Before and Afters: Dining Room part two

Before: Junky clunky
I'm on a roll here, but I had to finish showing you the dining room makeover.

I love this big 'ole wood dresser with curving drawers I made my ex haul from the end of the street. But what the hell was I thinking? I tried to heed the rule of grouping collections together, but my head vase collection just looks junky when jumbled together with all these white pieces.

Try two: Matchy-matchy yuck
The second attempt: eeew. In an effort to group all my coloured glass together (to highlight the orange "made in Canada" stamped vase I found for $9.99) I created the worst little tableau in the history of the grunge-queen: an overly-symmetrical, matchy-matchy blah-sville barrage of tchotchkas.

After: Looks like Spring
Try number three united the light and the dark and balanced the scene. I kept the lacquer mirror and lamp and added: my beloved blue head vase (found in an old coin company shop while a broke student in Ottawa and traded for a bunch of jewellery), perched on my thrifty decorating books;

my Canadian-made orange vase next to a piece of green pottery; a gorgeous crocus arrangement given to me by Scott, owner of Vanderfleet Flowers in the Humbertown Mall in Toronto; a piece of green tile given to me by a Toronto artist and a hand-made purple card by my very artistic twin sis, who designed by grunge-queen logo btw.

The very scary hanging lamp reflected in the mirror (which I propped length-wise against the wall to add height and drama to the space) was a leftover from the previous tenant - I need my ex to come over and help me string up my girlie-glam chandelier (pretty please!). Grunge-queen has great ideas, but she's not handy, alas.

MAKEOVER TIPS: I can't stress it enough... be in the mood for playing when tweaking the decor of a room. Practice restraint with all your baubles. It's easy to want to cram in all your precious possessions, but taking away a few pieces and hiding them in a drawer creates a less cluttery look - and will also bring new life to the hide-away pieces when you haul them out again. LASTLY: you can have Spring in your room in the dead of winter -- hopefully I've demonstrated that!