Paint a Rug Party : Inspiration

Linda of My Crafty Home Life invited me to join a rug painting party, and since I am never one to pass up a project beyond my skill set, I said "sure!"

For a while now I have had my eye on this rug:

via Elle Decor

via Fresh Quince

via Design Manifest

I could buy the Madeline Weinrib version for a gazillion dollars.  Ikea supposedly has a similar version, but I have scoured the Ikeas of four states for the past year and they are always out of stock, so I think Ikea is only pretending to sell that rug.  Rugs USA also has a navy blue version.

My one concern with this rug is that it looks like it will use a hella amount of Frog Tape, does it not?  I reserve the right to change my mind to a less tape-involved design.

I will probably not paint it black, but I do like the three rows of alternating stripes.  I can't decide if I should attempt this with a rug in my master bathroom, or in my foyer.  Check back next Thursday and find out which one I pick.

You can check out other participants in the rug party:

Chinoiserie Chic

Design du Monde

The Junk House

Little Black Door

My Best Friend Craig

My Crafty Home Life

Pawleys Island Posh

The Pink Pagoda

Room Rx

Seekers Bazaar

Simple Details

art possibilities from the consignment store

Last week I went to the home consignment store to peruse the art selection.  The consignment store is not really a "thrift" store--its more of a used furniture store, and the prices are cheaper than retail but way more expensive than a thrift store.  However, this store gets a huge selection of furniture from model homes in addition to estate sales, so there's usually a large selection of items that are currently trendy and fun.

The art selection is sometimes fabulous, sometimes terrible.

Because much of the art is from model homes they seem to have lots of enormous, oversize paintings of generic, dentist's office type art.  And then sometimes there is this kind of stuff.

As I was perusing the art selection, this jumped out at me.

I love this!  Sadly, it was really expensive.  Supposedly, according to the info on the back, its a Jean Pierre Cassignuel painting named Femme au Chapeau. I have no problem just ordering a print that I like off art.com, but internet research did not turn up this particular painting, and Cassignuel seems to have painted nothing but women in hats, and it appears that every single one of his paintings is named Femme au Chapeau.  Sad, sad.

There was another painting around the way that caught my eye, called Snapdragons.

I love the orange frame and the gold trimmed mat, but again, this art was alot more than I wanted spend, and the frame was in poor condition for the price they were asking.

I would love to put these two paintings over the shoe cubbies in our foyer.  I think I could accomplish something similar by spraypainting an Ikea Ribba frame red, using a gold-trimmed mat, and finding a similar floral print and a print of a lady.

How about this floral?

And this lady?  (I know, she is the antithesis of Cassigneul's lady, but I like her.)

I am in a "lets go buy awesome art!" mood lately, but am trying to control myself. No new art until I buy a house.  Unfortunately there is some fabulous stuff on etsy calling my name.  Help me resist.

What's your favorite art source?  Have any etsy favorites? 

portrait paintings

After a long time of loving abstract art (still do), I am branching out into portraits/pictures with people in them.  I'd love to find some oil paintings, but have searched the thrift stores around here in vain.

These two portraits are in Erin from Design Crisis's house.  Are you reading Design Crisis?  Because it is an excellent excellent super excellent blog.  I lurrrve her house.  (She just had a baby like a week ago, so she hasn't posted much lately, but I am obsessed with her house, so I will wait (im)patiently until she posts again.)

via Design Crisis

This one is also from Design Crisis; you've probably seen this one all over Pinterest and blogland:

via Design Crisis

Kristen Panitch Interiors:

via Kristen Panitch

An enormous portrait of President Harrison in the first episode of Secrets From A Stylist:

via hgtv

Emily Henderson's home office:

via Emily Henderson

Pretty girl in a straw boater in Katie Rosenfeld's house:

via Katie Rosenfeld

Plum Cushion's workroom:

via Little Green Notebook

Ideas on where to find these awesome pieces of art?  

decorating -R-'s mantel and bookshelves

One of the very first blogs I read was -R-'s And You Know What Else (yes, -R-, I stalked read you for two years before commenting).  I'm super sad she has shuttered that blog, but she and some friends started a new style blog over at Style All Over, so I still get to follow along.

