The Vine: June 15, 2007
Hi Sars,
It’s my apartment. I just moved into a new place, and decided I need to actually decorate this one, now that I’m sort of an official grown-up now at the grand age of 27.
Only problem is, I am relatively poor these days (paying down my credit card debt isn’t leaving me much room in the budget for funky room decor). Do you or your readers have any advice for decorating a boring white-walled apartment on a low budget? I already have a lot of decent furniture, but I need help with what to put on the walls and cute little accents everyone else manages to put in their homes so flawlessly.
Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Thanks,
The only difference between this and an institution is I don’t need to tongue any meds
Dear Tongue,
You can do a bunch of different things — posters; framed photos; shelving with colored glass and toys mixed together; collages pinned to bulletin boards that you can redo when the mood strikes; squares of cork or colored fabric with pictures and postcards pinned to them; clocks or album covers or vintage ads — so the first thing to do is figure out your style, what goes with your furniture and what you’d like to look at every day. Maybe you want one pricey item that sort of unifies the space, and you go off that; mine is a vintage anatomical poster of a hen — heh — but most of the rest of my wall decor came from eBay, or it’s photos and vintage ads I matted myself because I’m cheap. Maybe you want to collect a whole bunch of posters and pictures, and rotate your collection now and then. Up to you.
Then you can start collecting — stoop sales, eBay, haunting Crate & Barrel.com for clearance sales, razoring cool ads out of vintage mags you got for a buck, whatever you want to do. A framed-photo array is always cool-looking, or if you collect toys or snowglobes or something you could do a staggered series of shelves and arrange them nicely. A friend of mine made a mosaic out of the free promo postcards you get in bars; it cost her nothing but the price of a pack of art-tack and it looked awesome.
Readers?
Tags: Ask The Readers retail
Over the years I had collected a huge variety of interesting picture frames at second-hand stores. I sprayed them all black & filled them with family photos & hung them with all the frames touching one another in a wide band around the room, very Vern Yip. It was a very inexpensive solution & I get TONS of compliments on it!
You cannot kill a peace lilly. And they have really pretty glossy leaves. Did I mention you can’t kill them? I honestly am not sure when I last watered mine, but it sits there looking lovely all the same! :-)
A couple of things you can do…
– stencil work, if you have the patience, pick out stencils you like, but a couple of small paint colours and get to it, it’s only a little area to paint (and paint over in white before you leave, if you have to), around door frames, windows, even on your own Ikea wood furniture.
– my bathroom was a mess, ugly weird patterned stucco EVERYWHERE, so I had an old piece of fabric I’d used as a curtain, and just staple gunned it to the wall (leaves only little holes).
– paint a drastic colour (bright or dark colour), but only paint one wall (saves money on paint…and painting over white when you leave, if you have to…)
ohhh, i LOVE Big Lots.
the one by my house has been carrying pier one stuff lately, although even at 50% off, most of it is too much for my slim budget.
but if you’re willing to paw through stuff and be imaginative, they are a great source of stuff. I scored about $280 worth of curtains for $70. we got a bunch of nice curtain rods for about 75% off list price.
Tuesday Morning is another good source of household goods, it’s similar to big lots, but ‘higher end’. I get all my fancypants high thread count sheets there, ohhhh how it’s worth it.
An easy, semi-crafty way to decorate is to hang a collection of similar items on a wall. For example, you can pick up some pretty single pieces of china or glass from flea markets or discount stores. Even Target has cool melamine plates (See: http://www.shopscadonline.com for some really neat ones) that would make interesting wall decor. You can buy plate hangers from a crafts store (about $1.50 ea.). Then just arrange a group of plates on the wall. It will add interest to your walls and breaks away from the picture frame box.
Another cool idea is decoupage. If you find some craft paper, tissue paper or even paper napkins with a pattern that you love, you can use ModPodge (found at craft stores everywhere for $5 a pint) to glue the tissue or paper to an item, like a cheap vase, lamp base or even furniture. It’s simple to do and can really help you turn a piece of junk into a personalized treasure.
Good luck!
I second craigslist Free postings, with one caveat. Anything that is porous, like wood or fabric, can harbor bedbugs. They are extremely difficult to get rid of, so be very careful what you choose to take. A good rule is to avoid “someone left X out by the dumpster” posts. If you can’t contact the owners, it’s better to leave it alone.
