Vignettes 101

Remember when I took you on a tour of the home of Laura, my friend and decor mentor? I showed you just a few of the vignettes she has created in her home. Here's a picture of one of my faves...

As we began a complete overhaul of basically every decoration and color scheme in our house, I knew I had to call in my expert. Somehow, miraculously, Laura and I both found a kid-free afternoon and went on a 2 hour speedy shopping spree to find just the right accessories to create a wall vignette for the gigantic blank wall in my living room.

I came back with a minivan full of decor goodness, and a chest-full of fear knowing I would have no idea what to do with it all. The next few days, every time nap time for our little ones rolled around, I would set out different arrangements of all the accessories we accumulated and send Laura pictures through text message of my concoctions. You can see my feeble attempts below: 

Take 1: Mirror image look. Too bland.

Take 2: Adding sconces didn't help. Nice try.

 Take 3: Symmetry? A little better but still...swing and a miss.

Take 4: When I sent this to Laura she said, "Too lined up. It would be so much easier if I were there."

She tried sending me pictures of sketches she drew through text of what would work better, but it was pretty useless. Either you have an eye for this stuff, or you don't. And, apparently, I don't. But we were convinced we could make this work.

Since we live pretty far from each other, we decided that I would load up any and all decorations that might be useful and we would meet halfway, on the side of the road, and figure this out. Now we're sounding desperate, aren't we?! Between Laura's love of decorating, and my perfectionism, we were ready to solve this problem.

So one afternoon we met in a parking lot just off the interstate, spread out a sheet as our "wall" and began laying out our options. Within minutes the perfect layout became obvious. I took a million pictures from every possible angle, measured distances between shelving, accessories and art, and packed it all back up.

And the results... 

So much better! As my husband was hanging it all on the wall for me, he couldn't believe that I needed him to measure everything perfectly before hanging. He said, "You can't just eyeball it?" Hahaha. Days of trying to figure this out have proven to me that, no, I can't.

While I don't have the natural gift of "eyeballing" art placement, Laura did teach me a few essentials for creating beautiful vignettes:

1. Everything needs to be a little "off". Don't line up every shelf. Don't make every candle stick the same height. You can see in my after photo above that no shelf, frame, candle or piece of art lines up perfectly with anything else. Keeping things out of order magically makes the eye travel smoothly across the arrangement, instead of stopping at every obvious line.

2. Spread out your pops of color. My color scheme, if looked at in percentages, would probably read: 60% gray/white/black (neutrals), 30% blue, 10% pink. I didn't want pink on every shelf because it's my "pop" (and a man does have to live here), but I did want to make sure that each shelf carried out the blue scheme in some form.

3. Create a unifying theme. As we shopped for accessories, we realized that everything I picked up had a fleur-de-lis or scroll pattern to it. Before I even realized it, I gravitated towards a clear theme for our living room. You probably already do this without realizing it as well. Do you love chevron, paisley or stripes? Are you always attracted to yellow dresses? Or maybe you stock your kitchen with only red appliances. Your theme is probably already in your house. As you design vignettes, keep this theme in mind and carry it out evenly across your wall.

Creating eye-catching vignettes takes time and (a lot) of patience. One of the keys that my vignette is missing is layering. You can see in the first photo how Laura layered accessories, plants and frames on her shelves to create a much more cohesive and homey look. But the truth is, layering takes time - time to gather decorations and keepsakes to display. So while my vignette isn't quite finished (what project is??), I'm still very glad I took a leap and decorated that big, bad, blank wall that has been staring me down since the day we moved in.

Do you have any vignettes you want to show off? Did these tips help?

Breakfast Room Before & After

This breakfast room wall has been my nemesis. Sometimes when you have a large blank canvas, it can be more challenging to work with than a limiting space. That's the way my brain works, anyway. But I've overcome!
See? Gigantic, blank canvas. Some of you have minds that can visualize within 2.6 seconds exactly what you would do with this space. I am not among you. We added the chair rail months and months ago, as a first step in the direction we wanted to take this wall. I won't even pretend to give you the tutorial on that project. It was all hubby and his handyman brain. I think I held the tape measure once though.

We had dreams of installing picture frame molding underneath but we knew that project would take forever to finish because of my husband's work schedule. So we nixed it until we found these little beauties...
Ready-to-go molding! We priced out this molding style and the ready-made was a much more cost-effective option. This kind came from Lowe's. Here's a close-up so you can copy-cat if you'd like.

