Guest Post: Design Rules from 10 Rooms

Are you ready for the first in my little mini series, three design rules from three of my favorite bloggers?  I know I am.  First up, Anne Marie from 10 Rooms.  Anne-Marie is a color expert.  I swear, her post on choosing whites is a regular reference for me: you must check it out, here.  She's also a french speaker, a Canadian, the host to blog series "Crushing on Color," and the creator of one of my favorite blog banner out there.

Without further ado, I give you Anne-Marie.

First of all, thanks so much Heather, for having me over! 

I hope you are having a fantastic time in the Big Apple...

and I hope you'll share a little of your experience when you return so we can live vicariously through you :)

You've asked us for design rules, but since color is my thing,

 I thought perhaps I a few of my most basic color rules may be in order...

#1 The numero uno rule: work with the colors that you love.

This sounds simple, but so many people are living with color that they don't actually like.

You have to ask yourself: what color makes you happy? 

Does pink make your heart do double flips?

Just because pink is not a traditional choice for decor doesn't mean you should pass it up.

Your home doesn't have to please the neighbours, or magazine design editors, or your Mother-in-Law!

Just you and your family. So use what YOU love!

#2 Consider your space.

Your home's architecture sets a stage, and your home will shine when you embrace the architecture and make design choices that highlight the best features in your space, and enhance everything else....

Again, this sounds simple, but filling a terracotta tiled space with black leather doesn't transform it into the city loft you are dreaming of..

but a bit of city might be perfect...

or perhaps no city at all..

#3 Consider the atmosphere your color choices create..

Color is one of the simplest ways to create a "feel" in your home. 

We all know red is stimulating, 

and green rejuvenating, 

but what happens when we place a red sofa against a green wall?

sources 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 

Complementary combinations of color are lively and create contrast, because they intensify each other.

You have to consider the effect the colors will have on each other, 

as well as how they make you feel individually,

 to best choose a harmonious color scheme 

with the right amount of visual stimulation for your space.

There's so much to think about when choosing color for your design.

I've been working with color for years and still learn new things all the time!

But these three considerations are the basics, and using them you're off to a really good start.

Thanks again for having me over, Heather,

and I'm looking forward to you heading over to 10 Rooms when I'm off adventuring :)

x Anne-Marie

Thank you Anne-Marie!  Can't wait to crush on color with you soon.  As for the rest of you, go visit Anne-Marie and tell her I sent you, and don't forget to enter my Shabby Apple Giveaway!

Heather

Photo Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Shabby Apple Giveaway!

How cute is this dress?



Don't you kind of want to be her?  Or at least go to there?
Yeah, me too.

Well, guess what?  You can.  Or, at least, you can look like that by winning this dress, know as "Spanish Steps" and made by the fine purveyors of women's dresses at Shabby Apple.  T-shirt top, full skirt, universally flattering and oh so chic.

Look at me, hosting a fancy giveaway.  There are a couple of ways you can be entered to win (but U.S. residents only, please.)  First up, visit Shabby Apple and take a look around. Their dresses are affordable and vintage-inspired, and I love that they are partnering with blogs like mine to get the word out.  (There's another giveaway just wrapping up at My Interior Life and closing this Sunday--hop on over there for even MORE ways to win.)

Okay, once you've checked out the goods, do one or more of the following:

1. Become a follower of Love Your Space (if you're not already) and leave me a comment letting me know that you're a follower, new or old, and how you feel about giveaways.  Yup, I'm serious: I know a captive audience when I see one.  And be honest.

2.  Go "like" Shabby Apple on Facebook, right here, for info on specials, sales, etc.  Leave a comment here telling me you did so.

3.  While you're there, how about "liking" Love Your Space on Facebook?  Yes, please.  Then--you guessed it--leave me a comment here and tell me all about it.

It all seems a little redundant, I know, but when I run a random number generator on all those comments, you want to be in there as many times as possible, no?  Get started: giveaway ends Wednesday, July 20 at midnight central time, and the winner will be announced Thursday July 21.

I would kind of like to enter my own giveaway, but I think that is frowned upon.

Oh!  How could I forget.  If you are not the winner (boooo), or if you would simply like a different dress, go ahead and shop using code loveyourspace10off to receive 10% off any purchase.

Have fun!

Perhaps I should also mention that I'm off to New York to visit a slew of old friends (and meet with a client or two.)  I have a couple of my favorite bloggers lined up with guest posts sharing three design rules to live by.  Come on back for some sage advice.  I've previewed the posts, and there is some good stuff going on there.

See you next week!

