Makely

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!

Today is Day 13 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.

A few weekends ago, I took a road trip to the Round Top, Texas area to shop the twice yearly antique market.  Although Round Top only has 90 residents, thousands of shoppers and antique vendors descend upon the small town each spring and fall.  Quite literally, there are tents set up in the middle of pastures spread out over three little towns (Round Top, Warrenton and Carmine), and vendors ship in wares from all over the world.  It is truly something to experience if you ever get the chance to attend.

The first time that I attended, I was so taken by the excitement of it all that I forgot to take any pictures to share with you guys.  I had my wits about me this year, and I captured some of my favorite items.  The vendors in Warrenton, Texas had the best selection of items at the best prices.  It is an eclectic shoppers paradise!

One of the first things we ran across were these great spheres of curly wood.  My friend bought one to make a light fixture over her breakfast room table.  As you can imagine, her project came out beautifully!

Need a chandelier?  Warrenton was the place to find them!  There were some real beauties that day.

This loveseat was obviously a reproduction (you have to be careful if you are really shopping for antiques!), but I thought it was a fun twist on a fairly traditional piece.

These rococo style chairs were fabulous!

Just about every vendor had a great selection of old trunks.

The merchandising within each tent was a lesson in eclectic style.

I thought this was a creative repurposing of an old arm chair.  It’s been crafted into a new porch swing.

Letters, letters everywhere.

I’m not sure what I would have done with them, but these pieces of rock were just beautiful.  The color was such a brilliant turquoise.  This vendor had some that were polished, and they really made a statement.

This was a creative way to display two of my favorite things – a chandelier and a birdcage!  I’ve seen birdcage chandeliers before, but the birdcages are usually much more decorative.  I really like the look of this one.

There were certainly some freaky things, too.  I felt like I was on an episode of Oddities at times.

Yikes.

Freaky stuff aside, there’s an overwhelming amount of goodies and deals to be had at the Round Top Antique Market.  I ended up bringing home two really amazing items, which I’ll show off to you soon.  For the larger spring show in 2012, I’m going to join a group of gals in taking an RV out there and staying a few days instead of just doing a one-day road trip.  It is going to be amazing, and I can hardly wait!

Do you have an antique show in your area?  I know they have them (on a smaller scale than spread out over 3 towns!) all over the country.  I’d love to hear about shows you’ve been to and what types of items you found.