RedRum, RedRum

Does anyone get the reference to that title?

In my previous post "Rome Wasn't Built In A Day"  I showed you the beginning of the evolution of my red bedroom.  Here's a little more.

As usual, I was in Home Goods one day and I saw this armoire which was the right size and was the same color wood as my vanity desk, so I went for it.  I had been looking at all the furniture stores in my area for a white armoire, which of course they didn't have, or one that would fit my needs and that perhaps I could paint.  The ones I saw along the way were either way too big, just not the right configuration or extremely expensive.  The one from Home Goods is great.  Every now and then I look at it and think about painting it.  It goes pretty well as is.  What do you think?

Also along the way, as I was looking for a red chandelier for my bedroom ceiling (see my first post and the inspiration red room picture), I had a tough time finding anything and then one day, I came across this red acrylic chandelier.  It looks like crystal, you really can't tell that it's not crystal until you get up close and touch it.  I got a really good deal on it.  Here's my sister graciously holding it up for me to see how it looks.  I haven't had it installed yet, but it's on the list.

Picture the chandelier without the little shades and also, I was considering putting a cool white border to highlight the chandelier. I'm still working on that.  Do I center it over the bed?  or center it to the room?  I've read about different schools of thought.  What do you think?

The next thing I had to do was to figure out what decorative items to put on top of the armoire because it was just dead space.  Don't laugh, but I bought like eight or so types of vases  all at once from Home Goods, some very modern and some classic, all white.  I had to bring them all home in order to try them out on top of the armoire.  The modern pieces I got turned out to be way to tall to fit but that was fine because I really liked the ceramic ginger jars instead.  I needed something to group with them and remembered that I had bought these white vinyl croc boxes.  Here is what it looks like now:

I love the fact that the ginger jars have the trellis like pattern, in two different sizes, which will echo the Red Trellis fabric pattern I created on www.spoonflower.com and will eventually use to make curtains. The white boxes just were perfect.  I had found them at Home Goods as well and planned to use them for other things.  In fact, I keep looking to see if I can find more, but I'm having trouble finding white again.  I'll get lucky one day.  Here is the Red Trellis fabric, see how it all ties in together? 

There is one more element that echoes the trellis pattern that I would like to share in this post.  One of my former work colleagues was cleaning out his office and was going to get rid of a shadow box from pottery barn.  I didn't have anything specific in mind, but I asked if I could have it instead of it being thrown away.  The frame was brown wood and the inside was lined in beige canvas.  I took it home and after some thought, settled on a plan to recycle the shadow box into a cool wall art piece.  Because it was going on the red wall, I painted it all, what else but white.  I bought red crystal chandelier pieces from ebay and using clear Elmer's glue, I glued down the crystal pieces in a pattern.  When I hatched the idea for this project, I thought about using a very large canvas and making a large wall piece, but then I decided the shadow box was better and that I would like to paint an original artwork on a large canvas instead (see earlier post).  I absolutely love the finished project.  Here are the visuals.

I just love how this project came out!  I got to add more jewels into the decor which is always good and it looks great on the small wall between the closet and the door.  It was a really easy project to do.  The white painting took most of the time. 

Thanks for stopping by and Stay tuned for more creativity!

"Windows are the eyes of a room, drapes are the eyelashes"

Drapes, Curtains, what's the difference?  Beats me.  I just know that I like them and needed them on my windows.  Like everything else I've purchased or made in my new place, the search was long and I confess probably obsessive.  Ands it funny, sometimes I have a vision of what I think I want and it turns out to be totally different and other times, I know exactly what I want and if I can't find it (or afford it), I have to make it happen. 

I have three windows in my apartment.  Two large picture windows and one regular sized window.   Because of the saturated colors I have in my place (blue in the living room, red in the bedroom, white in the dining room), most of the furniture is white or light so as to not compete with the color.  More on that later, but after trying a few options, I decided to go with light/white curtains. And I decided to use the same pattern for all the windows in the main living space because they were all on the same wall, despite the different wall color.

