tossing ten more eh-this-room-is-ok images into the mix. So really do some serious soul searching (and magazine and online searching) to see what tickles your fancy. Then lay them all out to study what they have in common- and what you can adapt and introduce into your very own home. Oh and check out these great online sites (here, here, and here) for galleries full of gorgeous rooms in a variety of styles.
Tip #2. Take a few find-your-style quizzes to see what they say that you like. Sure they could all be complete hooey, but it’s not like they can really hurt. And they’re all pretty quick to complete. Sometimes one or two of them will hit on something so eye-opening and illuminating that you’ll literally feel like you finally know exactly what you like. Or at least like you’re a lot closer to cracking the code. Ready to play along? Try this one, this one, this one, and this one.
Tip #3. Don’t get caught up with a label like “Elegant Classic” or “Cottage Meets Vintage.” Sure sometimes they can help (and if a label or a specific descriptor keeps you on track then by all means embrace it). But we don’t really go out of our way to describe our exact style in any words at all. We just know what we like (capiz, jute, neutrals mixed with sea glass-esque greens and blues, dark wood, bamboo blinds, natural materials, glass based lamps, and white white white). Here’s a post all about that. It’s safe to say that we finally know what we love and can easily identify what will fit seamlessly into our house (and what won’t – which is just as important).
But even though we have a handle on what fries our bacon when it comes to furnishings, accessories and so on, if you were to ask us to label our style we’d probably hem and haw while tossing out a slew of general terms like: clean-lined, airy, light, breezy, beachy, modern, classic, transitional… the list goes on and on! So don’t worry if you don’t end up with a specific decorating style name at the end of your figure-out-what-I-like pilgrimage. Just be open to embracing the colors, shapes, materials, and elements that you’ve identified time and time again as your cup of tea. Because a label doesn’t make the room, and sometimes trying to encapsulate your style with some two or three word description is nearly impossible anyway.
Oh and remember that our we-know-what-we-like confidence didn’t happen overnight. It was all thanks to decorating in stages and taking the time to figure out what worked and what didn’t (the wrong paint color can be painted over & the wrong pillows, rugs and blinds can always be returned or upgraded down the line). Sometimes it’s the mistakes that tell you the most about what you like and get you a lot closer to pinning down your true style. So don’t be paralyzed with indecision- it won’t get you anywhere! You have to start somewhere, and after you try out these three style sleuthing tips you’ll hopefully have a nice little map that will get you closer to your own personal decorating holy grail.
But enough about what we think. We’d love to hear any and all tips that you guys have on the subject of pinning down your style and making your house feel welcoming, chic, and oh-so-you.
Psst- Looking for more decorating advice when it comes to pinning down your style and figuring out what will work. Here’s a post all about avoiding decorating ADD and here’s one about keeping things looking layered and lovely as opposed to hodge podge or matchy-matchy.
Two inspiration images courtesy of Canadian House & Home magazine and Pottery Barn.
House Crashing: Lovely In LA
When Jaime of Prudent Baby sent us photos of her gorgeous Los Angeles home to woo us out her way for a House Crashing adventure we were so there. Except for the whole newborn thing. So we decided to virtually crash her pad instead. Here’s the charming exterior- isn’t it sweet?
And look, here are the lovely homeowners now: Jaime, her husband Carleton and their sweet daughter Scarlet.
But enough fresh air, let’s get inside. Check out the adorable homemade silhouettes of the family (including the dog) hanging by the door. And the stunning distressed wood chest by the window was scored for $35 at a flea market. Just beyond that space is a small breakfast room with a chair for relaxing and a mini kitchen for Scarlet.
Then we have the actual kitchen, which is open to the sunny breakfast room on one end and the dining room on the other. The glass cabinet door fronts keep things feeling open and less heavy than solid wood ones would. And we love that orange mixer in the corner- so sunny and fun.
Here’s the adjoining dining area that looks lively, eclectic and oh so posh. We love that Jaime found the mirror frame on clearance for $15 at Home Goods (and had a mirror cut to fit the inside). And she hunted down more affordable Louis Ghost chairs on eBay.
Here’s the living room which again is full of eclectic finds and a mix of posh pieces and thrift store rescues. We love the splash of color in the sofa and the fact that the room is actually super lived in (as demonstrated by the plethora of books in those bookcases and the basket under the side table full of Scarlet’s toys).
One of the coolest features in the living room is a large gray tone-on-tone cabinet (which Jaime stalked until it went on clearance from Anthropologie). Not only does it lend tons of storage and style, we love how much height and dimension it adds to the white wall next to that large picture window.