A few weeks ago -R- asked me for some help decorating her fireplace mantel.  She notes that she likes brass and gold pieces, milk glass and colored vases. Here is a picture of her fireplace:

Seeing the tv mounted over the fireplace, I told -R- that she should decorate her mantel with....wait for it....nothing.

I know, I'm a big help.

Putting stuff under the tv would look cluttered and might interfere with viewing the tv.  If you search pinterest for "tv over fireplace", you will find hundreds of pictures of televisions mounted over the fireplace and nothing on the mantelpiece.  I think that the best option here is not to put anything at all up there.

However!  I DO think that -R- should put shelving on either side of the fireplace walls.  The more expensive option would be to invest in built-in cabinetry on either side of the fireplace, like this excellently photoshopped example (thank Emily Henderson for her excellently styled bookshelves):

Because of the vaulted ceilings, I think built-ins that go up to the ceiling would look fantastic. Here I simply photoshopped bright white shelving that was the right shape onto R's picture, but since her living room has muddy earth tones, I would paint the built-ins a creamy off-white, rather than bright white.

However, if -R- would prefer to DIY a cheaper route, putting free-standing sideboards or cabinets on either side of the fireplace, and adding floating shelving above would add a ton of storage and still allow for display pieces. Again, I'd stick with light wood tones like birch, or a creamy off-white to keep the room from looking too dark and heavy.

As for decorating the shelves, my personal theory on stuff people like most and won't get bored of is usually stuff already owned, like souvenirs from travels or your collection of salt shakers lifted from the bars you drank at in college.  However, if one's significant other convinced one to dump the collection of Terrible Towels and that creepy monkey bust, here are a few things that might look nice.

-R- has a dark brown leather sofa, and a chair that is similar to the yellow and red fabric in the moodboard below, but with an additional blue stripe.  These suzani curtains pull all the same colors, and the white background will stand out against the gold walls.

The red lamp is from Target, the gold nugget lamp is from Land of Nod.  All of the other accessories are from ZGallerie.  The nice thing about ZGallerie accessories is that if you have a Home Goods near you, you can find nearly all of the same type of stuff for cheaper.  I have seen the yellow chevron vase actually at Home Goods, as well as white ceramic animals, antlers, colored vases and coral, most of them for $10 - $20.  A can of spray paint will turn them into any color you want.  (I haven't seen the gold skull, I'd probably pay full price for that :-)

gold skull / pearl vases / chevron vase / wood vase / aqua vases / coral / antlers / white dog

blue Gladiator living room

Since I don't actually have a new house to decorate yet, I've been drawing up moodboards to pretend I do.  As you already know, I love the blue Gladiator print. (See the previous bedroom moodboard here.)  Here I've used it as inspiration for a living room.

Somehow, some way, there will be an entire wall of bookshelves in my next house.

I already have the Petrie sofa.

Lately the stuff I've been thinking about is less Hollywood Regency and slightly more bohemian. This Minar rug from Anthropologie is an amazing mix of color and pattern, and you could go in so many different design directions with this rug.  Sadly, it is only 5 x 7, so it probably won't be big enough for a living room unless layered over another rug. Maybe I should draw up a little girl bedroom around this rug.


It is unlikely I will ever own a white upholstered racing stripe chair (that chair is already dirty just by my children eyeing it on the computer screen), but a girl can dream.


For years I have wanted this Kalah ikat fabric, but haven't had anywhere to put it.  I am afraid that by the time I get around to actually buying a house, I will be tired of these fabrics I have loved from afar but don't own and will be on to new and exciting fabrics.  Not bored, really--its just that there are so many wonderful and gorgeous fabrics out there that I want to own them all.  

Because the rug is so patterned and colorful, I would not get too crazy with painted furniture or other patterns. I'd probably stick to wood tones in the furniture (like the dresser and the coffee table) to give the room some more texture but a neutral backdrop to the rug. The bone inlaid mirror, the agate lamp, and the wicker storage basket are natural materials that provide texture, interest and warmth but don't compete with the rug.