Two-day Makeover

I love (I mean loooooove) budget decorating.  I find it incredibly satisfying to transform a room for peanuts.  And with the amazing array of resources available today, budget makeovers are more and more doable, if you know what you're doing.  And lots of people do.  But lots of people don't.  And in this economy, it can be tough to hire a decorator.  I've been thinking for a while about offering a new service to clients who want a quick transformation but don't have a lot of money to spend.  I called for guinea pigs on Facebook, and the Two Day Makeover was born.

The idea: Two days (of my time), a small budget (of their money) to spend at local retailers, and a little bit of elbow grease can yield a remarkable makeover.  Ready for the proof?

Enter Lisa, a friend from grade school.  She and her husband swapped rooms with two of their daughters (they have four fabulous kids) but never painted over the "Cinderella Blue."  They bought a bedframe and filled the space with hand me downs.  Functional, but not exactly a soothing retreat.

As so many of us do, Lisa and Dale fulfilled the needs in this space as they arose, without an overall design plan.  A TV was propped on a pair of (non working) speakers, on top of a small side table.  An old cabinet was pressed into the corner to hide its unfinished side.

One piece of an old sectional was crammed in another corner, and Dale started hanging his caps on the wall hooks left over by their daughters.  (I am guessing that Lisa would like you to know that this photo was taken mid-project, and that all the extra stuff in this picture is makeover material.)

A hand-me-down dresser got a coat of black paint, but the sloping ceiling of the attic room meant the mirror had to sit off center.

The biggest problem (and its common in these converted attics) was just how unbalanced the room felt.  The open stairwell split the room and almost everything was in the large half.

But the room was nice and big, and Lisa had a number of great pieces to work with.  Don't you just love POTENTIAL?

Thursday morning, I arrived to check things out and discovered that the room had a larger challenge than I had realized from the photos:  large scale panels along both long walls concealed storage, and needed to be left relatively clear for access (you can see one next to the dresser in the photo just above).  Holy space planning challenge!  After a bit of rearranging, we found the right spot for the bed--nestled between two storage doors--and everything else fell into place.

Ready for it?

Ta da!

Moving the bed to the side wall opened up the window and balanced out the long, narrow room by moving the most massive piece to the center.  We were then able to place the lowboy dresser on the far wall, and balance it with the sectional piece.  (there were actually other armchairs available in the house, but nothing would fit up the stairs!)  A pair of velvet throw pillows and a brown chenille throw balance out the sectional, and the placement makes you overlook it's armless side.

The dresser had a matching tallboy, which came out of the closet and took up residence at the far end of the room (essentially facing the lowboy).  The vertical shape is a much better fit for the narrow wall, and the surface is a good spot for frames photos.  

White curtains with a quilted floral motif soften both windows and make the far end of the room feel finished.  Black cafe rods hung high heighten the tallest part of the room, drawing the eye up and de-emphasizing the sloping walls.

How pretty is this duvet?  Lisa already had it, and it set the color palette for the room.  The softer green paint instantly brightened the room, making it feel much bigger and airier, and a satin finish blurred the edges to make the walls recede, whereas the old semi gloss (washable, for kids)  highlighted the surface of the walls, drawing them in.

The corner that previously housed the sectional got a proper entertainment unit, which is tucked out of sight upon entering the room, and provides storage for books, remotes, and odds and ends.

And the bed got spruced up with a bright orange accent on the shams.  Pairs of side tables and lamps lend balance, and their round shapes break up all the blockier pieces in the room.

Not bad for two days and a couple hundred bucks!

So, where did we spend our money?

Paint: Behr "Outback," $52.00

Curtain Rods: Black cafe rods from Target, $10 each

Everything else, Ikea:

Bedside tables, $20 each

Curtains, $40 each pair

Oval Mirror above dresser, $10

Pillow shams, $6 each

Baskets, $5/ set of 3

Total: $219

Okay, and then Lisa cheated.  We were planning to use a media stand from her garage, give it some spraypaint, new knobs, and wallpaper the glass doors, but she decided it was too short for the space.  Another trip to Ikea (unbeknownst to me) yielded a 100% perfect media stand in the As Is department.  So that basically doubled the total to $400 (ish).

Still, not bad.

So again, the before:

And after!

(Three notes on the photos: we couldn't find the appropriate hardware to mount the oval mirror, which WILL hang on the wall; the square artwork across from it will be replaced by a framed photo of Lisa's kids, and there is a painting that belongs on the wall above the stairs.  I'm impatient, what can I say?)

Local (Twin Cities) readers, if you're interested in a Two-Day Makeover, you can email me at heather@heatherpetersondesign for rates and more information.

