W.A.N.T. this Elephant Chair!

I am completely in love with this bold black Elephant chair by Maximo Riera!!! He did some other before, like the whale chair, which is magical and whymsical too! But I just feel the Elephant chair would bring luck into my home :)

DIY Amazing decorative Fire Pit Lamp

I just stumbled over this fantastic DIY project! Sibylle from Funkytime has found this old fire pit on the fleamarket and spiced it up with a gorgeous yellow color and turned it into a lamp! I love this, it's a really unique piece of standalone decor with lightning function! Here come 2 pictures, but for more detailed info on how to make this fire pit lamp, please click here

 

DIY reupholstered Chrome Office Chair from the 60s

I just made some photos of my finished DIY reupholstering project, and my first one too!! For many years I've loved this ooooold 60s chrome chair in the basement of my father-in-laws craftsmen room, but I always thought that it's just way to damaged, dirty & stinky to be repaired and renewed. Well, back then I probably didn't have much idea of how to do it, but now after many years of interest in these things, I now felt it would be no problem to do it! And especially because I just couldn't let go of this beautiful chair - to not be part of my new home!!! So here you can see how it was before, it was upholstered with a green vinyl fabric, but there was a lot of dust, dirt, and color splashes all over it, because it was in the crafts and tools room for so long. Also the wooden armrest, totally scratched etc. My worries were mostly about the chrome, because I thought once it is rusty, it is hard to remove it!
Well what a nice surprise that I was wrong!!! :)

I found some tips and advice on the net, the most simple one I tried, which was aluminium foil and water or vinagre, I mixed the two in a little bowl, and started to rub the chrome legs! Miraculously and very fast the legs got it's beautiful shine back!

I decided to go for this lovely electric blue fabric, which I really loved, because I have nothing comparable in my house, and I wanted to add a real different accent. Also for long I wanted to finally make use of the neon orange piping, that I had left for a long time, never had anywhere to use it, but still kept it, because I love it so much! So finally it matched perfect with the blue fabric!

 

I was hardly thinking about using a vinyl or leather material for the chair, I was really into the idea, not only for the looks of it, but also for the longevity of the chair, but because there were parts that I would have to sew, the seating part, and my sewing machine doesn't work very strongly and properly, so I didn't want to risk it and used this heavy cotton material instead. I guess it will live for 2 or 3 years, and after that period of time I will probably anyway be in the mood to change the look of the chair again!

So what do you guys think of my new old home office chair? 

I hope you enjoy it :)

Silver BIGTAB.U stool is adorable!

I just stumbled upon this lovely silver stool, that looks like crunched paper!It comes also in gold, black and white additional to the silver. But I really love the silver one!

  The BIGTAB.U stool is from OpinionCIATTI, and you can buy it for 450 Euros over at www.homeform.de

 

 

Which one do you like most?

Sunburst Mirror

For a long time I've wanted to have one of those sunburst mirrors, I know it's been a while since they were trendy, but however I still wanted to have one. I love big mirrors, and so I didn't want to buy one of the smaller affordable ones! NOW WAIT: I do not want to post or reblog the DIY tutorials on how to make these with wood shims, I offer an alternative for a specific reason, that I will tell you in just about a moment, so please be patient and read on!

I researched the net, and found so many wonderful DIY tutorials, and most of them were those made of wood shims. Here's a few lovely examples that I really liked: 

Now that all sounded so simple, buy the shims, maybe even in 2 different sizes, glue them together, make a huge ring of them, paint in a nice colour, and glue the mirror onto it - ready to hang!! Yep, that's what I thought!

Here comes the problem I encountered: Most of the tutorials and DIY that I read on the net, are from the US, and often I cannot find some specific material needed for the projects here in Germany...And that really makes me mad, because it's the most simple things. For this sunburst mirror project, I wasn't able to find anywhere that kind of wood shims, so thin and very long. Here they only sell very short ones, like an inch or so, they are only used to lay laminate.. So I wanted to see if I can buy them online, the US shims I mean, and they were available via amazon.com, but just the shipping would've cost too much, because I would really need many packages, as I had a huge mirror (about 24" diameter, 60cm). Then I thought to make them myself with the table saw, watched some vids on youtube, looked all pretty clear and simple to me, but I didn't go for it, because we have a really bad table saw, and when I switched it on, it just scared the sh*t out of me... Next idea, why not go to a carpenter, he could professionally make the shims for me, I did, and I felt like he slapped me in the face when he said he would make them at 0,65 cents a piece, I mean it's not like I'm buying professional table legs, wood shims are usually sold like waste or remaining stock. On Amazon.com, there was a package of 56 pcs at 7.36 $, so one shims cost is about 0.13 $..

So here's what I've finally decided to do! I decided to switch on my scroll saw, buy a huuuuge piece of wood, and transfer a sunburst drawing that simulates the wood shim burst scheme onto the wood, and simply saw the whole sun as a whole piece! It was too big for the scroll saw, so I had to make 4 equal pieces of the wood, and then it worked. I'm still working on it, need to paint it and glue the mirror onto it, but I can't wait to post it in the next days... :)

Especially I'm excited because I hope for all the people here in Europe, who also encounter problems to find wood shims, can maybe also use my alternative idea to make your own small or biiiiig sunburst mirror! 

Only thing I can reveal at the moment is the drawing that I made in Adobe Illustrator, it's huge, 100x100cm , that's about 40x40". Please don't be irritated by all the numbers , now that I've finished the cutting and sawing part, I realize I made things once again more complicated than they really are, I tend to think that I am a logical person, but doesn't seem so... Here's the preview of the drawing:

 

Are you interested to see how mine turned out? Would you like to read a post on my blog that describes all the DIY steps for this mirror? Please join my network, and feel free to comment :) Thanks and Enjoy!

