Don't get me wrong, I love my junk. I love my stuffed piranha that my grandparents got from Brazil, I love my eight bookshelves of novels alphabetized by author, I love my large framed painting that Batman says looks like "gorilla butts".
Horses, people. Not gorilla butts, not plums. Don't hate on the Franz Marc.
More and more, I start looking around when I'm at people's houses--people my age, not "grown-ups" (we are not going to discuss how I don't consider myself a grown-up yet) and their stuff actually matches. Their kitchen furniture is a matching set--not a table from a thrift store that is embarrassing looking without a tablecloth, two folding chairs, and two chairs that I painted turquoise on a whim and are falling apart.
I am never going to have a pristine, beautiful museum of house. It's not my style. I really do love eclectic decorations, bright colors, and unusual paintings. I think homes should be comfortable--you shouldn't be constantly afraid you're going to break something or dirty something up.
Still...I'm starting to tackle the little things and make an attempt to coordinate. I've started with our bathroom. I got rid of the accumulated clutter left over from the last three bathrooms we had--the trash can, the soap dispenser, etc. and bought an inexpensive but matching set of turquoise accessories from Target. I also made these:
They are darling, no? And they were ridiculously easy to make.
1. I bought frames from a thrift store. $1.25 each
2. I spray-painted them. I did another frame at the same time with a different color--the high-gloss of the royal blue turned out better than the matte finish of the other one.
3. I used Google images to find "octopus silhouette" and "shark silhouette" and copy and pasted the ones I liked into a Word document. I re-sized them to fit inside of the frame and printed them out. I cut it out and used it to trace the shape onto scrapbook paper. Pay no attention to the bird, that's for a different project.
4. Cut out the scrapbook paper silhouettes, rubber cemented them onto a piece of card stock cut to size, and framed them. Viola! I have art that matches my the colors of my bathroom.
Now if only getting a new set of kitchen furniture was this easy...
For your kitchen, since you like the eclectic look, just get random chairs from garage sales or used furniture stores... they don't have to be identical, but maybe have a similar feature, like all wood or with a cushion... etc. I think it'll be coffee house cozy.
ReplyDeleteNice work on the frames!