A cheap & clever decorating tip

Photo courtesy of Csaba J. Szabo.

When it comes to interior decorating, I’m creatively challenged. That is, it takes me a good long time to come up with anything creative in my head, on my own. Mostly I have to pore over the creative ideas of others before I get a tiny little spark of inspiration myself.

So when I’m about to decorate (or redecorate) a room, I head to the craft store and buy one of those packs of scrapbooking paper. I’m always amazed at how lovely many of them are and they are enormously helpful. Here are a few ways one might use them:

1. Decide on a color scheme. Bam. Everything’s perfectly coordinated for you. Pick out a color or two, take the scrapbooking paper to Lowe’s or Home Depot, have them color-match paint for you and you’re ready to paint — no frustrating paint chip hunting required.
2. Frame part or entire pages as artwork on the wall.
3. Pick out an element you especially like (maybe a bird or flower or flourish), trace it, have it blown up at the copy store and use it like you would a stencil (or you could project it on the wall to paint it if you have a projector). I did this once with a flower for Hayley’s room. I blew it up, cut it out, traced around it directly on the wall and painted.

And that, my friends, is all I got.

This post is part of Works for Me Wednesday over at We Are That Family. Check it out!

Related posts:

1. Chasing the Guilt Away
2. Stopping Shopping
3. Ask me