So one day, I happened to be in Bed, Bath and Beyond passing the shower curtain section and my eye was caught by a shimmering curtain hanging up.  Hmm, I thought, this is cool.

I really liked the hourglass pattern.  I really liked the silver sequins that made up the hourglass pattern and I liked the shinier background which reminded me of the sheen of raw silk.  Luxury! I love diamonds and sparkle. I'm not afraid to decorate with them! So, I grabbed a few packages and brought them home, opened one and spent days looking at it against the blue painted wall of the living room and the swatch of wallpaper to eventually go up in the dining room.   Just in case, I brought home a few other options and swatches of fabric to compare and in the end this one won the battle. It is called Infinity Shower Curtain. 

All was going well, I finally made a decision.  The only problem was that the dimensions of a shower curtain (72 x 72) are very different than the dimensions of a window curtain (usually longer and not as wide).  I bunched up the 72 inches wide shower curtain to see if it was too much fabric, but it worked.  So yay, I didn't have to make changes to the width.  My ceiling height is 8 feet or 96 inches and I wanted some pooling of fabric on the floor.  This meant that I had to add length to the pre-made shower curtain.   But how to connect the pieces so it looked good?  A ribbon to hide the edges of both pieces and to connect them, but what kind of ribbon?  Another thing to obsess about.  I tried a few options and didn't like anything.  I ended up making a custom sash with a strip of the shower curtain and metallic silver ribbon sewed on both edges.  Now just keep in mind, I said I was creative, I didn't say I was a master sewer.  Unless you look really close, you don't notice anything that might possibly not be perfect!

I picked up some really cool clear faceted crystal curtain hardware from JCPenny to hang the curtains on.  The trick to making a window and ceiling look taller/higher, is to hang curtains as high as possible.  I plan on getting crown molding, so I left a little room when I installed the curtain rods.  Then I sewed away and here is what the curtains look like now.  Oh, one more note.  I didn't like all of the silver metal of the curtain rods (very long curtain rod, not easy to install alone) and decided to try covering the rods with extra fabric.  I think it came out cool.  What do you think?

Please ignore the shade on the window, that was there from previous owner and will be replaced eventually! Oh, can't wait.  Here's the dining room.

And one more picture - with the sunlight streaming through!

Kitty makes a cameo. You can see some of my pretty flower on the terrace.

Okay, one more thing.  For the bedroom, which to remind you is RED, I wanted a geometric bold pattern with bright white as the background and red as the pattern color.  I was inspired by some fabrics I saw online but the colors were all wrong.  So I found a website, www.spoonflower.com where you can create your own patterns and get them printed on different types of fabric.  So, that is exactly what I did.  I made my own pattern using mostly Photoshop and then uploaded it to spoonflower and now I (and everyone) can order the fabric (when I get a job) and make curtains for the picture window in my bedroom.  Here is what the pattern looks like that I call Red Trellis.  Don't even get me started on picking the right RGB pantone color so it would print the right color.  Actually, I should say a few words about this.  What you see on the computer screen, is not necessarily what others see on their computer screens and not necessarily what will print out from the computer.  So, in order to ensure the color you want comes out right, you must make sure you use the right settings.  Really simply, because its more complicated, there are codes for different colors.  On spoonflower, there is an option to print on a yard of fabric, color charts.  You can see a tiny bit of it on the very right of the picture of the finished curtains in the dining room. This is a yard of thumb size color swatches very close together.  Put it this way, it took me a while in different lighting to figure out which red to use.  Luckily, it came out well when printed.  One last note, a red that was medium in color, turned out to be coral when printed on fabric so I had to have real red, the color I picked looks much darker on screen.

Okay, that's it for now. Time to go to sleep. 

Thanks for stopping by and stay tuned for more creativity!