When Hollywood came calling

Back in 2008, I posted pictures of my newly-decorated living room on the Rate My Space web site.

A couple of months later, I received an e-mail from the alleged producer for HGTV’s upcoming TV show, “Rate My Space”. She said that they were interested in using my living room as an inspiration location for the show. Uh, yeah, right, sure – I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck!

But being the curious sort, I had to at least play along. And after doing some spy work, it turned out that this was totally legit – OMG, Rate My Space wanted to put my living room on TV!

There were papers to fill out and a video to make and a couple of months of excitement and anticipation, and then it really happened – Rate My Space came to my house. Well, OK, to be honest, one camera man named Dan came to my house. But still, it was pretty freakin’ awesome! Dan was such a great guy – he was even willing to wear my crazy Canadian springy things on his head.

Our Skype interview with Rate My Space host & designer Angelo Surmelis didn’t happen because he was laid up in bed with a bad back that day. But I got to talk with Tayo & Mark, the couple that was getting a martini lounge makeover on this episode of the show. They chose my living room as one of their three inspiration rooms because they  loved the party-potential of my furniture arrangement.

 

This is how Angelo interpreted my living room furniture arrangement in Tayo & Mark’s martini lounge.

The shoot took an entire day and in the end, my clip on the show only lasted about a minute. But it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and a fun day of feeling like a Hollywood star :-)

If you’d like my living room to appear on your TV show, give its agent a call ;-)

Creating custom artwork with Fifi Flowers

When I was designing my dining room makeover (you can read about it here), I wanted a Hollywood glam look. But I also wanted some colourful & fun elements in the room so it wouldn’t be too stuffy or serious. And I knew just what I wanted to get the look I was going for – artwork by Fifi Flowers!

I e-mailed Fifi and asked her is she could create a set of three 12” x 12” custom painting with an old Hollywood theme for me. Fifi loves Hollywood and she loves painting, so she was quick to say OUI OUI! YAY! This is how Fifi and I worked together to bring the paintings that I had in my mind to life.

First, Fifi asked me to send her images that I liked and that had elements I wanted to incorporate into the paintings. Fifi sent me some images that she found too.

Once I narrowed the choices down to my very favourite images, Fifi created some mock-ups putting together the different elements.

 

Next, Fifi created small thumbnail sketches based on her mock-ups.

 

I gave Fifi feedback on the sketches, and she modified them till they were just right. For example, take a look at the Montmartre Cafe sketch above – as you can see in the sketch below, the couple on the right side was replaced with a sax player.

And then Fifi changed the perspective of the sax player from looking up at him from below to looking at him from the side.

Once the sketches were done, Fifi created a thumbnail of each one and added all the black.

I told Fifi what colours I wanted, inspired by paintings from her portfolio.

We started out with pink, green, purple, and blue.

   

Very nice! But I thought they needed a little more colour to add some pizzazz, so I asked Fifi to use ultramarine blue and orange as well.

   

     

And then we hit on the perfect colour combinations :-)

Fifi’s final step was creating the 12” x 12” paintings. Just a few more bubbles in the glass of champagne…

 

And the final result, framed in Ribba frames from Ikea.

I ♥ my custom Fifi paintings! They’re exactly what I wanted – they bring the colour and whimsy that I was looking for into my dining room, and nobody else has paintings like them :-)

Merci Fifi!

Custom artwork isn’t as expensive as you might think, and the final result is truly unique, one-of-a-kind art that you won’t see anywhere else. If there’s an artist whose style you love, why not contact him or her and ask about getting your own piece of custom artwork done.

I’m linking up to Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch. The blog party gets rolling at about 9:00 tonight – don’t miss it!

Shiny, happy, sparkly dining room makeover

I’m not sure when or how or why it happened, but one day I realized that I had a thing for shiny, happy, sparkly rooms. Pretty crystal chandeliers, shiny silver accessories, mirrored furniture…  they’re the things that really kick the glam factor up a notch. But a room can’t live on glam alone – there needs to be something whimsical… light-hearted… unexpected. The combination creates an elegant room that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

And so this was the inspiration for my dining room makeover.

As you know if you’ve read about my other room makeovers, our whole house was pink and green when we moved in ten years ago. The dining room was not just green, it was two shades of green…

Previous home owner’s colour choices & decorating. Not my cup of tea!

