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Saturday, July 7, 2012

How to Decorate Your Mantel - As Seen on Pinterest

Hello, friends.  How do you like my new digs? I've spent the last several days trying to spruce up the place.  After much Googling, I found a few sites that helped me with the remodel.  You can find the designs I used here and here. Gotta take care of those credits, folks. There'll be NO plagiarism up in here!

So in keeping with the remodeling theme, I decided to highlight one of my most recent Pinterest-inspired decor ideas. While I've seen a million of them there, this one was fairly simple and cheap - it cost me literally nothing! Even better!

First, I want to introduce you to a term my dear friend Jennifer introduced to me: Refluff. It's where you take stuff you currently have in your house and find new places for it to make it work and give different spaces mini-makeovers. Apparently there are people you can pay to do this for you and after some more Googling (I <3 Googling, can you tell?), alas I did not find any of these services to link up here for you.  But this is the theory behind the Pin I will mention today.

Project 1:  How to Decorate Your Mantel

We've all seen 'em.  You walk into someone's house and think, wow, that mantel looks nice! You can't quite put your finger on what sets it apart from the average joe mantel and makes it look professional. Well, this Pin explains it and provides a lovely diagram! 


Looks simple right?  The OP's website goes into detail about the visual elements and techniques involved and why they work.  But I won't go into all that here.

Here are the results. And yes, the little monkey girl in the corner is my pretty girl, Mia. She just loves a good photo op!


Again, I didn't go buy anything for this project, I just used what was already on the mantel and few other things that were stuffed under my bed. See? Glad I kept them! ;)  My problem with mantels, and really a lot of other similar spaces, is that I always tend to make the space symmetrical and end up with a "bookend" effect.  And I certainly woudn't have thought of layering items. The only thing I'm not 100% satisfied with is the "visual height" piece on the right. I would like something a little taller, but that would've involved a trip to Hobby Lobby. Here's a close-up photo:




  It might not look exactly professional, but I think it's a vast improvement.  Although when I asked hubby what he thought of the changes, not telling him exactly what the changes were, he said, "Everything looks the same to me." 

Eh, oh well.  Can't win 'em all.


~Craft on!


Editor's note:  Next week I will start a week-long series on an OP called "10 Habits for a Well-Run Home".  I will check in throughout the week with progress and give a full run-down at the end of the week. Stay tuned!

1 comment:

  1. I'm liking the changes, and your mantel looks great! Shea really needs to work on his saying-the-right-thing-to-his-wife-skills!

    ReplyDelete