charmgirl's Profile

Just painted our new master bedroom Benjamin Moore "Love Affair", a plum raisin shade. Mixing with it is copper, rust & deep raspberry shades. Love the warmth with lamp light & the pop in the daytime.

Anything with Elderflower liqueur in it, is a winner. Since my wedding in 2010, (signature cocktail) I have found ways to use this mild, delicious nectar in & on many foods. Try some on Vanilla ice cream.

I am an Interior Designer who also sew all my client' window treatments. I love to mix fabrics together to create that unique design that sets you apart from all the ready mades out there. Use a band of your darkest fabric at the bottom to visually & sometimes physically, add weight to the panels. Add weighted pieces to the inside of the hem to hold the panels in line properly. A fun & relatively inexpensive rod idea is to use copper tubing. I buy mine at Home Depot & they can cut it to size for you. Get other copper bits in the plumbing dept. to use for end caps. Rings & brackets can be spray painted with Krylon copper metal paint. Hope you like this tip.

In most of the rooms, the small area rugs were insignificant. When you put down an undersized rug, it only emphasizes an already small room or makes a larger room appear smaller. Attention goes to the bright addition to the floor & suddenly it sucks in the largess.
Either use a larger rug with a 12"-16" carpet border or define a particular space, but just don't drop it down willy nilly.

High praise from a designer of children' rooms! Everything is so well pulled together & each room has the room to grow that you want. Love the map clothes. Where did you find them?

I have a workroom that will make crib sheets to fit your mattress. I also have a resource for contemporary pirate & dinosaur prints. The same fabrics can then be used to make window treatments, bumpers, etc. along with contrasting stripes & plaids. Mixing it up adds sophistication & longevity.

Thank you poster #1 for correcting the punctuation on the title "Befores & Afters". As soon as I read it, I knew it was an error & wanted to post until I read yours.

Not quite sure what your readers were thinking with their votes for 2 of these winners. The "cheerful nursery" & the "serendipitous nursery" are so not winners after all that I saw submitted. I am surprised by the dark green wall with random colorful placements & in the other, the mix of the wallpaper & the rug are just too much.

As a designer of children' rooms I am so often suggesting to clients to do a bold accent wall. And once they see a large sampling, they go for it. It takes some getting used to if you are a 4 walls of a kind, kind of person. And not just in kids rooms, all rooms can use that touch of WOW!

I have made blackboards for many client' children, but never as a headboard for all the above reasons. Every room has that behind the door wall space with nothing on it. Do it there. The first few feet will be low enough for the youngest to draw on & as they grow, you have the upper part.