Showing posts with label bedding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bedding. Show all posts

19 February 2020

Blue and Green Shadows: Bedroom Makeover

Long post warning.


When last we saw my bedroom, it looked like this:



I had a white-on-white bedroom for about six years, the centerpiece of which was my beloved Ikea Alvine Kvist duvet cover and shams.  I loved the white look, but I was getting a little bored and wanted some color, so when I moved into my current home I painted my bedroom a sort of dusty medium blue (Sherwin Williams' Silvermist) without a second thought.  However, a few months in I realized that my blue walls and white floral comforter were looking a bit little-girl-bedroom-ish.

Then about a month ago I was looking through Ikea's online catalog, and I found this spread:




I needed it. I fell instantly in love with the tonal color scheme.  I needed those blue and green shadows playing off each other.  I needed the turquoises and teals and mints and aquas and deep, dark, hunter green.  I needed them in my life.

I instantly set about converting my bedroom to a room based on that picture.  Because I'm NUTS about blue and always have been, my house had no shortage of random knick knacks to harvest to use in my bedroom.  I removed everything that wasn't blue or green, and brought in a few blue and green things from around the house.  I changed most of the feel without spending a dime.

For the bedding - the biggest part of the makeover - I ordered this duvet cover and shams set from Amazon.com.  It's a perfect medium jade green (it matches Sherwin Williams' Privilege Green (what a weird name) and it plays with the blue sheets in a really neat way.




I also created a gallery wall above/around the bed, which was sort of accidental.  I love the nude woman on the green background (artist: Matt Manley) and planned to only frame a couple of small posters next to it to balance out its height;  but before I knew it I had created a whole wall of artwork in similar colors to those of the bedroom, and I LOVE the way it turned out.






I exchanged the white Ikea curtains for a set of muted teal sheers that I ordered online.  I hung 4 panels on the window instead of two, for depth and a little more light control.  There's still plenty of light for the plants, but the room isn't flooded in glare all the time - it's nice and moody, and dark at night.

I moved the wooden jali screen from behind my bed's headboard over to the corner, and hung solar string lights from the top of it (the little solar panel hides behind the curtains in the window). I have to say, I didn't think I'd like the lights, but I LOVE them so much.  In front of the screen and below the hanging philodendron is a small Ficus tree in a blue-gray scalloped ceramic planter.




On the other side of the window, next to my dresser, sits a blue Ikea Raskog utility cart.   The top of it is filled with small plants and cuttings, and glass jars.  Lower shelves house random things that I use regularly but which don't really match the room or have a permanent home - my makeup, jars of lotion, some books, and other little things like that.





This giant silver metal tray came from Ikea a million years ag (I forget the name) - and, actually, so did the dresser it's sitting on (I spray painted the handles gold).  Also dresser-top are a green jade lotus incense burner, a small gold picture frame, a Ming Aralia in a teal planter, a couple of blue glass bottles, and, centrally, a blue-green glass vase I scored at Goodwill for $3, with a fake white peony in.




The vanity in my room is all white, and there's nothing I can do about that, unfortunately.  But I have stashed lots of blue and green glass items on it - most of them are actually useful and contain little toiletry items like swabs, cotton balls, perfumes, and so on.



On the north wall of the room is my black jewelry cabinet and dressing table,  a small window with a dusky teal sheer curtain on it.  There's also a  Tullsta tub chair from Ikea, with their "Nordvalla" light green cover. 




So that's the room so far.  I love the way it looks, particularly at night when the string lights and the bedside lamp are the only light in the room and everything is all dusky and shadowy.  I don't know that I'm done with it - there could always be more blue and green glass in my life, hehe.  I think the room needs more little pops of gold and/or copper.  We'll see.  It'll be fun to play with until I get it right.





For fun, and to check my work, I matched up nearly everything in my room with my Sherwin Williams paint deck.  The deck is a few years old, so some of the colors are have been replaced/renamed, but they still come up on a google search if you want to see them. Here are the colors I've used in this room:


Blues:
Silvermist (walls)
Rain (sheets)
Quietude (glassware/ceramics)
Tempe Star (Raskog cart and some of the glassware)
Moody Blue (glassware)
Really Teal (curtains)

Greens:
Softened Green (lotus incense holder)
Hunt Club (chair pillow, pillowcases on the bed)
Courtyard (Manley painting background, most of the plants)
Rosemary (glassware)
Comfort Gray  (glassware/ceramics)
Spearmint (Ikea Tullsta chair cover)
Privilege Green (duvet cover and shams)










18 November 2013

Bedroom + Art

Couple of things from the weekend:

1. I went to Ikea, and I bought a loooooot of things.  The first item on my list, and the most important, was this:

Oooh, aaah...

