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Thursday, March 4, 2010

Enter My Brain If You Dare!!!

I did a post recently on Design Springboards, here.  I have a project that I am starting out slowly and I am not sure when I will be able to finish it, but I have made a little progress that has pointed me in the direction I need to go. My thought process started like this.............(You are now entering my brain).(insert The Twilight-Zone music here)
  1. I desired a change in the playroom (Kiddos are getting older, time for a change).
  2. Looked in my inspiration folder that I have been collecting pictures in for a couple of years.
  3. Noticed there was a consistent color theme (actually, this was a bit of a surprise, but when you randomly select pictures, a common thread will start appearing). I think this is the most important step in finding what you really like. Do it randomly and go with your heart.  If you like it save the picture.
  4. Once I had the color family I was going to use, then the fun part, shopping for my first element or Spring board.
  5. Next the shopping continued until I had enough items that a picture started to emerge.
  6. Since this is a playroom and also used as a guest room it has a bed in it. We need new furniture desperately but due to budget constraints this might have to wait for awhile.
  7. Now that I have the color pallete, I now know what color and design of furniture I am looking for.It needs to be crisp and white, fun with simple lines.  (I have found a bed I really want and will show it to you later.)
With all this in mind I am going to show you pictures of my inspiration file and then my Springboard. After that, I will show you the fabrics of the various elements I have pulled together so far. Here we go..........










Serena & Lily bedding

The funny thing about all of this, is I have talked for about 2-3 years about wanting a black and white color scheme in the play room. See how interesting it is when you put a collage of inspiration photos together. No black and white here, only blues and greens.

Next is my Spring Board..........

TA-DA! This is the quilt I am using. It is beyond perfect for what I have in mind. What makes this even better is I got it on clearance at TJMaxx for $10!!! I would have purchased it even at full price because it was that perfect for the room. They also had some sheets and pillows to go with it but you know me. I can not Smatch! (my word for matchy/matchy). I have to make it hard on myself and try to co-ordinate things.  The next step was to find some elements to go with this quilt. This room is also a guest room, so the bed is sometimes slept in by a boy and sometimes by a girl.  With that in mind I knew I needed two sets of elements to address each gender.
Next came this............

I had  seen this earlier and fell in love with the color and pattern, but at that point I did not have the quilt(Springboard). Once I had the quilt I could move forward, so I quickly went back to the pillows and grabbed two of these-one large and one small. I thought it might be too strong because it is so bright, but I loved it with the quilt.  In my minds eye it was starting to come together.

Next came the sheets for the boys bed. These sheets are a very tiny bright turqouise pin stripe. They appear brighter in person so now I had another puzzle piece to the bedding.

Next I needed some pillows to complete this look.............

I found this Nautica pillow sham on clearance for $5.00. Boy, I am on a roll. Now I have the boys bed complete.

 Onto the girls bedding...........

When I saw this round pillow I just knew it would look great with the quilt. I brought all my treasures home and started playing with the bed.  I went shopping in my house and found this lamp in my closet. (I told you I love lamps and they are hidden in closets through out my home).............

It just happens to be the perfect in-between blue and I love the gourd shape, very Christopher Spitzmilleresque. ( I think I just made up another word)
In this room I have a small wicker table that I covered with a lime green tablecloth making it look like a table skirt. Here is a close up of the fabric. It is banquet size so I had plenty to work with.  I found this at GW last year for $5.00.........


The last two pieces I needed for the room were a pillow and sheets for the girl bed.  I forgot I already had the perfect sheets from Target that I had purchased about 4 years ago.........

I am in love with this pillow. The fabric is a linen and I am in love with all of the colors. The large flower is more of a shocking pink with red under-tones in person.  I got this on clearance for $10 and I would have paid full price. Too me this made the bed and once I put it in there, I smiled!! Remember that is my very technical design test.
Here are the sheets that I already had and it completed the picture............

Pretty cute and they go so well with the quilt it looks as if they were almost a set.

Boy Bed Elements.........




Girls Bed Elements.............
















Now you see the evoulution of how my mind worked on this project I will show you the bed all made up in a future post, I promise it won't be too long before I post it. In that post I will also show you some other pictures of some elements I might like to use. I need to do a little virtual shopping. I hope you had some fun tagging along in my brain. Next choice to make is Paint!


"Enjoy the Process" Of: Finding your own inspirations and design Springboard.

Kathysue