Stripes

Stripes are one of the easiest ways to give your room a little pizzaz. Such an impact can be made with this design. One way to do it is to go half way up the wall, with an actual wooden chair rail, or a painted chair rail as shown in the pink and brown nursery and the butter yellow and white bathroom above, to separate the stripes from the solid color on top. The painted border can be done to match your bedding or other design elements, giving a very customized look.

Bold stripes are great in kids rooms, such as these examples. The Cardinal Red/Gold/Tan stripes are part of a USC themed room, and the Hot Pink/Black/White stripes tie into the Zebra bedding in this little girls room. The Zebra border was hand painted to tie it all together.

In a nursery, as shown in the Princess themed room and the Blue/Black room above, stripes are a good way to bring in color and leaves you with options down the road, when the crib moves out and a twin bed moves in. In either of these rooms, the crib can be replaced with a twin under the mural or monogram.

In this case, we painted a wave design above the existing chair rail, and added stripes to correspond to the waves in this Surf Shack themed room. It's so easy to dress up a room, and it doesn't always call for doing a huge, involved mural. Stripes can do the trick!

Alice in Wonderland

I finally was able to complete a most exciting project for a long time client of mine, in her daughters' secondary playroom. They were debating on either an Alice in Wonderland theme, or a Wizard of Oz theme. Oz is pretty dear to me, my parents decorated my room in the 70's with an Oz theme, so I had some great ideas for how to design a room with that theme, but Alice in Wonderland is so amazing too! And with Tim Burton's version of the movie coming out earlier this year, and seeing all of the amazing set designs and crazy artwork, there is a lot to work with there as well. They ended up choosing Alice, and here is what I did. I took photos in stages so you can see the process.

Now the only thing I need to know is when they are going to adopt me? Their upstairs playroom/loft is one of my favorites as well.

Whoooo is in the tree?

This room was designed from the bedding that was just purchased, and we just wanted a simple tree with an owl. I painted it with what I think of as an "embroidery" look, as far as the flowers and details go...little dots and "stitching" to adorn the elements of the painting, tying it into the style of the bedding.

Black and White and Hot Pink all over!!!

What's Black and White and Hot Pink all over? Exactly, not the newspaper. These adorable rooms! Quite sassy for the most descerning tastes in room decor, for nurseries to teen rooms. What girl doesn't like a little hot pink to brighten things up?

In this room we wanted to do a "paris" theme, that she can grow up with. Dresses and ballerina tutu's, purses and perfume bottles, and I adorned it with charms, bows, lace, pearls and "diamonds". The tulle coming off the painted dress form above the window acts as draperies, all for show as the window has shutters, but needed to be dressed up.

This teenager wanted her room done in a simpler fashion, with her name curved over her bed against the hot pink walls. Simple, straightforward, and packs a punch! The wall makes quite an impact now.

Here I am painting the Zebra striped border for my lifelong friends daughter's room. We updated her room from a light pink and sage green floral topiary tree theme (adorable and very hard to paint over for me! But she needed an update, and hey, it's just paint!). Jordyn's new room leaves room up above the Zebra border for her mom's immense Barbie collection (all in boxes and amazing!) to be hung above on the white wall. We painted the 10" hot pink stripes with a black 1" pinstripe, leaving an 8" white stripe at all. I also painted little crowns on the edges of her name above the bed, and on the dresser. Fabulous.

In this nursery we designed the monogram for Maycie above the crib and created a floral border copying flowers, leaves and scrolls from the fabric used in the custom bedding. The quote painted above the closet was chosen by mommy, and we added little details in the corners of the room as well to bring the floral design around the room.