I love etsy.com for inexpensive, original artwork (plus a lot of cool jewelry and bath and body products, but you can’t really decorate the walls with those…)
My boring apartment was transformed with a bucket of paint (my living room is a warm peach — it feels like a hug, and everyone’s always, “I can’t believe you have orange walls! This is awesome.”) and drapes for the windows. I know what you’re thinking; you can’t afford drapes. I got creative and used tablecloths that I found on clearance at Target. And remember, you don’t have to do everything at once.
Oh! I just thought of another idea! You can frame single 12″ x 12″ sheets of scrapbook paper and hang them as art. I promise, some of the designs are really cool, and lots of them come in related themes or sets, which you could hang in a group. I mainly get my paper at Michaels or Target because they’re both on my way to work.
Some places I have found free (or relatively cheap) wall art for my apartment:
Cute plastic placemats from Target with multicolored dots on them for .99 cents each. They look very retro 60s on my wall.
My grandmother had these old “prints” of famous paintings that were actually given away at gas stations in the 50s. I suspect you could find stuff like that at a garage sale for fairly cheap. Or if you have older relatives who might be interested in cleaning out their closets.
Printing out pictures from the computer can be really cool — I had a nice color copy of a painting on 8×11 paper that I scanned in to my computer and printed out over nine pages. Color ink and photo paper can get expensive, though. Some friends of mine used the rastorbator linked by Jill upthread and printed up a photo of a random piece of sculpture in regular black and white on a large scale (it covers a 6×10 foot wall) and it looks awesome.
Friends who take photos, or your own photos. I actually had a great idea- of getting one of those big frames that has cutout shapes for multiple photos, like the kind you put family photos in.
Only, my idea is to put nifty, funky details of architecture, cool-looking-plants, scenery. And maybe a couple bits of magazine cutouts of “real” art
so it winds up looking like a puzzle or, instead of one picture, you have a dozen different ones, for staring at while lost in thought.
Also- get arty friends to photograph/draw/paint things for you. Offer to feed them in exchange.
When I had no money living in Germany, I got really cool single sheets of wrapping paper to hang. For less than $5 you can get at least 1 or 2 nice ones. Check a local fancyschmancy gift or stationary store by you.
Then, Ikea or Target or one of those places should have a cool cheap picture frame thing. And voila!
You could do a neat little trick my creative sister did at my parent’s house. It’s cheap, and you don’t have to be an artist. She took flowers and placed them on different colored gift boxes, took a picture of it and mounted them in clear plastic frames that usually are magnetized for the fridge. Well, then she took ribbon and hot glued it to the backs to make a pretty hanger for it and then hung them on the wall. It was a very nice effect.
Tuesday Morning, if you have locations near you, are wonderful for decorative items. You’ll have to search a bit, they have very nice quality items for pretty cheap – including frames.
I’m into nature photography, so I haunt local art shows. I’ve gotten some wonderful pieces fairly reasonably priced. (Under 100 dollars, although larger ones cost more.) One hint is that if they are selling prints framed, take it. It’ll almost always be cheaper than having the item framed, unless its a completely standard size print.
Coldwater Creek outlet often has nice decorative items, and they often have 50% off everything sales – if you are quick, you can nab nice framed prints. My whole house is pretty much a couple of local photographers, plus coldwater creek prints.
See if you can find the book “The Movable Nest.” It has tips for useful and interesting home decor, improvements, and decorations. It’s about 20 years out of date as pricing goes, but it still has good ideas. I also appreciate the Christopher Lowell Show. He specializes in home projects that are both inexpensive and innovative. Even when you hate the color of what he’s doing, or the style or something, you can modify it to be pretty cool.
Also, if you plan on matting and framing a lot of pictures: BUY A MAT CUTTER. Seriously. Get the big set that has stops for the blade so you don’t have to dick around with an exacto knife and a ruler. It’ll run you like $80 on sale, and matboard runs between $6 and $20 per sheet, depending on style and quality. Art stores that do framing generally have mat scraps for sale (local art stores, never the big ones) at a discount. It’s really easy to do once you get the hang of it, and if you get good, it’s a very marketable skill.