ALVINE KVIST duvet & sham set, $39.99.  I have wanted this duvet cover for YEARS, you guys.  I finally have it.  Yay!  

I also purchased:

  1. a whole bunch of FAGLAVIK drawer handles for my kitchen, which I'm about half-done putting in place. They're $7.99 for a 2-pack, but I found a bunch in the as-is section for  $3, so I bought them all.  Turns out, I need three more two-packs!  Oops.  Pics when done. :) 
  2. an UPPLEVA (I know, right? Wth) tilting tv wall bracket, so my TV is now hung on the living room wall again!  (And now, since I've replaced the one I lost, I'll probably find it any day now). 
  3. a metric assload of small, cheap things, like you do.  

2. I painted some pictures.  A pair of canvases, for a pair of dear friends' birthdays: 


I completely forgot what I called this one, but it was for my friend Laurie, who is bright and tall and colorful, and always growing and reaching.  She's also a very spiritual person; when I was little, I thought sunbeams streaming through the clouds were happening because Heaven (which was a floating cloud island) was right there at that exact moment (God flew it around, naturally) - so this is Grace and Heaven and stuff smiling down on Laurie.   :) 


This one was for my best friend, Sylvan, and is called "Sylvan of the Trees", something I see her say a lot on her various blogs and on Pinterest.  That's her face, yes (no, it doesn't really look like her, because I'm terrible at portraiture.  You're lucky I can even draw faces that don't look like Monkey Jesus), but the whole picture is her.  I wanted to paint a picture for her, to her, but I wasn't sure what to paint - and then I decided to paint a picture of all of the things about her that I love, so that she can look at the picture and believe what she sees, even if she doesn't believe me when I tell her she's awesome.  Her response to this, of course, was to flail her hands at me, saying, "STOP GIVING ME FEELS!"   Hee.  I think she liked it. ;)  

More soon!  

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21 May 2012

Bigger & Brighter Bedroom

Maybe Blogger will get its head out of its @$$ and allow me to make this entry on the third try.  Hmph.

BEDROOM YAY!   I spent my Sunday afternoon correcting some issues in the master bedroom.  It was dark, mismatched, the curtains were fugly (seriously, wth was I thinking??), and there was still an old, queen-sized comforter on my king-sized bed.  Also, I was tired of looking at the blue ceiling:  it looked alright with the blue walls, but it was a different tone, too dark for the room, and, er, I had never bothered to go back and touch up around the edges when I painted it.  Whoops.

σ_σ

Fortunately, last week a sale and a coupon happened to me at the exact moment I was thinking about the bedroom issues, and I ordered a new, white duvet cover and shams in the correct size.

Over the weekend I sorted through all the paint in my garage (I have a lot of paint, you guys), and mixed together all my various whites and off-whites, to produce a soft, creamy off-white to use on the ceiling.  I also picked up a white, king-sized flat sheet, and made it into a pair of curtains;  I teamed those up with a pair of those Ikea LILL sheers that I have a frillion of and hung them hiiiigh on the walls under the the new, wide, ceiling border.

Et voila: 




























Muuuch better!  The room is brighter, and feels about twice as big as it was before.






I absolutely adore the big, wide border around the top of the room.

And the off-white looks fantabulous with the wall color.










It's hard to see the curtains against the morning light in the pictures;  the white sheet-curtains are on one half, and the sheers on the other half.

While I like the effect, I do plan to get another sheet and repeat the process so that I have two curtains on each window, with the sheers in the center instead, so that it's a bit more balanced.


I also moved that dumb little rattan chair over to the window.  It feels less crammed-into-the-room in this corner;  the dog crate that was here is now more out of the way, and won't be getting doggy dust and grime all over the new white curtains.








Other things to continue working on:

  • That dumb little rattan chair.  It's falling apart, and, well, it's pretty ugly.  I really would rather have something comfy and stuffed, like this.  
  • Note the obvious lack of an actual comforter in the new comforter cover.  Oops.  Also - the ivory sheets are getting pretty worn, and need to be replaced.  With white, or blue, or gray.  Not sure yet. 
  • The nightstands, which are functional, but boring as hell (as opposed to the old ones which were cute, but not remotely functional).  
  • The bed needs a skirt to cover those box springs; and I do eventually plan to adjust the old four-poster frame to fit this bed. 

Anyway - yay!  I love it.  :) 

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09 March 2011

In Which Laura Is Very, Very Excited About Something

OMG GUESS WHAT. 