And because we couldn’t resist sharing the gray cabinet from another angle, here you go:
You may notice a small office in the background that Jaime was able to work in thanks to using some light and airy pieces that don’t feel too heavy for the corner of the room:
Here’s the crisp and inviting guest bathroom complete with a little stool for Scarlet that Jaime craftily DIYed. We love how open the room feels thanks to the glass shower door and the mirrored backsplash that was added to the built-in across from the pedestal sink.
Next we have the dramatic master bedroom complete with another DIY project (yup, Jaime whipped up that headboard herself!). And we love how she chose an unapologetic lush red tone for the walls to play off the inky blue headboard fabric for a cheerful yet surprisingly high end result. Doesn’t it feel like a boutique hotel in there?
And here we have the master bathroom which is pretty much always flooded with light (oh LA, does the sun ever set there?). We also adore the great handheld shower (it has such a chic vintage feeling) and of course that DIYed yellow stool (a thrift store rescue covered in Dwell pillowcase fabric) paired with the clawfoot tub. And the gorgeous marble hex floor is totally speaking our language. Who’s in the mood for a bath now? Just me? Come on, I can’t be the only one.
And here we have one of the most cheerful and fun places in the house- it’s little Scarlet’s nursery. We love that Jaime took on a ton of homemade projects in here (from the crocheted pennant garlands to the window treatments and even the spray painted Ikea mirror above the bed). We can only imagine how much Scarlet loves her special space.
And because we know you guys love a source list, here you go (be sure to follow all the links that say “DIYed” back to Jaime’s blog for more info):
Living room- blue chair: Anthropologie sale find, white chair: Jonathan Adler store display chair, Ikat pelmets: DIYed, orange bench: Pottery Barn, blue couch: The Dock Downtown, coffee table: Platner, lucite console used as desk: CB2, Eames chair: Modernica, gray cabinet: Anthropologie clearance sale, honeycomb end table: Anthropologie, brown leather/white wood chair: Jonathan Adler sample from eBay, pelmets: homemade with eBay fabric, painting above desk: LACMA Art Rental and Sales Gallery (rented for 8 yrs and finally paid off). Dining room/kitchen- mirror: $15 Homegoods frame with new mirror added, wire C Jere sculpture: ebay, buffet: Fairfax flea market, dining table: Brocade Home, Louis Ghost chairs: eBay, dining chairs: Wisteria, little cabinet: from a furniture mart (I added fabric to the doors), captain’s wheel: Melrose Flea Market. Entryway/Breakfast nook- cameo plates: DIYed, bird embroidered chair: Anthropologie sale item, play kitchen – Kidcraft from Costco. Nursery- rocking chair: Nurseryworks sleepytime chair, crib: WalMart, bookshelf: Oeuf Mini-Library, spray painted frame: from Ikea, pelmets: DIYed with Ikea fabric, pom pom curtains: DIYed, crib sheets: DIYed w/ Alexander Henry fabric, leather pouf: Calypso, crochet pennant garland: DIYed. Master bedroom- headboard: DIYed with Otomi fabric from eBay, end tables: West Elm, pillowcases: DIYed. Bathrooms- remixed thrift store find, Indian-style-print roman shades from World Market, kids stepstool: DIYed, matryoshka tray: DIYed.
So there you have it, a stunning Los Angeles haven full of clearance finds, eBay scores and homemade projects galore. Thanks so much for inviting us into your gorgeous home to snoop around Jaime! Oh and feel free to check out her new book since she so generously allowed us to poke around her home. Now let’s play a game we like to call what’s-your-favorite-part? We’re torn between that giant gray on gray cabinet in the living room and the sweet homemade silhouettes in the entryway. And that nursery. So sweet…
Psst- We’re always on the hunt for a mouthwatering house (or ten) to crash, so if you or anyone you know has a casa that’s feature-ready just shoot us an email along with some photos of the space and if we’re ever in the neighborhood we’ll be sure to drop in.
