Mod Podge and other Decoupage products are necessities in your craft room! But they are a bit pricey.
Try making your own - easy and thrifty.
Use 3 parts white glue and 1 part water. Put it in a jar or other air tight container. Shake Shake Shake!
This creates a matte finish mix.
Bedding and Bath Sale at K-Mart
All Essential Home, Cannon, Joe Boxer and Abbey Hill Bed Pillows On Sale 1/11-1/17
All Cannon Comforters On Sale 1/11-1/17
All Jaclyn Smith Comforters On Sale 1/11-1/17
January is a great month for white sales. These K-Mart links are a great deal! Watch for more sale information.
Janet
Add personality!
Use personal family items such as photos, vacation souvenirs or theme park / movie tickets and brochures in a special frame.
Use what you have!
Sounds kinda simple, but sometimes just looking around your house for items that would offer a new look in another part of your home. Look through your attic, closet, basement and inventory all of your pictures, knickknacks, furniture, etc. Then paint, refinish, or buy some cheap fabric and throw it over the piece.
Disguise!
If you can't afford to replace, disguise! Cover a sofa, lay a rag rug over that stained carpet, or use fabric to screen an unpleasant view.
Be creative
Use fabric from sheets and quilts, use yard sales to locate furniture to be painted to match your décor, and visit your dollar shop on a regular basis for picture frames and candles. Express yourself. Do you love music? Look for old sheet music with great covers whenever you're at an antique or junk store, garage sale or thrift store, or at a going-out-of-business sale at a music store. Hang the music on the wall above your piano, framed or unframed. Do you sew? Keep an eye open for antique (or just old) sewing equipment and display it on the walls and shelves of your sewing room.
Thrifty artwork
For thrifty artwork, don’t buy at a high-end art gallery - instead window shop the galleries and magazines for ideas on what you would like.
Then take some time to check online.
There are dozens of discount artwork websites, many of which offer prints of popular paintings. Try an e-coupon site to get some additional discounts on artwork. You can find coupon codes for some of the top discount artwork sites, saving you a great deal. Many throw in free shipping for going through one of these discount coupon sites.
Buying prints is an easy way to save some money. Print manufacturers will take a copy of a famous piece of artwork and print it out on a sheet of paper. They come in a variety of different sizes, and work well for almost any décor. Prints are fairly cheap and you can do the framing and matting yourself. Go to your local craft store to purchase an inexpensive frame and mat. It takes only seconds to put together, and you will be very pleased with the overall look. No one will ever know how much money you saved by doing it yourself!
You can frame just about anything. Try framing posters, postcards, or even play programs for an interesting look.
More to come!
Janet
Check out http://www.thrifty411.com/ for more on being thrifty and frugal.
Today - Thrifty Decorating (part 1)
Remember - with decorating; as with clothing, it's not so much what you have as what you do with it. The biggest secret of a fabulous (and thrifty) decorator is your imagination. You have to see the possibilities in what you find. You don’t have to spend a lot of money. You'll be surprised at what you can do yourself at no cost at all.
Look at objects to see what they could become: old milk-can could be transformed into a lamp, the base for a small table, an umbrella stand, or a planter. Be creative as you see each object's potential.
Look for inspiration. There is no shame is scouring books and magazines for the look you desire, then adapting their scheme to a budget decorator’s plan! Go to your local bookstore to get ideas for rooms, painting and refinishing furniture, etc. Their stock is much more up-to-date. Your library's current magazines are great, too.
Tackle the larger areas of the room first, such as walls, windows, and floors. That will make the fastest impact on the room.
Move things around
Rearrange until you find a new pleasing setup! Swap furniture from one room to another. Put items on a pretty shelf over a piece of furniture or some summer or fall branches stuffed into a vase. Mix and match furniture styles, fabrics, eras, etc.
Do some painting!
Paint is one of the most thrifty and fastest ways to get a new look. Use COLOR. Let your walls make as much of a statement as your furnishings (for a fraction of the price).
To create a sense of flow from room to room, select a dominant color for your main room, then pick up different shades of the same color and use them in subtle ways throughout the house.
It's no great surprise that desert colors -- oranges, reds, browns, and yellows -- are often used in decorating in the Southwest or that deep greens, earthy browns, and dark reds show up in mountain homes. Those are predominant colors in nature in those regions. The dominant natural colors of any part of the country can be used to subtly tie the interior of your home to the world outside.
You can fool the eye with the way you use paint, making a room appear either larger or smaller just by the choice of color. Cool colors and lighter tints tend to make walls look farther apart; rich, dark colors bring walls dramatically closer, creating an intimate look even in a large room.
Different colors tend to elicit different emotions:
Cool colors. Shades of blue, green, purple, and similar cool colors tend to have a calming influence -- excellent for bedrooms if you want to create a soothing haven.
Warm colors. Shades of red, orange, and yellow tend to have a strong, dramatic, inviting effect -- a look you might want for a living or dining room.
Light, bright colors. Lighter shades of yellow and the spectrum of whites can be cheerful and sunny -- great in a kitchen or family room.
More to come!
Check out http://www.thrifty411.com/ for more on being thrifty and frugal.