Oriental Persian Rugs - Yes or No?

Today I looked into oriental rugs. Up until now I didn't like them, because when I grew up we had lots of them and I just found them really ugly, which now I realize was not just the rugs fault, but just the whole interior design as it was...but since I have a bigger piece left here in the house, it was in the living room combined with horrible dark brown leather sofas and a tiled / wooden couch table... however I've been thinking if this rug might be revived with the right constellation of furniture and decor. I have some examples that I found and I surprisingly do like some of them:

 

 Abigail Ahern's home, I love it so much! Here the rug is not a typical oriental one, but I like that it is not too big, but still it adds personality to the room! I say YES!

 This one is my next fave, when these rugs have enough area and space, they can really dominate a room in a positive way. Also unusual but lovely in this one is that everything about the house is so bright and white, so the rug doesn't seem so heavy on the eye! The white blue chairs are beautiful too!

 Ok, this one's acceptable, I'm not flippin out though. Not so sure about the curtains in combination with the rug...

 This is a very calm living room, therefore I find it's good the rug has no red/bordeaux color schemes, the yellowy/orange feel really adds to the room! Nice!

 

This is ok, but the more I look at this photo, I get a feeling like the owner only meant this rug to be a placeholder until a good one comes along. I really like the wooden chest table, could use some nice books and vase decoration though.

 This rug really fits in the room, but for me the whole concept is toooo dark and uncozy. Weird art, but again I have to say, it really goes with the room, just not for me.

 

NO! NO! Not with that wallpaper! NO!

I almost forgot, did you guys know that these rugs tell a story, that all the patterns on it have a real meaning? I didn't know, here is a nice link that shows the meaning of some schemes like running water etc.:

 http://loveofrugs.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/meaning-of-persian-rug-symbols/

 Do you have an oriental rug at home? Where did you place it, and is it more of a compromise or did you really want to get it? Or are you planning on getting one soon?
Which photo above did you like most, I'm so curious!

YELLOW FRESHNESS

Recently I'm really in love with yellow accents in homes. I never really used it, but after seeing some adorable examples of how to give your apartment a twist, especially now in summer, i feel like yellow is really a great choice to freshen things up! Here some of my favorites:

this chair is the star of the show! Love it, and also the zebra rug!

 these are some lovely and easy little yellow decor ideas, for those of use who don't want to change or add furniture, but still feel the freshness of summer! 

 

This yellow couch is kind of greeny yellow, but I like the dark piping, and the lucite table is really adding a nice touch! 

 

I believe this one was an online DIY for how you can spice up your flower pots! It looks good next to the miller rocking chair

 

kind of love this basic wooden table with neon paint, although I could not really match it into current settings at home, I still think it's a beautiful but very simple piece of furniture!

 

Yellow wall poppin up! The Pink sofa - mmmmm yum I love it!

 

Yellow lamp base, if you have an old lamp that needs to be revamped, just buy some yellow spray paint and give it 2 or 3 coats, it's always amazing to me how much a new looking lamp/shade can freshen up the interior!

 

OK, yellow double door, need to be brave to do it, but in this constellation I really think it works!

 

this one only works for me because of the graphic prints on the wall, and because there is the yellow print to balance it. Otherwise I don't really think this yellow chair would've convinced me....

What do you think of yellow accents and these photos? Like or Hate it??

uhhhm ok first post and a big HELLLLLLO!

Hi everyone, first post....wow, finally i decided to make this blog about home decor and interior design. I have a HUUUUUUUUUUGE collection of interior books, that I insanely keep buying over the last years, and additionally I have so many inspirations that I found in real life, and especially the internet. In the last weeks I was doing a lot of research, and looked through all these libraries of mine, what a chaos !!! So I finally thought that I  might as well structure them, and upload them on a blog, and share the ideas and inspirations with people out there.
There is a lot happening at the moment, because I will temporarily (for about 2 years) live in the house of my parents in law, because they moved to the sunny south, and my husband and I are staying in this area currently because of work. So we had the offer to live in their house, rather than staying in a rented apartment for the short period of time. OK, sounded nice in the beginning, but what you don't know is that they left the house completely over-furnished .... it is sooooo full, that there is not a chance of adding any of our own stuff here....at this point I don't just yet want to mention what style it has...that would take too much time for my intro post, and there'll be enough time to talk about that. They left everything as it is, because they plan on coming back in the future, and of course they don't want to change anything, and I understand their point of view. 

But for us, it kind of really got heavy lately, in the beginning we just tried ignoring that nothing in the house appeals to us, or reflects at least a little bit some of our taste and personality, but what was even worse, is that it felt like we were feeling very negative energy around and in the house, (also because the house is soooo dark inside, even when the sun is shining outside), as soon as we left the "building" it suddenly felt so much easier to breathe. I don't know if you guys believe in that, but I really do think that if you don't feel safe and happy in the place you live, and if you are not surrounded by your favorite and personal things, it makes you non-happy, non-creative, non-fun, and hopefully not but possible at some point really pessimistic and negative. 

So we decided to give it a try and just start to change a few smaller things. That was just 3 weeks ago, and believe me , it was and still is much more of a journey than I expected...

So I will keep updates on this blog about the changes in the house, which will be ongoing for a while, but mainly I will share all my favorites of interior design homes with you, and I will love to hear your thoughts and feedback. 

Enjoy - and I hope you come back!

Sarah Kerst