Weekenders
Posted by Michele | Filed under Accessories, Art, Bed and Bath, Flooring, Furniture, Interior Design, Lighting, Weekenders, What's New
Dave is off on a little sabatical so I’m taking over on Weekenders. My mind set this week will be focused on sophistication for miscellaneous interior design products and art. You won’t find these in the 99 Cents stores. They are a few steps above in quality.
Home Portfolio - This is one of the best sites I’ve seen for search engines on interior and exterior design solutions. Nice layout as well.
Boyd Lighting - Following that link above I found this lighting manufacturer. Very sophisticated.
Sharon Courtney - For the pianist or opera singer, this mixed media of photography and art is terrific.
Bodum Drinkware - For the hot summers coming up, chill your heat away with this line of double wall glassware.
Debage - This is not my cup of tea but if you want to be a Queen for the Day, the bedding is right out of the Rococco period. Not great for hot flashes, I presume.
John Prince - Plays croquet and paints! Very talented man!
Gus Modern - For those who love the lean modern furnishings, this is simply that.
Giving Tree - The most luxurious linens around. Wow! I’d love to feel what 1020 count sheets feel like. Just might have to save up my pennies.
Green Feet - Save the earth! Bamboo Disposable plates and utensils. Group your table setting with the tumblers above from Bodium and you’ll have great conversation pieces for your next outdoor party.
Wilshire Garden - Time to replace the mailbox. How about a copper one?
Happy shopping and have a great weekend!
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Fanatical About Symmetry and Balance
Posted by Michele | Filed under Accessories
I’m fanatic about perfect balance and placement of accessories and art in the home. My housekeeper does a great job of cleaning up the place, much better than I could ever do in the 2-3 hours she has alloted. It’s truly amazing what she does. I love her. She makes it all look like a resort: towels hanging perfectly, cosmetics and such in alignment, tile sparkling.
There is only one minor—and I mean minor—problem: The accessories are not exactly where I placed them. To myself, as I write this, I absolutely sound nuts. But when I see other homes designed to perfection, most of it has to do with the fine details. Details mean that it can be an inch or two out of symmetry. I’ve seen the same pattern of personality in my son. He came to my home one day and noticed that one of my accessories was not centered on the fireplace. I have to crack up; the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The photographer Gary Blackman , who took this shot, must feel the same way except he probably likes things asymmetrical.
So it this over the top? Maybe, maybe not? All I know is that I cannot live in my own home if I don’t have all my ducks in a row, most things organized and accessories in place. I am not as goofy as I sound. In fact, I’m rather relaxed about having a lived-in home. But I cannot have accessories out of scale or placement. I cannot have a painting or group of paintings out of sync. If they are….it will bother me until I fix it. It’s not perfection, but rather alignment and balance is what I need for my design eye.
Procrastination is human nature. We are tired, we want to relax and we just don’t get around to fixing the final details. We burn out before the project is complete. Take some time to notice the simple, easy fix-its in your own home. Laugh about the way you’ve just sat and looked at something that bugged you but you just didn’t get around to it.
Budget can also play a huge part in a finishing detail. Can you complete one area? Maybe not an entire room, but how about one wall? If you can do that, now imagine if you could do that with four walls or one area in a room. This is how we need to look at details. Let’s just start with a living room and finish every teeny weeny detail to perfection. If you were to do that, how do you suppose it would make you feel?
Awesome! That is why I’m talking about it. If you look at a room in which you’ve completed the minute details, you will be in awe of yourself and a warm feeling of admiration will glow over the room.
So let me help you with a very short list of how to attain some balance:
1. Take one wall at a time. Review the art and see if the size works well with the furniture placed in front of it. Is it too large or too small? If you have a collection of art and photos, pretend they are one big piece of art and all of them together make up one big frame. Try to stay away from too much staggering of art unless you can fill up a nice space. I feel the only place for staggering art is up a staircase. It’s best to keep it symmetrical.
2. Accessories: Small→Bigger→Biggest or Low→Higher→Highest are my motto’s when placing things together. You don’t usually showcase much on a family room coffee table because you want to kick your feet up on it. A living room layout on the coffee table might have several items; let’s say, a stack of art books is low, then you place a candle stick that is a higher, and next you place a vase with flowers billowing up or out. That would be Low to High. Notice the wonderful room above and it seems very correct in all the placement of things, furnishings and such. I might have added a thin horizontal piece of art over the sofa. The designers, Shelton, Mindel and Associates, like the very minimal look.
3. Do your finishes on items flow together? Do you have bronze drapery rods, gold candlesticks and chrome light fixtures? That would be a bozo no-no. It would be easiest to change the candlesticks. You might be able to mix the other two finishes if you bring both of them in to other accessories, such as a vase or decorative box to place your coasters in.
Start with these ideas, and work on one area at a time. Tomorrow, I will look at the details of one of my rooms and make a to-do list. I should invite some guests over for a big party; that usually gets me in to action. Then I will finalize all those little things that have been bugging me. Fanatical? You answer that question.
A Place For Everything and Everything In Its Place
Posted by Michele | Filed under Accessories
Designing with color is my life because it comes easy to me and I love it. The only thing that comes easier is finding and placing accessories. Recently, I took a load of found items to a client’s home. Give me a bunch of “junk” and I’ll find a way to make it look good in the room.
Using found items are great, but shopping for accessories is a lot more fun. Most of my clients say they have a difficult time selecting pieces. When they walk into design shops with a huge array of stuff all strewn together with no rhyme or reason, it’s no wonder. I just take my time creating a theme in my head while I’m shopping. If I don’t find the pieces in one store, I go to others or I consider other ideas for the design.
It’s easier to go to branded stores like Pottery Barn because they have their collections by color. The problem I find with that is that you find too many generic looking pieces. When the catalog comes in the mail that week, everyone knows you shopped at Pottery Barn instead of having a unique home.
When I’m hunting for a client, I keep their personality totally in mind yet let my creative juices flow to create a energetic mixture. For instance, I found a landscape painting for a client that they loved but instead of putting the typical traditional sconces next to the art, I found some that are on the contemporary but transitional edge. This keeps the room from being too formal.
The best stuff usually comes from antique stores or discount stores. You can get away with discounted items but you should add some finer details so the room doesn’t look cheap. I’ve encouraged my client to purchase one very nice original piece of art. In turn, I also filled in with some expensive accessories they cringed over for a minute until they saw the beauty of it all once placed.
Take this designer, Frank Rudolph I’m showcasing here. Look at dresser carefully. There is unity in the whites and wood tones. He might have picked the art piece first or after he found the dresser and elements. The best part is the scale of objects and the placement. This isn’t perfect symmetry but it works. The candlesticks are in alignment and the urn is the center point, making the other items seem natural in their placement.
Placement is a key ingredient to a balanced design. The other is having the right touch with picking the perfect pieces. All in all, if you don’t like the mix, take something back and add again until you feel you’ve got it.
hahaha...