One of the best ways to make your space a better reflection of your personality is by decorating walls and surfaces with artwork that makes a statement about who you are. But this doesn't have to mean spending money on someone else's masterpiece. Instead, create beautiful decorative pieces with what's already in your home.
"We all have to be frugal today, which makes us think differently and get really creative with what we have," says Lara Fishman, owner of Storm Interiors and Designers Call. "You may have things lying around the house, which you can turn into an art project."
rearrange your flowers
In Japan, flower arranging is an art form called ikebana, and you can take a cue from the Japanese about rethinking how you arrange your own blooms. A shallow dish or container, some pretty pebbles and a handful of blooms from your garden can make a beautiful and abstract arrangement in the spirit of ikebana. Check out a book on the subject at your local library or get information online.
Frame It
Showcase your kids' school art projects, a swatch of pretty fabric or a page from an illustrated book as a work of art. Shop at yard sales and thrift stores for ornate picture frames and quickly clean the wood frames and glass insets with
Pledge® Multi Surface Wipes, which leave no streaks or smeary residue. With the addition of inexpensive mat board (found at craft stores), your two-year-old's crayon drawing could look like a Picasso.
Beautiful Music
Favorite vintage record album covers make terrific wall art, and frames designed to house albums are available at home-organization stores. Try creating a tryptych (grouping of three) of related covers from the same band or the same era, or try similar color schemes.
Your Private Art Gallery
Try seeing the things you collect as art installations and display them creatively. For instance, antique tea cups, lined up on a narrow tray, can dress up the top of a buffet in the dining room. And a row of vintage purses, hanging from decorative hooks, looks great on a bedroom door. Fishman also likes to use inexpensive acrylic pedestals or risers to display collections or sculptures.
Bigger Is Better
You don't have to be a collector to have artistic photographs on your wall. Take a look at your photo albums with a fresh eye to find a particularly attractive snapshot. These days you can easily turn digital pictures from color to black-and-white (or even sepia tones) for a classic look. A photo lab will crop and enlarge most digital photos to any size for only a few dollars. Add a frame and a mat for a look a pro would envy.
Shadow Boxing
There may be things around your house that you never thought of as art. Nava Lubelski, author of
The Starving Artist's Way, repurposes divided wood wine crates to make diorama-style frames in which she'll display tiny treasures, like a doll-size china teacup or a toy car. "Anything encased," she says, "automatically becomes more significant."
Jarring Notions
"I like to reuse jars, especially from food I buy all the time, so I have a bunch of the same jars," says Lubelski. She soaks them in hot water so the labels slide off easily (use
Windex® Original Glass Cleaner to remove any sticky residue) and fills them with anything interesting: rocks, a seashell collection, vintage buttons. "A row running down the center of a table can look really dramatic," she says.