You know you are in Indiana...

J. Irwin Miller house completed in 1957

Gotcha didn't I! You were thinking corn fields, Hoosiers ( the greatest sports movie ever made) and, well, dull.  I am from Indiana. I got Indiana blood which is 1/2 basketball (even if you do not give a damn about basketball), and the other is that "down to earth" mentality. There are also many jewels in Indiana including the most glorious trees, forests and this....

landscape architecture by Daniel Kiley, those are flowering magnolia trees

Be still my freakin' heart! Modern+Color=HEAVEN

Considered one of the most  important modernist homes in the country this is the historic J. Irwin Miller home in Columbus Indiana commissioned in 1953 by Industrialist J. Irwin Miller and his wife Xenia Simons Miller and designed by the dream team of Finish born architect Saarinen, Interior designer Alexander Girard and landscape designer Daniel Urban Kiley.

Maybe the earliest conversation pit of our time

So YUMMMMMMMY

When I saw this I wanted to rush right into a bedroom and try to paint it on a wall.  Will you look at those lush colors!

 It simply makes my heart quicken.  Look closely at how many colors there are. And how saturated they are. OMG, was all I could say. And there was something modern about the colors.

And guess what? These are WALLPAPERS. Show me another wallpaper with this many colors that is not a digital print. (ok ok, some Designer Guild papers...)

I blew up the one above so you would have a closer look at the multitude of colors. I found these fabulous papers via Home-Styling, the wonderful blog of the very talented Portuguese designer Ana Antunes who even has her own home makeover show in Portugal. I SO LUV international designers. There is a whole world out there!...

This is the work of Sophia Portocarrero , a Portuguese wallpaper & fabric designer who creates & designs exclusives patterns......

Form her site: "Permanently aware to the international trends we conceive new patterns using unexpected colour combinations, in naturalistic themes from classicist inspiration applying new size scales. Our translation from traditional motives develops into modern patterns with a strong timelessness character. Illustrations of graphical floral contents are inspired from the 30’s and 50’s".

My very first thought when I saw these papers was how marvelous they would look in a modern interior.  NOT an entire room but one wall, hanging like the piece of art they are. 

Not Paint....

 

Pick a color you love that you want to see on a wall or in an entire room or above/below a chair rail or on a stencil...

Via Golden Touch, work in progress

and instead of using paint use Interno Lime Wash which you can find here. It is a glorious finish that "blooms" with the light, is saturated with pigment and has the look of weathered stucco you find only in Italy except..

Entry Hall by Golden Touch

it comes in EVERY color you can imagine.  Porters Paints of Australia manufactures, without a doubt, the most beautiful speciality finishes I have ever worked with.  Their supplier in the USA is Sydney Harbour Paints (the websites are exactly the same). You can email them to order. I have the "real" painted out fan deck which literaly must have my saliva on it.

Stencil Heaven

Be Still My Heart! 
(vintage collection, those were the days)

You must go right now (or when you can sneak it in at work) to Stencil Library for a glorious visual creative feast and inspiration. The website is revamped and it is Fantastic. I have purchased many stencils from SL. The owners, Helen Morris and her family, are just the best. Even though located in the UK they ship worldwide at excellent flat rates. There are thousand of stencils in any style you can imagine. These are some new ones I so adore:

These stencil examples are repeated to look like wallpaper. I want this one on the wall behind my bed! 
Oo-la-la baby!

                

Stencil Heaven Redux

single damask  stencil

In case you have not noticed I am a HUGE fan of stenciling. It is easy, fun, inexpensive and gives you instant wall design that is so easy to change.  And as I am sure you know, stenciling ain't what it use to be. To that end you MUST visit  Royal Design Studio and Modello Designs  to see the inventive, inspirational and creative genius of Melanie Royals.

an "all over" stencil is a design repeated so you can cover more area at one time

Here you can purchase all kinds of stencil designs including "all over" patterns for large areas.  And Melanie has plenty of classes and even web classes which are so easy to take over the internet while in your 'jamas (SP?). 

Get your Redo On! Start at the Start...

Lets start at the start. That place you enter and leave from everyday. It is an entry/exit area of some sort, probably a smallish space and thus not a big tackling job. Come on and just do it*.  Wake up baby and GO WILD. This is the perfect place. No one hangs out in here and declare every bit of it YOURS.  Lets say you want to change this:

(the entry to my client's apartment BEFORE)

                                                                                  

A nice size entry but a bit crowded. And how about doing something FUN and ELECTRIC like THIS:

mark chamberlain genius who also writes on color at AT

Lets get your cha-cha going when you leave home and get happy when you come back. I DARE Ya! OK, so here we go...how about trying THIS:

(AFTER: view entering, fab turquoise picture covering that fuse box now)

