Frugalful Design Trends
Vintage Furniture
If you’re a big fan of the vintage trend, you’ll know that creating a vintage design of your own is expensive. Following the frugal path is inexpensive but therefore time-consuming, but that is part of the vintage fun. Combing flea markets for great bargains on large and vintage style furniture is one way to go about it, as great bargains can be spruced up to better fit the trend with a very thin lack of paint in a pale color such as white or pastel blue. Another option to recreate this trend is by using the art of upcycling. Within upcycling, everyday objects are crafted into trendy and new items for your home. You can craft some wooden shutters into a vintage style bedside cabinet by using some wood glue and again sprucing the finished product up with some paint.
Accessories
It’s the little added touches that make the difference between a nice design and a great design, and while accent cushions are pretty their price is pretty steep, too. Try buying some plain pillows and cushions which are on sale and have a go at making the trendy covers for these cushions by using old curtains, preferably ones with really funky patterns. Alternatively, you could buy some patterned material and even ask a friend who’s skilled with the sewing machine to help you out.
Chic bowls are another popular design accessory, which can be recreated with some cheap plastic toys. You can carefully (very carefully, preferably outside and after doing some intense research) melt some barrel monkeys so that they stick together but are still recognisable as monkeys and then shape them into a bowl by pressing the linked monkeys between two cereal bowls. After the plastic has dried you have a very trendy fruit bowl to act as an interesting feature.
Creative storage solutions are another trending design feature, and this can be easily and frugally recreated. Simply keep hold of jam jars and pasta sauce jars. These can be washed out and colored either with paint or by gluing colored crepe paper inside them, and then be used to keep spices, pasta bows or twirls, sweets or even Satsuma oranges and new potatoes if you use large, square jars, in them. Alternatively, these colorful jars can be used to substitute elaborate candle sticks by being chic tea light holders.
There are many ways in which you can mimic design in a more frugal manner. Often buying the cheap alternative or crafting the item yourself to then add your own personal touch to the design (lack of paint does wonders), is all you need to keep up with the ever changing world of interior design.
This article was written by Sarah Oxley on behalf of Shutters Direct, providers of quality wooden shutters. You can visit their site here. Sarah is an interior design enthusiast, but who likes the designs to be personal so she enjoys recreating design trends in a crafty and frugal manner.