The Jonathan Adler fabric pillow mimics the diamond shapes in the rug.

Last but not least, the bubble chandelier is a nice little taste of something different.  

shut the front door, haircuts, monkeys, Bruce

I thought saying "shut the front door!" was a colloquial way of saying "hey, that's awesome!".  I have been using it frequently as a comment on blogs as a fun way of saying "wow, your DIY project is awesome!"

Apparently what it actually means, according to Urban Dictionary, is "shut the eff up."

If I complimented you recently on your blog on your awesome DIY project, I apologize.  I will be returning to my "oh, I love that color" comments.

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I went to the hairdresser for a haircut and to cover up my gray hairs.  I thought, its September, even though it feels like high summer here, so I will just pretend its fall by perhaps putting brown low-lights in my hair, instead of blonde.  The hairdresser talked me into an all-over color instead.

I went from this strawberry blonde:

to this:

This is lightened from the original crazy dark color.  This picture does not reflect the RED RED PURPLISH RED color that it was.  Wine-infused dark brown was NOT the look I was thinking of.  I am washing my hair daily and waiting another two weeks so I can go back to my usual strawberry blonde.

And yes, I went home and plucked my eyebrows into oblivion after seeing that picture.

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One of my aunts gifted this bust of a monkey to my grandmother:

It makes monkey noises and turns it head and the eyes and lips open and close.

I need a creepy monkey bust for my own house.

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I had a lovely visit with the family over Labor Day weekend.  I got to meet my new nephew Ferb and love me up on some baby:

I love to snuggle babies.  Love it.

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In addition to seeing Ferb, I went to a Bruce Springsteen concert.  Bruuuuuuuuce!!!

We have a family tradition of sitting in the very last row for events.  (Ask me about the Nutcracker ballet where we sat behind a structural column.)

Any further back we would have been sitting on I-95.

Although we could barely see Bruce on stage, we had an amazing view of the Philadelphia skyline, and the skyscrapers appeared cut in half by the low hanging clouds. It looked very ominous and Gotham-ish.  Bruce started the concert singing Working Life, and as I sat there in the dark, looking out at the skyline, and all the people around me singing along, with me between my dad and my sister and my mom, I felt the past and the present and the future converging, distilled in that single moment.

I love Bruce.  I love Bruce because my dad loves Bruce.  My dad listened to Bruce Springsteen all throughout my childhood; I can peg every house we lived in with a different Bruce album.  Two years ago my sisters and I took my father to a Bruce concert at the Meadowlands (sitting in nearly the same seats), and it was a religious experience, made more so because it was so great to see my father having such a good time.

I want my kids to have that.  I want my kids to enjoy something because they know I enjoy it, because doing that activity with me is a connection.  Listening to Bruce makes me think of my dad and my childhood and Saturday mornings and long car trips.  I think of my dad opening a new Bruce album and putting it on the record player and dancing me around the living room.  Listening to Bruce makes me remember feeling safe and happy and cherished by my daddy.

I need to give that to my own kids.

Jersey girls represent!

navy blue library by Phoebe Howard

As I was reading the September issue of House Beautiful on the plane this weekend, I gasped as I came across this blue library decorated by Phoebe Howard.

via Phoebe Howard

I can't find the picture that House Beautiful used.  It was taken from right beside the the leather club chair, and seems slightly different than this picture.  In the HB version, the blue of the wall is deeper and richer, and the blue velvet sofa has a rich shimmer to it. The styling on the side table is also different; there is a yellow vase and a small asian bust instead of the bird and the flowers.

Although I don't think the room shows as nicely in the above picture as it does in the HB picture, I love this room. I love how the gleaming wood of the antique side table and the aged leather complements the deep blue. The red and blue in the rug ties in nicely with the Civil War flag.  I love the BM Newburyport Blue on the walls.  I need a navy blue velvet sofa in my next house.

(I think I could do without that ottoman.)

I would love to do a similar room in our next house.  It works nicely with my current cobalt blue obsession.  Its masculine and traditional.  Seems very man-cave-ish, doesn't it?

Do you have any inspiration images you're currently obsessing on?