blue

design vacation :: angsty teen boy’s room

21 October 2013 by Andrea Leave a Comment

My little boy is not so little anymore.

In fact, he’s a teenager. Guess that means it’s high time for an angsty teen room.

When we last saw the boy’s room, it was a vintage cowboy room…

Not so cool for a teenager. So sadly it had to go.

Then it needed to cure for the requisite length of time. Here at Homage Style, we don’t just jump into projects. We think them through, allowing the creative juices to flow. Some call this procrastination. I call it the creative spirit!

Well, this past week, my son went to Washington, DC with his 8th grade class, so I decided to take some time off from my day job and revamp the boy’s room. So off I went on yet another design vacation.

My son picked his own paint color and it was deep cobalt blue from Behr. I felt that it might be a little dark and overpowering, but then again, I’m just the mom…what the hell do I know? So I let him have his paint color. Ultimately it was the perfect color to set the tone for a dark and angsty teen room.

Let’s take a look around the room, before the angsty teen boy gets home and kicks us out! Here’s the finished product…

With two windows, the room gets plenty of light, plus the black and white striped curtains from Ikea help to keep things light and fun.

At the foot of the bed are two grey beanbag chairs…

For the record, I don’t advocate TVs in kid’s rooms, but the boy scavenged this one, and a little dumpster diving never hurt anyone, so I let him keep it. Plus there’s no cable, so he can only play video games on it. Aren’t those beanbag chairs perfect for gaming?

In the corner above the TV is a globe lamp that I made myself from a discarded globe my sister the school teacher gave me…

Globe lamp how-to blog post coming soon. Bet my sister’s sorry she gave up that little treasure!

On the wall next to the TV is an old laminate bookcase that I spray painted ages ago for kid #1 and it’s still going strong. Above it is a manly French memo board that I created from a wooden retail display shelf…

Ohio State fans, don’t mind the Michigan hat…he only wears it on crazy hat day!

How-to blog post for the French memo board will be coming soon too.

The memo board is my pride and joy of the entire room! I’ve been percolating on this idea for quite some time now and was thrilled with how it turned out!

A closer look…

The wall opposite the window has some great features as well, like the floor-to-ceiling bulletin board made of 12″x 12″ cork tiles…

Isn’t that fun? Right now there’s a synthesizer in front of it, but I’m sure it won’t be long before it’s covered with all sorts of memorabilia.

Notice the You Are Awesome poster that I made last year at a letterpress printing class I took with some girlfriends. Plus there’s the lava lamp…isn’t that a requirement for every angsty teen room?

And the black and white striped canvas balances out the black and white curtains on the other side of the room and breaks up all that blue. It was super easy and cheap to make…just painted the canvas white, then taped off for the black stripes, painted the black stripes, and voila!

We’ve all heard the saying, the best things in life are free. Well, this is especially true for free art! It’s the best!

I was lucky enough to score some advertising art posters from work and was thrilled that they were the perfect colors and style for the boy’s room. And by score, I mean co-opt them after someone left the company and left these bad boys behind. The first is a cool clown placed to the left of the window…

And the other is a giant robot towering above the headboard…

To the left of the robot poster is a Serbian ethnic instrument, a tambura, which the boy occasionally tries his hand at. It, along with the wooden French memo board and the cork board, as well as the natural wood on the furniture and the wooden box on the nightstand add an earthier touch to what could otherwise be a too cold blue room. All the beautiful wood tones warm up the room while giving it a very masculine touch.

I was really happy with the way the room turned out, but was especially thrilled when the boy came home and said he LOVED his new room! I’d call that a successful design vacation!

thanksgiving table

27 November 2010 by Andrea 4 Comments

This Thanksgiving I hosted the Thanksgiving dinner and had a total of 11 guests. Not a huge production, but certainly more than my usual 3 person deal.

As always, I wanted to create a special tablescape, but using things that I have around the house. Plus, this year, in addition to making it budget friendly, I wanted it to reflect the more austere times that we and many families are experiencing. Not too sparse, but nothing extravagant either. So, I went with a combination that I frequently rely on…shabby chic with a touch of whimsical & mod.

As promised, I used the same tablecloth as last year and the year before. And no, I didn’t iron it…I’m not that kind of girl! Besides, that’s part of the “shabby”!

I mixed 2 sets of dishes and tied the dinner and salad plates in fun ribbons that I’ve had since forever…

The ribbon takes care of the whimsical…

…and the mod…

The delicate blue glasses are vintage – they were my mom’s from before I was born.

The “centerpiece” is comprised of repurposed Classico pasta sauce jars, filled with a tealight and topped with ribbon, further contributing to the shabby chicness…

But best of all were the family we were blessed to have joining us at this table…

Here’s wishing all of you a warm and wonderful holiday season, filled with the love and laughter of family and friends!

robin’s egg blue

12 September 2010 by Andrea 3 Comments

Robin’s egg blue. Sky blue. Tiffany box blue. I love all of those gorgeous blue hues. But there aren’t really any rooms in my home where an entirely blue room would work well. So I decided to create a little vignette at the bottom of the stairs that isn’t really part of any room, but the perfect place for a splash of robin’s egg blue.

And because I have a bird problem, when I think about robin’s egg blue, I start getting all literal, thinking about eggs and nests and feathers and birdhouses and branches…need I say more? I’ll just show you…

I decided to create a vignette that brought a bit of the outdoors in. Most of the items in the vignette I already owned. Only had to purchase the nest, eggs, and feather, so this whole arrangement cost me less than $5.

This small square glass plate is from my old house, where I used it as a candle dish on the mantel. I think it set me back a whopping $1.99 at Home Goods.

Then there’s this gorgeous blue & black floral bowl. Another inexpensive Home Goods find.

My favorite part of the vignette is the nest with eggs, and the branch with a feather. I simply hot glued the eggs into the nest, then tied a little floral wire on the back of the nest so I could hang it on a nail.

When I got the bug to do this project and needed a tree branch, I took a walk on the path that goes around our neighborhood, which backs up to a tree-lined corn field. Whenever I ride my bike along the path, I have to dodge fallen branches, so I figured I’d find something good there, and I wasn’t disappointed. I hammered some nails strategically at the joints of the branches, so I wouldn’t have to nail through the branch itself, and risk splitting it.

To give the illusion of a bird, I used a colorful feather, which is actually a Christmas ornament, tucked behind the branch. Who would decorate their Christmas tree with bird feathers? Me! Guilty as charged!

Rather than try to hide the thermostat, I just incorporated it into the vignette, and it more or less becomes unnoticeable.

On the little black table sits a metal candy dish with a bird perched on it, a picture frame, and the lid from a china teapot. Yes, that still is the fake photo in the frame from when I first bought it, even though I’ve had it for a solid 4 years! Eventually I’ll get around to finding just the right photo!

The teapot lid has a story to it as well. Someone – a child or pet, but I can’t quite recall – accidentally sent the whole thing flying across the room on a collision course with a tile floor, and I had to piece together the lid with ceramic glue…now that was a project! But I loved it so much, I couldn’t bear to call it a loss and toss it in the trash. It lives again in this fun vignette, full of robin’s egg blue.

Do you have something in your home that’s inspired by good ole’ Ruby Redbreast?

PS…this post was inspired by Donna over at Funky Junk Interiors…she’s having a Robin’s Egg Blue link party, so check it out!