Black and White Family Photography: Creating an Awesome Wall Montage

Displaying your family photos in black and white can be a great way to highlight your special moments. Converting your color photos to black and white is simple and affordable and arranging them into a montage is an effective way to create an attractive visual statement.

Choose photos that will tell a story when grouped together, perhaps of family trips you’ve taken or a collection of special events. Once you’ve decided on the photos, you’ll need to convert them to black and whites. If your pictures are in digital format, you can use a program like Photoshop to instantly convert your color photos to black and white without damaging the original photos. You can convert those old photos from your albums by scanning them and printing them out onto photo paper. You can also edit these photos in Photoshop if you like. If you’re not computer savvy, go to your local photo shop or kiosk and have a professional convert your digital photographs for very little cost.

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Weekend DIY Series: Transform Your Laundry Room from Washed Out to Crisp and Clean

Let’s face it, you probably spend a lot of time in your laundry room doing the wash, but spend little time thinking about its decorating style. For a room that most of us spend so much time in, it’s usually one of the most ignored rooms when it comes to interior design and decorating. Perhaps it’s because the time spent in the laundry room is boring, mundane, and uninspired. So, why not transform it into a crisp, clean, fun place to be and add some excitement to your daily chores?!

The first thing you can do to spruce up your drab laundry room is to add a little color. Stay away from really dark shades because they can make small rooms feel even smaller and the reflection of these darker colors onto your clothes can actually make them look dingy and more difficult to see stains. Instead, choose bright and airy colors, like a sunny yellow, soothing light blue, girly pink or grassy green. Bringing in a sense of the outdoors will make you feel like you’re hanging clothes on the clothesline in the breezy summer wind, just like grandmother used to do!

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The Lo-Down on Hanging Art Attractively & Effectively

Puzzled about how to hang your pictures, paintings and other wall art objects for maximum impact and attractiveness in your home? Take heart. While choices in styles and types of art vary widely, the “rules” for hanging them are few and sensible. If you know the rules for hanging art at the right height and in the correct manner, your home can look like a chic art gallery and have a definitive interior decorator feel with very little effort! Here are a few tips to help you hang your art correctly:

The eyes have it: Hang art at eye level for best visibility and greatest impact. Whose eye level, you ask? Yours, of course. While you will undoubtedly entertain guests who are taller or shorter than you, you will be spending more time in your rooms than they will, so hang art where your eyes can most easily take it in. If you happen to be a particularly short or tall person and you choose to hang your art for the enjoyment of others, use a height of 5′6″ as your guide – being the average height to cater to. In private homes, “eye level” is generally considered to be judged from a seated position; in public halls and reception areas where people stand more than they sit, “eye level” is assessed while standing.

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Understanding Scale When Purchasing Artwork and Accessories for Your Home

Although your unique personal preferences may want to take precedence over basic logic, understanding scale is essential when you select artwork and accessories for your home. Choosing accents that fit properly into a room without getting lost or overwhelming the eye can be trickier than it seems.

Here are a few points to consider when choosing the ideal artwork and accessories to enhance your living space:

What is the shape of the area where you will be adding artwork or accessories?

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Easy Fabric Wall Panels: A Great Way to Add Color and Personality to ‘No Paint’ Apartments

If you’re renting an apartment the owner won’t allow you to paint, but the color of the walls just isn’t what you want, don’t give up. You can change the look of “no-paint” walls in a couple of hours using fabric wall panels that are inexpensive, easy-to-make and a snap to install.

Begin by measuring the length of the wall or walls you want to change, and dividing that measurement so that the resulting number of panels are each no wider than about two and a half feet. This size allows you to use material that is 45 or 60 inches wide with the least amount of wastage.

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Making a fabulous headboard from an antique door is a fun, unique, and inexpensive way to add an interesting and unusual element to your bedroom. Whether your bedroom decor is contemporary or shabby chic, a headboard made from an old antique door can really create a focal point and add interest to any bedroom.

You can find antique doors at flea markets, antique stores, auction houses, estate sales, yard sales, or even junk yards. Look for an antique door that has interesting details or unusual accents to it. You can choose a solid door or one that has window panes. Just look for something that appeals to you. It doesn’t really matter what shape it’s in, aside from being broken into pieces, because you’re going to give that old antique door new life as a fabulous headboard.

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One of the first things most of us want to do after moving into a new house, is put something on the walls. When you have large, blank, bare walls staring at you the house just doesn’t feel like a home yet. Unfortunately when the walls are large though, you may find yourself staring at them and wondering just what in the world you can do to decorate them beautifully.

Decorating a wall in your home does not have to be limited to painting it or hanging pictures though. There are actually many quick and creative ways you can decorate bare walls. Let’s look at just a few of these ideas…

1. Create shadow boxes. Creating shadow boxes is a wonderful way to decorate your home uniquely, and it allows you to create a memory wall of relatives who may have passed away, or family history items. You could create shadow boxes devoted to specific people if you’d like, such as your grandparents, or you can simply create shadow boxes filled with collectibles, keepsakes, or pretty things you’ve picked up yard sales and flea markets over the years.

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Creating an elegant centerpiece for your holiday table doesn’t have to be difficult. There are a few basic rules you can use to build a centerpiece for any holiday you want to commemorate; the rest, as they say, depends on you.

First of all, make sure that whatever centerpiece you design isn’t so tall that it will interfere with people seated on opposite sides of your table seeing and speaking with each other. There’s nothing worse than trying to unobtrusively crane your neck to see around a centerpiece that blocks your view! Think low and wide rather than tall and narrow.

Then choose a container to hold the main body of the centerpiece. This can be anything that catches your fancy; perhaps a unique wicker basket, your grandmother’s heirloom fine china compote or a fabulous art pottery bowl. Inside this main container, place another, slightly smaller leak proof plastic or glass “liner” container with a profile sufficiently lower than the main container. If there’s enough space between the two containers to allow the liner to wiggle, stuff the space with foam or wadded up newspaper to keep everything stable.

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Put the ‘Boo’ Back in your Yard this Halloween: Quick, Fun and Cheap Decorating Projects

Thinking of going all out in decorating your yard for Halloween this year? There’s certainly no reason not to—Halloween decorations are inexpensive and fun to make, and the effects on others, especially young children in your neighborhood, can be fun to watch as well.

Go through the family closets and find the oldest, rattiest clothes to use for dressing scarecrows. That pair of jeans you reserve for really messy tasks like painting the garage door or hauling trash to the dump will be perfect. Then gather up some white trash bags with pull closures, some small rags and an old broom an get started building your scarecrow. Stuff a small trash bag with rags for the head. When the bag is big enough and fairly round, tie it off and draw a face on it using permanent ink markers. Attach the head to the bottom of a small broom, secure a piece of wooden doweling crosswise under the neck, then dress your scarecrow, pulling a long-sleeved shirt over the dowel “arms” and a pair of jeans or trousers over the broom handle body. You can use the same process to make ghost heads and complete their ghostly look by tying old white sheets around the base of the “neck.”

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When you have space for a table in your foyer, you should celebrate it by creating an eye-catching table montage on top. The foyer greets your guests and makes a first impression about your home. Creating an exciting table montage is a welcoming way to inspire conversation and admiration.

What exactly is a montage anyway? Formally defined, a montage is an art form that consists of a number of smaller items put together. There are a variety of items you can use to create your foyer table montage that will reflect your unique tastes and preferences to people as soon as they enter your home.

When choosing items to create a table arrangement, consider the size of the foyer and the table and make sure they fit the space properly. Choose colors that compliment the colors used in the foyer and throughout the rest of your home.

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