For the Birds

I love the idea of bird feeders.  My in-laws live in the country, and the tree outside the kitchen window is full of hanging bird feeders, replete with a wide variety of birds to watch (and my father in law, also known as Grandpa, takes great pleasure in identifying and watching them.)  When we moved away from New York City, I wanted to take advantage of our not-exactly-country-but-more-countryish-environs, and I picked up a simple little bird feeder from the Smith and Hawken line at Target.  This is what a bird feeder looks like in Boulder.

And this is how it spent much of the winter, until the crazy Boulder snowfall/sunshine loop took its toll on the wood, and the whole thing popped in half.

Here in Minneapolis, our house has a pretty modern facade, and while I don't believe that every little functional item needs to match your architecture, this house is pretty demanding in its simplicity, and I do feel like any bird feeder or bird house I choose should have a simple modern architecture of its own.

Months ago, I pulled this picture from Chicago Home and Garden magazine and slipped it into my inspiration file.

(Actually, it's a file called "To buy?"  Note the question mark.  My husband does not, and probably should not, know that this file exists.  Also, in case you're wondering, he does not read this blog.  Which is kind of like an unspoken gift between us.  I get to say whatever, he doesn't need to listen.)

I love the color of these little houses, but also the texture: like boiled wool.  I like how simple they are.  When I re-discovered this image, I took a look around to see what else I could find.  As with so many subjects in blogland, plenty of folks got there first.  You can see round ups here and here, or even here, OR you can just stay with me and see my picks, right here.



Blomus Nido Bird feeder, $79, available here (come to think of it, this one was featured in Cooking Light a while back, if I'm not mistaken, and probably went into my "To Buy?" file, too.)


Areaware geobirdhouse, $95, available here.



Hepper Roost Birdhouse (Red), $75, available here



Roost Bodega birdhouse, $79, available here



Modern canopy birdhouse, $78, available here


Available here.  please note, this is the first blog I have ever visited that gave me a content warning, and I was a little afraid to open it.  I spent a few minutes inspecting this birdhouse to determine whether there was anything--ahem--dirty about it, but if there is it eludes me.  I also have no idea how you would go about purchasing one of these.

And since not a one of these is in my budget, how about a DIY?



Super cute, no?  Go here.

Or this?

Those are old ceiling light fixtures, tied up in some cord.  No kidding.  From Design sponge.

Or this?


here

In all honesty, this shoulda coulda woulda been two posts, with one devoted solely to the gourd birdhouse idea.  I spotted a pair of them nearby when my in laws were last here, and had Grandpa get a picture of them for future reference.

See how it goes?  If you wait on a project long enough, a blog will present itself with a nice little tutorial for you.  And your project list will grow to mountainous proportions.

And just for fun (or because I am tired and may have lost the thread of this post), how about a human sized nest house?

Those are my people at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.

Oh, and of course, how could I forget the birdhouse that my kids made at the Minnesota Children's Museum?

Okay.  Bird houses.  Do you have a favorite?

Super SUPER size me

I wrote about ovescale botanicals last week.  When the new issue of Lonny was delivered to my inbox tonight, I noticed a project that took the concept to another level.  (Or "a whole nuther" level, as those old Domino's ads would have said.  Anyone remember those?  Anyone else really bothered by them?  How about my penchant for tangents as of late, how are we feeling about that?)

Behold.









Do you see what's going on there?  Designer Jarlath Mellett created custom wallpaper from his own photography writ large.

What do you think: yay or nay?

I think I'm partial to the two that have been quite abstracted--the gossamer tree on one wall of the living room (bottom image) and the sun-spotty branches behind that tan leather headboard (up top).  The others may be too literal for me, but perhaps I'm too much of a traditionalist at heart, and abstracted florals have been making their way into wallcoverings for about as long as there have been decorative wallcoverings (Lascaux?).

Oh, and check out the new issue of Lonny and let me know what you think.

Small Measures: Whorled lamp

Simple lamp, spray primer.  Take liberties with the paint: agate, Florentine paper, oil spill.  Or purchase from Arteriors home.

Home Decorators Side Tables

Home Decorators collections is knocking it out of the park with their side tables these days.



I first spotted this new drum table over at Aesthetic Oiseau, and when I went to check things out, I was pleased by a few other choices.

Macau table in Pumpkin




Lavello table in yellow





Pawn accent table in Brown





The Piao Stool




I'm reminded of a number of classics (and "new" classics), but at a fraction of the price.  Observe:

Eames Walnut stool,  $800 and change


dwr.com

Brigitte Oval Table, Bungalow 5, $400 plus



available here

Moroccan Key Table, $371



And Spool Stool, $305


House Eclectic

Pawn Stool by Gus Modern, $395



here

Ah, well, you get the idea.  While the Home Decorator's drum table is $229, the others are all under $200, with most at $129.  Not a bad deal!  And they all come in lots of colors.  Go check them all out (and more), right here.