Yup, clear it out, tape up a zigzag pattern and paint it! Damn, that was not so hard was it? And just go right over the top of the doorways:

LUV Today / Use of Trim

Nuevo Estillo Girls Room

TRIM PART: Jenny over at  Little Green Notebook  posted this lovely room designed by Nuevo Estillo. She pointed out the trim used along the wall edges. (although something this wide I would just paint). I adore using grosgrain ribbon for finishing off all kinds of things including using it on walls, furniture, lamp shades, frames and my cereal bowl (not really).  It makes the edge of anything look very clean. You use it where you only dust, not wash. If you want to do this buy your trim in BULK (many places on internet) because those small rolls add up fast for a big project! I highly recommend using "sealah" double sided tape (google it, not in stores!) for applying trim to walls where you want a seamless, perfect application all the way to the edges. Sealah comes in many different widths to fit standard trim sizes. Glue can be lumpy, show thru and difficult to get a sealed edge without a mess of cleanup along the way.  I use high tack, fast drying, fabric adhesive on small projects.

LUV PART : Come on! Those colors are to die for. And the design. What works: one wall of color with the same color repeated on pillows and the bed skirt. It connects the color on the tall wall out into the room at floor level. The curtain color the same as and following the vertical line of the wall trim. Pink introduced as the third accent color. And thank god there is the left wall is left for ones "stuff", in this case a bunch of awards. Every room needs a place for our "stuff".  It can be organized but geez , we are human and don't live in a magazine.

Update : The lovely Maryam of My Marrakesh asked about bulk trim which I should have posted. If you are doing walls and curtains etc you want bulk ribbon. Check out   Strano Designs  and they ship worldwide, Ribbons and Trims    if you need 100 yards. And the Ribbon Lady. For the Sealah tape go HERE

About Me

You may recall Domino Magazine. They had a decorating contest and because of you, my dear readers, I won!
It was a HUGE honor and flattering and I got my 15 minutes of fame along with 10k!
I won for my bedroom renovation which I had planned for and saved for.....forever.

 My name is Catherine (I am liking "Cat" right now) and I am still a full time lawyer in San Francisco and probably will be as long as I can because I got to pay for Pooh's college (see below).  I became a lawyer because I was a very poor teacher, didn't know what to do next, was dating a lawyer so why not?

I dabble in redoing, designing, painting, fixing, anything creative or I would go nuts.

Lately I have been seriously considering selling everything, buying an RV and visiting every major and minor league ballpark in the country. Plus I would get to "redo " an RV.  I would drink many martinis. I love baseball and kind of fancy myself an older version of Susan Sarandon in Bull Durham.

College Redux/My Weekend

Come On! How cute is this Chaise?! I am so proud of the way it came out. It was an awful "mature-woman" (not "little old lady") pink and faded but had great bones, all feather cushions. From the thrift store. I helped the Pooh pick out the fabrics from a fab discount fabric store in NY and determined the application.

Showing herself off again. Love the box pleats that do not go to the floor. She's got on a short sexy skirt! (yes, I do speak to furniture)

Anyways The Pooh went off to college again last fall, is sharing a house and has her very OWN big bedroom, an unbelievable luxery for a college student. Of course she had to move her stuff in "RIGHT AWAY THIS WEEKEND MOM!" as she said on a THURSDAY. Her previously painted bookcases and desk were completely trashed from the first two years of college and desperately needed a redo.  

The chaise was the color inspiration.

Desk Finished (no before pic,  just picture an old white leather glove in the middle of the street)

 We are talking about priming, 2 coats of paint, stenciling and 2 coats of poly in THREE days on THREE pieces! 

I do not have a studio/work room so everything gets done right in the kitchen/living room/dining area in the winter. What difference does it make to have a creative mess for a few days. I love the way that slim, inexpensive rolling cart from CS fits under the desk. Note: desk drawer is gone. I was told it "broke" when desk was being moved. (probably during some party...)

 A touch of silver leaf on the applique. You got to not worry about leafing. Slap on some water based size (glue), let it tac up, slap on a piece of leaf and brush it off.

a BIG bulletin board for the Pooh

 

I got this idea from Centsational Girl. She is sensational too. Simple: Cork squares glued onto a big stretched canvas, covered in fabric, lots of crossed ribbon to hold stuff, finished off with a glued-on frame made with cheap pieces of molding. Stripped grosgrain trim glued with fabric tack. PIcture wire for hanging on the back. 4' x 3'

What are you Looking at Today

I sit at my laptop all day (unless I am attending to legal stuff in court etc)."What are you looking at Today" is right next to the laptop. Whew! I swear my blood pressure lowers each time I galnce away from the scren. It can be anything that brings you joy and don't spend time arranging and pondering. Just do it. I love my little bits of flowers from the garden and coffee in a pretty cup. What a difference it makes and what a simple idea. I highly recommend it.