Crafts & Projects

One thing I have tried to do in my apartment, both out of necessity and desire is decorate and accessorize with objects and images that look beautiful to me even if they aren’t high art.

This is the north wall-lette of my bedroom. It’s pretty narrow (the door is just to the right) and impeded by both the radiator and the light switch. It also gets a lot of sun through the three large windows on the front wall.

I didn’t want to hang a print here because it might fade from exposure. It would have been awkward to place one individual item with the light switch in the way of any symmetry.

The first thing I did was change out the switch plate. The gold one that was here when I moved in clashed with the silver coating on the radiator. I don’t think my landlord thinks himself an interior designer, but hello! That’s a catastrophic aesthetic error. I bought the matte white switch plate at Target or Home Depot for less than three dollars. I couldn’t have any distraction from the aged Victorian radiator.

The zinc letter E is from, yes, Anthropologie‘s monogram collection (8″ high, $18; 25″ high, $98). I staked out two different stores for two weeks until I found one with perfect texture imperfections. I really like the “drop-shadow” it casts on the wall in the early afternoon.

I got those four silver frames on clearance at Urban Outfitters last winter. They were meant to be magnetic, but the tiny disc magnets on the back had all popped either out or in leaving holes—which happened to be perfect for hanging on flathead nails. I think I spent about $10.82 on two sets of two. They are very lightweight and I wouldn’t want anybody from Antiques Roadshow to see how faux they look up close, but I love the baroque-y shape.

I’m really crazy about what’s in the frames, though, and this is where the “use whatever looks beautiful” philosophy comes in. I replaced the halftone portraits of Ghandi with images clipped out of catalogs. You can decorate more than the coffee table with junk mail!

On the left is a deep purple velvet tufted chair that I saw in an Urban Outfitters catalog. I cut it in two, so it’s pretty obvious what’s in the photo if you look at just the top half, but the bottom half is meaningless without it’s mate. On the right is a scrap from a J. Crew catalog. They did a photoshoot with lots of distressed furniture in a pristine living room, and one model posed beside this slender, white table with peeling paint and a chandelier on its side on the table top.

On their own, none of the framed clippings would mean much. Even as a set they don’t really convey a distinct message other than, “This is Emily’s aesthetic style, and since she can’t afford any upholstered furniture or a chandelier and she doesn’t have room for furniture that serves only one purpose, she decorates with pictures of all of those things.”