Reader Redesign: Office Aficionado
When Erica sent her awesome office overhaul our way we had to share the before and after photos. Here’s her letter:
I love to read your blog and see what creative ways you come up with to save money. I recently fixed up my home office on a tight budget. Of course you can find more info about the room on my blog, but the L-shaped desk is made out of two hollow core doors (only 25 bucks each!), two table legs, and a bookshelf. The paint color is Valspar “Plum Passion.” Both chairs were thrift store finds and all the art from the art wall was completely free, it all consists of things I already had (fabric and giftwrap) or things I printed on my home printer. I used three sources for printing artwork: Vintage Printable, a disk of clipart images I had, and Dafont.com. The pear, bicycle and tree sihouettes are all Dingbat fonts I downloaded from Dafont. When all was said and done I spent about $200 benjamins. Hope you enjoy! -Erica
Here are the lackluster before shots:
And here are the amazing (and enviably budget friendly) after photos:
Is that not a fantastic office makeover full of wallet friendly ideas? Everything from the hollow-core-doors-turned-desk and the thrift store chairs makes us swoon. Plus the fact that the entire art wall was 100% free is amazing. We’re sending over a virtual round of applause and one not-worthy bow to Erica and her fantastic office makeover. If that gorgeous room doesn’t make paying bills and writing emails a bit more fun then we don’t know what will! What do you guys think? And what’s your favorite part? We love the white roman shades with the black ribbon trim a ton, and of course that amazing wall color paired with all the white furnishings is totally screaming our name. Lovely, lovely, lovely.
Psst- Wanna see how we made a desk with a hollow core door just like Erica? Click here for the deets.
Office Progress: Let There Be Light
We did it! We DIYed an awesomely oversized light fixture for the office and we only spent… wait for it… $32 from soup to nuts. Which is pretty darn exciting considering it reminds us a lot of this pricey $412 version. Gotta love saving $380 with a homemade solution. Here she is in all of her glowing glory:
But let’s back up. Here’s the basic fixture that we started with to serve as something of a before shot (although you all know there’s no longer a bed in there since we upgraded to a sleeper sofa and built a DIY desk).
And now that we’ve easily been spending over 40 hours a week in this ever-evolving office/guest-bedroom/playroom, it’s probably understandable that we wanted something a little more inspiring and interesting hanging overhead to complement our things-they-are-a-changin’ surroundings.
So we hit up one of our favorite local lighting spots (The Decorating Outlet here in Richmond) and came home with this amazing – and amazingly huuuuge – 20″ lamp shade for just $29. It was actually on clearance since it was labeled as “dented” but we studied every inch of it and couldn’t find so much as a tiny flaw. Maybe it had been squished but the indentation later popped back out? Either way we were sold! We knew we’d need to figure out how to create a diffuser for the bottom of it, and we also assumed we’d need to buy a lighting kit at a hardware store to hang it, but we figured those things would probably only run us another thirty-five bucks total (which still meant we’d end up with a polished looking pendant for just over $65). Not bad. Then we caught our first break when we removed the glass hemisphere from our old light fixture and realized that there was already an existing rod that might work for hanging our new pendant…
And sure enough, there was no lighting kit necessary…
… we just slipped the shade onto the rod protruding from the ceiling and used the finial (leftover from the previous light fixture) to hold it in place.
Here’s a closer look for all you detail oriented people:
Of course the view from the bottom left a lot to be desired. So with our how-will-we-hang-this-lamp-shade-from-the-ceiling question answered, it was time to figure out how to create a diffuser to block the ugliness without blocking too much of the light. I should mention that we’ve never tackled diffuser-making before, but we just did what we do for so many other projects: attempted to figure things out as we went along. First we pondered materials that we could use to create this much-needed diffuser. We could get a piece of plexiglass cut to size and spray it with frosting spray to obscure those ugly ceiling bulbs. Or we could get some sort of thick acetate (or another weighty paper product) and try to work with that. It was around this point in our brainstorming exercise that we decided to pad into the dining room and check out the diffuser situation on the pendant light hanging above our very own dining table. Lo and behold it was just some basic cream colored fabric. Genius!
Now here’s the safety warning: you obviously don’t want to use paper or fabric as a diffuser if your bulbs will be very close to it or if there’s no room for the heat that may build up inside the lampshade to escape. Luckily by hanging our shade from the ceiling on the already-existing rod from our old fixture there was about 4″ of space above the shade (since the entire top of the shade was open and was not mounted flush against the ceiling) for any built-up heat to escape. Plus we use compact florescent bulbs, which are known to burn a lot cooler, so there’s even less of a heat issue. Not to mention that the bulbs are over 18″ from the base of the lamp, where we added our little fabric diffuser, so they’re definitely not in too much of a close proximity.
But back to the DIY process. First we removed the fabric band that was glued around one edge of the drum shade.
Then we draped our cream colored fabric (scored for under $2 at Joanne Fabrics) over the shade so we could see where to cut it to create the beginning of our diffuser panel.
Then we just held the draped fabric in place and used a scissors to cut around the rim of the shade, leaving about a quarter-inch of fabric hanging over the edge.