We're getting a new mattress on Saturday!  Kress' mom got us one for his birthday, and it's going to be delivered in THREE DAYS! The old one (the Ikea mattress I talked about briefly here) has definitely seen its day. Plus, Kress is 6'2"; and two adult humans + anywhere from three to five cats on the bed at a time do NOT fit on a queen-sized mattress!




So there's a king on the way.  :)   I plan to take the wooden bed frame apart and rebuild it to fit the new bed.  The posts and side pieces I can re-use for a king-size frame (handy sizing info here, if you're interested), but the shorter end pieces, and the slats under the box spring, will have to be replaced. 

I adore this bed; but it's time for a new incarnation

I already have all the lumber I need for new slats, and to build a shallow platform to use instead of a box spring (usually called "bunkie boards", but I think that sounds dumb, so I'm not calling mine that); as well as most of the stuff I need to not only rebuild the bed around a larger mattress, but also change the design a bit.

I suppose I'd better go get at least one set of sheets to fit it, too.


                                                            durr.

Yeah, I kinda forgot about that.  Woops!  A quick trip to Target is in order this weekend, then;  and then on payday, a trip to Ikea:

Ikea's TANJA BRODYR duvet cover & shams


Yeah? With all the blue and purple and green in the room?  100% cotton, and only fifty bucks for a king set!  I pet it every time I go into Ikea; it feels soooo nice.  Plus it's machine washable.  :)


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22 November 2010

Bedroom Art Wall!

In the meantime (while I await that elusive moment when I'm home during daylight hours (stupid Daylight Savings Time) and happen to catch that ONE MINUTE during the day when the living room is actually fully lit by the windows so that I can get a decent picture of the couch cover that is *finished*),  I have fixed the art wall and the Ung Drill frame in the bedroom!

before - meh.

After:  yay!
The "painting" (a printout made with Blockposter.com) is a section of Bougereau's Evening Mood, which is one of my favorite paintings in the entire world.   Also shown: a couple of pairs of Divine Lovers (Radha/Krishna and Shiva/Parvati) and a print of a Thai tapestry depicting similar themes, one of my favorite Orientalist Odalisques (which one, though...Fortuny? I think?), and a purple sitar painting from...somewhere?  Love, God, beauty, and music.  :)

taller nightstand; still-unplayed guitar

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22 June 2010

Photographic Succes!

I have conquered the stupid camera battery!  YUSS!


Here's the chair pad I made using the leftover "Sarita" curtain panel from Ikea.




An interestingly-lit shot of part of my office area in the living room. 




And a quick shot of the sari quilt that my friend Nadia gave to me over the weekend.  Isn't it GORGEOUS?!  I'm almost afraid to touch it.  And I waaaaant it on my bed.  Maybe I could just wrap all the cats in bubble wrap, and tape the dogs' mouths closed...

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21 June 2010

- 1 for camera, + 5 for Sari quilt!

Well, it seems my camera battery is pretty much out of commission for the forseeable future.  It won't hold a charge for more than a few minutes - not even long enough to take a picture and then get it onto the computer before the battery dies.  Sigh. Luckily, a new one's only about $15, so I'll get one on payday.  ...I just hope the battery is actually the problem.  Everything else seems to work fine, so, here's hoping.  

Add to this the fact that I have about three hours during the day when there's enough natural light in the house to get nice pictures for you, during which I was working and the house was torn apart yesterday, I have no shots of anything I did over the weekend.  So you don't get to see:

  1. The little semi-shrine for Ganesh I created in the living room with a little statue I recently got in a raffle, and a side table I painted yesterday. 
  2. Any of the "new" houseplants I did yesterday - same plants, actually, but some in new pots, some in freshly painted pots, and most in new places in the house. Or...
  3. An astounding, breathtaking gift from a friend which came completely by surprise yesterday:   a queen-sized silk quilt made of sari borders patched together, handmade for my friend in India many years ago while she was there, by a local shop.  This she gave to me yesterday, simply because (a) she wasn't using it anymore and (b) she knows I adore Indian textiles.  I think I'm actually in shock.  It's exactly what I've always wanted on my bed; but with eight four-legged companions, two of which enjoy fucking up fabrics, there's no WAY I'm using it as a bedspread.  I think I'll find a way to mount it on a wall as an art piece.  Have I mentioned, by the way, how much I love tapestries and fabric art on the wall?  <3

So:  camera battery on payday.  Until then...we'll see what happens.  Hopefully that week I'll also find out that I've won the HGTV/World Market Antonio Treatment sweepstakes and have a $10,000 gift card to my favorite store.  :o)


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