As we are getting to meet and know more and more of you who share our passion for great finds, unique style and the love of decorating - I thought I would give a little peek inside of where my girls and I get to call home for this year- Denise's amazing and eclectic house. For those of you who know her, you already know each room in Denise's home has a theme and she is constantly adding to, changing and recreating her spaces. Most of these photos were actually taken a few years ago, but I still thought you may like to see some of her great ideas for decorating. She hopes to take time in the future to blog about specific designs and techniques, so be sure to look for those blogs. The above photos is of a side courtyard. The gold ball chairs were purchased at an estate sale and she made the black and white stripe cushions. The ivy diamond wall is one of her most successful projects. Measuring the long wall, stretching thin wire into a diamond pattern, and waiting 2 years for the ivy to climb has been a labor of love, but well worth the wait!
Denise loves birdcages and crowns, and here she's placed a Sergio Bustamante sculpture inside of an antique birdcage on an antique pedestal. The cage and pedestal were found at local flea markets. In fact, not a lot of her finds were purchased in retail locations, but found while happily treasure hunting. The chairs were found at a local consignment shop, just awaiting the right image to be painted, or stenciled, onto them.
These photos show opposite wall designs in the same powder room. According to Denise, diamonds are not the easiest to measure out in a small powder room, but she feels the effect is worth it. Here she's used a huge style vertical door pull as a towel bar, just mounted horizontally.
The diamonds were handpainted and feature a wooden medallion nailed in each of the diamond's corners.
The Paris Apartment Bedroom features a crown above the bed and wooden curtain tiebacks screwed into the wall to drape back the curtain behind the bed. The walls of this room are awaiting a blue glaze that Denise wants to add overtop of the blue paint to create an old world feel. The photo below features a handmade window treatment, just one of the many window treatments Denise custom made for her home.
This is the Girls' Fairy Bedroom. These great textural trees go all around the room and were accomplished using a tree stencil and joint compound.
The bathroom for this room uses another fun technique where Denise used actual ribbon on the walls in a crisscross diamond pattern and used the same ribbon to tie bows at the corners and attached them with a simple thumbtack.
This is not the best photo, but I wanted to show that this is our dining room chair, yes believe it or not, this is one of four handpainted dining room chairs that our family sits on every night for dinner. Depending on the type of chair and the material, many of Denise's chairs are functional chairs, these chairs are probably 10 years old! Each chair features a different woman from the Italian artist, Boticelli. The long gold table with black marble top was found at a huge markdown at a local consignment shop!
One of my favorite pieces is this mirror Denise painted. She loves Italian and French design and this image was taken from photographs of a Pompeii mural. It hangs at her entryway, here you see it decorated for the holidays, and in the reflection of the mirror, up the staircase, is a wonderful mural by artist, Edmond Piffard.
More of Edmond's mural.
As you could tell by the first photo, Denise's love of decorating is not only limited to the interior of her home. Along with a local San Diego Pool Company she designed her pool. She loves urns and bowls and happened upon this large concrete bowl during one of her shopping trips along the roadside shops in Rosarito. She had part of the lip of the bowl cut away to allow for the water to overflow into the pool.
This gazebo she designed using concrete columns as the base. She then had an iron artist design the top piece to allow for climbing vines to eventually cover the entire top. Some of you may remember the black and white stripe curtains we use at many of our shows, those curtains Denise actually made to hang in between all of the columns of this gazebo. She has a great chandelier hanging above the center table and chairs, it makes a great place for entertaining in the evening.
I think out of all of the fun and unique things Denise has created, she is probably most proud of her garden. She works harder most days outside than in and it definitely shows!
This was just a glimpse into some of the fun and inspiring things my girls and I are surrounded by each day. A couple of weeks ago my girls were working on a project and I overheard them talking as they were coming from the garage, obviously successful in finding what they needed for their project. The older one says very seriously to the younger one, "I'm so glad we live in a family of artists." The little one answers "Yeah, me too" and I quietly answered to myself, ' yeah, me three...'