Next we used some Aleene’s Tacky Glue (some cheap already-on-hand craft glue) to coat the rim where I’d be sticking that round panel of fabric. Note: be sure to do this on the rim where you removed the fabric band and not the other side.
Then we simply flipped the shade over, so it was facing down, and placed it directly onto the fabric circle that we had cut out (with that quarter-inch of fabric hanging over the edge on all sides) so the glue would bond the shade and the fabric. Oh and it’s smart to iron your little fabric round before the gluing process if there are any creases in it.
Then we just had to use a little more glue to secure the smidge of fabric overhang around the outside rim of the shade. Note: you don’t want your fabric to overhang too much or it’ll protrude past the fabric band once you re-glue that in place around the base of the shade. So trim your extra fabric if it’s any longer than ours is in the photo below:
Then we just waited about ten minutes for that to dry and re-glueed the fabric band in place. You know, the one that we removed at the beginning of the project? Easy peasy. In fact, speaking of easy, the entire process took less than 15 minutes of actual work (and about 40 minutes if you count the breaks for glue-drying).
And voila…
… a light with texture, charm, and loads of presence thanks to the oversized proportion. We just love giant shades in small rooms (like this 12 x 12.5′ space) to give them more of an elevated and polished look. Plus we’re of the school of thought that bigger items in small rooms actually make it feel larger and more luxe (whereas a bunch of small-scale pieces in a modestly sized room can make it feel smaller and more cluttered).
But back to our DIY light. We’re thrilled to no end now that we can no longer see those ugly bulbs from below. Plus the smidge of silver that peeks out over the top makes it look like a pricey flush mounted pendant (as opposed to a cheap-o lampshade that we retrofitted onto an old $10 fixture’s frame). And the fact that we only dished out $32 for the big office lighting upgrade – especially when we initially estimated that we’d spend around $65 retrofitting things – is the icing on the cake. Or should we say it’s the diffuser on the shade? Nope, we’ll stick with the icing on the cake.
Oh and changing the bulbs is simple since we can easily remove the shade from above (that gap between the pendant and the ceiling is key) so even though you can’t see the bulbs from below they’re not quarantined forever behind the fabric diffuser. So that’s the latest office news here at Casa Petersik. What have you guys been up to this week? Did anyone else tackle a lighting makeover or another office upgrade that made their room a little more interesting, stylish, or functional? Spill the beans.
Psst- Wanna follow the entire office/guest bedroom/playroom makeover? Click here for the intro post, here to read about the big sleeper sofa hunt, and here for the DIY desk play-by-play.
Fab Freebie: A Taste Of India
***This giveaway is no longer accepting entries***
We’d heard of the “slow food movement” before, but not the “slow clothes movement” – until this week’s giveaway sponsor reached out to us. Saffron Marigold creates luxury Indian linens, and they make each tablecloth, bedspread, curtain and pillow cover very meticulously (both to safeguard traditional techniques and deliver a high quality finished product). Just think, all of these patterns have been meticulously hand-printed inch-by-inch using traditional woodblock techniques in Saffron Marigold’s Indian artisan studios. Pretty fantastic, eh?
And this week TWO of you are going to have a chance to enjoy TWO pieces of these slowly and beautifully made linens in your home. Each winner will get their choice of a lovely tablecloth or table runner…
…and their choice of a gorgeous and graphic cushion cover.
And while you’re over on their site browsing their stunning designs, be sure to check out the photo slideshow of their time-intensive process which details how they create all the unbelievably intricate patterns. It will truly give you an appreciation for the craftsmanship that went into these prizes. And you’ll also soon get to appreciate a sweet discount they’re dishing out (stay tuned for those details on Thursday).
So here’s the gist:
- PRIZE: Your choice of any tablecloth or table runner from Saffron Marigold, plus one cushion cover.
- TO ENTER: Comment on this post with the words “MARIGOLD ME!” and…
- BONUS QUESTION: … tell us something that you feel is always better when you take your time. Maybe you agree with the slow food or slow clothes movement? Or you prefer to give lots of time to painting or a DIY project? Perhaps you’re just a slow and very careful driver?
- GIVEAWAY CLOSES: Wednesday, June 9nd at 8pm EST
- NUMBER OF WINNERS: Two
- PRIZE SHIPS: Anywhere in the WORLD!
- USUAL STUFF: One entry per e-mail address is permitted. The winner will be selected using random.org and announced on Thursday. Good luck!
Find more freebie info on our Giveaway FAQs page. Pics courtesy of Saffron Marigold.
