Today is Day 15 of a 31 day series on creating and cultivating an eclectic home.  For some crazy reason, I have accepted The Nester’s challenge to write on the same theme every day for the month of October.  This may end up killing me.  Or you.  But, I appreciate you reading and welcome your comments.

I was recently reading the September issue of Elle Decor (yes, it takes me a while to get through all my magazines), and came upon a delightful feature on a 25-year old artist named Payton Cosell Turner.  She created this fun damask wallpaper.

Not immediately blown away?  Well, take a closer look.

If you can’t tell, those are stickers.  Turner applies thousands and thousands of ordinary stickers onto wallpaper panels to create uniquely custom wall coverings for her clients.  She originally devised the sticker wall coverings for her senior thesis, and has made a career of it since graduating in 2008.

Perhaps a stickered wallpaper (or should we call it an art installation?) isn’t part of your eclectic style, but you have to give Turner props for coming up with such a creative idea.  I think many times, we come up with interesting ideas but don’t see them to fruition.  What if we tried to create all of those projects that aren’t quite completely formulated in our minds?

Today, I challenge you to stick to it.  Pick one of those ideas that’s been rolling around in your mind and just try it.  The worst that can happen is that it doesn’t work out and you learn something new.  That’s a pretty good outcome, don’t you think?

Today is Day 14 of a 31 day series on creating and cultivating an eclectic home.  For some crazy reason, I have accepted The Nester’s challenge to write on the same theme every day for the month of October.  This may end up killing me.  Or you.  But, I appreciate you reading and welcome your comments.

One of the challenges of creating an eclectic home is trying to figure out how to make all of your furniture pieces work together.  It’s a task that can feel daunting, but it doesn’t have to be.  Today I am going to share a few guidelines that will make the process of mixing wood tones a bit easier.

When you are working with pieces that are wood toned, you want to keep colors in a similar range.  Generally, very light wood colors, such as natural and the light golden colors, don’t work well with the very dark pieces, such as espresso.  If you have a dark piece in the room, keep your other wood tones in the mid-range.  The room below is designed by Laura Hardin, the fabulous designer whom Rhoda and I worked with at our HGTV/Shaw floors challenge.  I love the way she combined the dark china cabinet with the mid-range table and chairs.  The dark piece on the wall really grounds the room.

A room with too many similarly toned wood pieces can look stagnant.  Whether you decide to mix up the wood tones or paint just a portion of one piece, the break in tones will add a lot of style to your room.  In the below photo from a home tour at Design Sponge, you can see that the legs and skirt of the table have been painted blue.  It’s that introduction of color that allows the little wooden side table to cozy up to desk.

If you are decorating around wood tones that are installed in your home, such as cabinetry or flooring, you need to make sure that you take those into account.  If your wood (or laminate) flooring is particularly dark, make sure that you incorporate some lighter, painted, or whitewashed pieces to lighten the room.  If the wood in your home is light, you will want to add some darker pieces to ground the room.  In the photo below (via Pinterest), you can see that this busy room works because of the use of color and that the wooden pieces are a contrast to the dark herringbone wood floor.

Are you having trouble mixing wood pieces or any other eclectic style in your home?  Towards the end of this series, I’d love to share a few reader photos and help tie some eclectic rooms together.  If you are interested in getting some ideas that you could easily implement, please email me at lindsay@makelyhome.com.

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All of this 31 Days excitement made me forget to announce the winner for the $100 Visa giftcard from DAP Products!

Congrats to Ms. Sourkraut, Commenter #5, for winning this great prize!