I can’t find any pictures of the dining room between when I painted over the green and when we installed the wainscoting. These pics were taken after the wainscoting was installed and primed with a paint sprayer a few years ago {yes, I’m super-slow when it comes to making over a room!. We bought the dining table & chairs about eight years ago {Gramercy Park Collection by Lane Furniture}, and the chandelier about four years ago.

Guess I took this picture just before I painted the ceiling ;-)

I’ve shown you a couple of projects over the past year that I worked on for the dining room. First there was this layered mirror project using the mirror that was already on the wall and another mirror that was leaning on the wall outside the dining room for about, oh, two years…

And then this little frame repainting project {original artwork by Fifi Flowers}:

And there’s one other makeover that never made it onto my blog. It was inspired by these chairs that Samantha Pynn had painted white and reupholstered in a lavender faux ostrich leather.

I wrote to Samantha Pynn to ask where the fabric was from. I got a reply a day or two later with the information, and I ordered a few yards from InVU Drapery in Toronto. The chairs went from this:

To this:

Yep, they’re big-butt chairs!

And now, the dining room is finally done – YAY! Let’s start with the chandelier. I can’t remember where I first saw this chandelier, but I loved it right away and found it on the Horchow website:

But at almost $3,000.00, I didn’t love the price tag! After some searching, I found an almost identical chandelier on Ebay for a fraction of the price:

There were already white sheers in the bow window. I don’t love them, but they provide some much-needed privacy so they’ve stayed. I’ll be replacing them when I figure out how to hang new shears to the floor. I really wanted curtains to add some pattern & softness to the room. Because our ceilings are 9’, it’s hard to find pre-made curtains that are the right length, so I had the curtains custom made. They’re silver silk with a band of patterned lavender & silver fabric and beaded trim.

A sparkly room needs a sparkly curtain rod! {Fabrics & curtain rod from C&M Textiles}.

My mom’s old Royal Doulton “Caprice” china sat in a box at the cottage for years after my mom died. My dad started pulling the china set out a few years ago and gave it to me. Some pieces have gone missing, but I have enough to put together eight place settings. What goes better with Royal Doulton china than silver giraffe print place mats? ;-)

Well, how about black & white zebra print place mats :-) I couldn’t decide, so I bought a set of each from HomeSense. {Purple chargers from Z Gallerie and flatware from Mikasa}.

I really wanted some unique artwork to hang in the dining room. Maybe even commissioned artwork, so I could get exactly what I wanted. I contacted Fifi Flowers about creating a painting for me, and we worked together to come up with these three fun and colourful Hollywood-inspired paintings:

I’ll be writing a blog post next week about the process of having Fifi create these cool paintings.

Whimsical, check!

When we bought the dining room table and chairs, we decided not to buy the matching hutch/sideboard. I didn’t want everything in the room to look the same. It took about six years to finally find the perfect sideboard. It’s the Somerton buffet from Cymax Stores. I love the curvy lines and open shelves, and the doors and top have the same diamond design that’s on the backs of the dining chairs and the layered mirror.

The colour scheme was inspired by the faux ostrich leather and the dark furniture. I love painted ceilings, so I thought why not go dramatic and paint the ceiling dark brown. The walls are Sherwin Williams Ash Violet and the ceiling is Bittersweet Chocolate. Hubby and I designed and installed the wainscoting. It’s painted Benjamin Moore Ultra White, as is all the trim in the room.

And how does it all look together? Sparkly, glam, and whimsical – just the look I was going for :-)

The sideboard styling still needs some work – I’m so bad at accessorizing!

Although I love the big clock above the sideboard, I think I’m going to move it to another wall in the house and hang one of these horse photographs by Diane Schuller there instead:

 

I love having fresh flowers in the house, especially when the season for outdoor flowers is over. Please don’t be a carnation snob – they’re pretty flowers, and they last forever :-)

My best buy in the room has to be the small mirrored console under the artwork. It cost a whopping $15.00! And it just happens to have the same diamond design that’s repeated throughout the room.

Now just need to break it in with a real & official dinner party!

I’m linking my dining room makeover up with Metamorphosis Monday over at Between Naps on the Porch {the party starts at around 9:00PM tonight}. I’m pretty sure nobody else will be sharing a purple dining room with a chocolate brown ceiling, but I bet there are lots of great & inspiring makeovers to check out :-)