Encore – Old Things – New Life

Have you ever thought about what your decorating style is?  Are you more French, English, or American in your tastes?  This Encore post from September 2012 will help you answer that question and is one of our most popular on Pinterest so we thought it worth repeating today 🙂

As we wrap up our week about decorating tips and ideas, today we want to talk about giving new life to favorite old items. Like people, favorite things that have gone beyond their usefulness in their original purpose, can be given new life and new purposes.
Just use your imagination and you can come up with some very creative new uses for otherwise outdated or nearly finished, favorite old items. It could be anything you love and would hate to throw away just because it was originally a part of a pair of something and the other “something ” is now lost or broken beyond repair. Or maybe it is something you like because it belonged to someone you love but you have never used it for it’s created purpose.

Here are just a few examples to hopefully inspire you.

This dish holding the jewelry on the dressing table is really a pretty old saucer that lost it’s cup. It is just the right size to hold jewelry taken off at bedtime. The glass behind it holding the makeup brushes was originally a small vase. It is small enough to fit nicely on this small table but the opening is large enough that it can hold a number of brushes easily. You could also use this to hold cotton balls or Q-tips.

This pale blue and white china plate was the only one left in the set but it found a new use as a pretty way to display powder room soaps.

When the lid to this black and white toile patterned teapot broke it would have seemed that it’s days of usefulness were over, until I realized it was the perfect size for a new orchid I had just received. I could have put the orchid in a terra cotta pot or even a pretty ceramic pot, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun as displaying it this way in my dining room.

Somewhere along the way I acquired this silver loving cup. I could have used it as an ice bucket or put a plant in it, but instead I use it to display this wonderful “bouquet of seashells”. You may recall from earlier in the week I LOVE my seashells!

What does one do with a sterling silver creamer that has no sugar bowl as a companion? Why stick a tea light in it of course!

Unless you have a collection of odd candlesticks without mates, a single candlestick that would normally be a part of a pair can seem awkward to use. But not if you fill it with water and make it into a bud vase instead 🙂

On a small casual desk you need a place to keep your pens and pencils that is easy to get to and doesn’t take up much space.

A small etched glass that was probably used for sherry when it was new, is just the right size and shape to be used as a pen/pencil holder.

Odds and ends of plates can be lovely when grouped and hung on a wall…very dramatic!

As you look around at the different possibilities for decorating your home just remember to think “outside the box”as they say and not limit what you use something for to anything remotely close to its original purpose. Have fun with the things you use, allow yourself to be a bit whimsical – you might just love the new purpose you assign to an “old friend.” And don’t be afraid to let your style evolve over time. As you grow and change, your style may also change. That keeps you from becoming stiff in your thinking and certainly in your decorating.

Years ago I read an article that very simply allowed you to determine what style of decorating you fell into. With one simple question you can determine if your decorating philosophy is more American, more British or more French. Here’s the question… If you had an antique chandelier with hurricanes over the bulbs and one of the hurricanes broke and had a small piece missing, and you could not replace it with an exact match would you :

A. Buy one new hurricane even though it didn’t match the others

B. Buy all new matching hurricanes

C. Just leave it up there broken with the small piece missing

If you said “A” your style tends to be more French. If you said “B” your style is more American. And if you said “C”, you and the Queen would get along swimmingly because your style is more British.

Americans tend to like things that match or are all be the same…they like sets of things. The French are a bit more bohemian in their style and don’t mind having the odd thing mixed in. The British like things that are original and if that means there is a flaw in something, well so be it.

Interesting to think about isn’t it ? Which one are you? We’d love to hear from you about this and get an idea of how you, our chums, line up style wise. Whatever your style is, celebrate it, enjoy it, and use it to make your home a place filled with more love, more joy and more abundant living!