Affordable art

Yes, we all have walls and no one loves the look of bare walls. I am always on a look out for affordable art for my walls. Some of the best places to find good frames is antique stores,consignment stores and of course craigslist.Another good place is staggers who have to get rid of their inventory after they are done with it.I was lucky enough to find a stagger who was selling his inventory.

I picked up two frames with an antique metallic finish and beautiful custom mattes for $10 each.The asking price was $15 but it never hurts to ask.A smile and a please can do wonders! The designers want to get rid of their inventory so they do not mind reducing the price. The prints were somewhat damaged but I knew a single frame would cost me more than 40 grand each if I buy retail. Just when I was about to leave, I saw a calendar with beautiful coral prints. The ones like you would see in designer furniture catalogs and priced at a couple of hundreds of dollars. Guess what they were asking for the calendar -- $5 only! A match made in heaven. 

                 

Here is what I did - I cut the pictures in the calendar that I liked and replaced them with the prints in the frames. Easy as that! Have a look!

Now they hang in my rust colored bedroom. My grand total for the entire project $25. Don't they look pretty!!

Coral has been quite a craze in home decor for quite some time but you don't have to spend a lot of money to achieve a look.Some more coral themed decor to inspire you.

left to right: 1.Mermaidhut.com 2.HGTV 3.HSN 4.William Sonoma Home

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Color wheel

This is my first place. After years of wait we finally bought our own house. I'm so happy !!! The house that we bought is a townhouse with a french country elevation.The interior colors were a warm beige for the formal areas and a deep brown for the family room and kitchen. Here are the Before pics: I feel color can have a huge impact on the style and mood that you want to achieve in a room.I tend to love colors on the cooler side of the color wheel.That was our first project.We went through a myriad of colors before we could settle on the final two.One for the family room and kitchen and the other for the formal living area and the hallways.Some of the colors that we selected were BM gray wisp,Coventry gray, BM raindance,BM Paris rain,BM shadow gray.It took us a week to finalize on the colors.Not an easy task for someone who has lived with builder white walls in an apartment for 4 years. Watching years of HGTV and surfing blogs definitely came handy.At least I knew the direction I wanted to go in . The beige was painted with a cool gray and the family room a relaxing gray green. Both colors are from Kelly Moore.The formal area color is called Key stone gray and the family room color is called green moss. We got a professional to do the painting for us.

Here are the After pics.

lessons learned:
** Always buy a sample or a pint and try it on your walls.Paint looks different even on different walls in the same room.
**Since we were testing out light colors on a dark colored walls it looked much lighter in fact white when we tried on a small patch in the wall.
**The color looks much darker when it dries.
** Don't ask your hubby which gray looks the best.His answer most likely will be they all look the same to me.

This is my first post and I would definitely like to mention some of the blogs that have really inspired me to start a blog of my own.
Centsational girl
Young House love
Design sponge
The Inspired room
decorpad
Houzz.com

Bye for now!

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