A laser level on a tripod made keeping everything in line a much easier task.
I'm sure there are very specific tools that should probably be used with these, but we're cheap frugal. So we used nails that were actually meant for a nail gun that we had on hand. You have to use very thin nails with this project or you'll damage the molding.
Can you just imagine the patience my husband has to let me stop him mid-project to take pictures of him doing this?
We (and by we I mean my husband) used a regular hammer to secure them into the molding and wall, but then used a punch to countersink the nails into the frames. It makes a big difference in the finished product.
Five frames later, it was getting much better. I would imagine the frames can be cut, but we purposely spaced ours out to account for outlets. And, no, we didn't paint the molding beforehand. They match! Who cares?!
A few botanical prints and clearanced-out matted frames and...

SO much better. I almost breathe better when I walk through this room (which is all day, every day). Marking a gigantic project like this off of our lists is a big relief!
What's on your to-do list?

Linking to:
Sew Much Ado...Sumo's Sweet Stuff...Today's Creative Blog...Skip to My Lou...Tip Junkie...Someday Crafts...Beyond the Picket Fence...Creations by Kara...Tatertots & Jello...Remodelaholic...Thrifty Decor Chick...

Sewing Room Redo Under $5

As a birthday surprise for my mom while she was out of town, my husband and son and I added some fun decor to her sewing room wall. I wanted it to be pretty and fun, but I also wanted it to be something she could take down and redo if she didn't want to live with it. And I knew that I would have to do it on the cheap. Otherwise, even if she hated it, she would never change a thing. She's a sweet mom like that.

With that said, I set myself a $5 budget and started brainstorming ideas to take her bare wall and turn it into something that would make her smile.

I started in my pantry. It seems a little unconventional, but you just might have some great tools to transform that blank wall in your playroom/study/sewing nook in there. For me, it was three jars. What? There's only two in this picture? The other one was filled with some pretty fantastic queso...it didn't last long enough for its beauty shot.
Then I made a trip to Goodwill. I tell ya, it's feast or famine in that place. But one thing they always have plenty of is frames. I picked up these matching (read: awful) frames for a $1 each. I don't know what material they were made of, but it wasn't wood.

A little Rustoleum's heirloom white spray paint later, followed by some distressing with my sanding sponge and they were good as new. I filled them with vintage sewing patterns that I found online and printed off.

Spray paint does wonders.

The lighting in these pictures is awful. So please excuse the fuzziness and yellow-tint. I tried!

I stopped at my local crafts store and picked up three embroidery hoops and floss, as well as two coordinating fabrics. It was all on sale and cost me around $3 and change.

Don't be scared away from embroidery. This was my very first ever hand-embroidering project and it was a cinch. I knocked it out in about an hour in front of the TV one night.

But freehanding the entire thing was a little intimidating to me so I printed off an enlarged letter "M" in a font that fitted the style I wanted (and would be easy for me to follow). Then I placed it underneath my muslin fabric and put it on top of my bedside lampshade. The light made the "M" shine through the fabric so I could lightly trace it with pencil. Then I just followed my pattern. The starbursts are simple straight lines in a circle. You could trace these beforehand if it makes you nervous. Knots are an easy idea as well, and end up looking like dots. Keep in mind that sets of three will likely look most appealing.

See my imperfect lines? No matter, I think it turned out great anyway.

One thing I do recommend is using an embroidery needle. I totally forgot about it until I was desperately trying to thread the floss through my ordinary sewing needle. I kept telling my husband, "If I could have asked Mom about this, I wouldn't be having this problem!" She's my sewing guru and thinks of everything.

Wondering where those jars of garlic, baby food and oh-so delicious queso come into play? I had these three ribbons on hand already, as well as super glue, a white shelf and some silver metallic paint. Use what you've got on hand. I couldn't even find a paintbrush so I painted by dipping a soft paper towel into the paint and wiping it on the lids. So barbaric, I know. After the paint had dried, I super glued the ribbon and rick rack to the edge of the lids. Then I raided Mom's incredible stash of notions, bobbins and lifetime supply of buttons to add some color.

The finished product. Not bad for $5.

(And don't worry, I did get her another present as well...one that cost more than $5, I promise!)

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