It all started when my friend Cara showed me some gray bedding in a West Elm catalog that she loved.
Actually, it REALLY all started when I sold my friend Cara her first home. 🙂
It seems like moving and getting bit by the decorating bug go hand in hand for a lot of people.
Anyway, Cara has been thinking about painting her bedroom walls dark gray, but the gray bedding she found was throwing her for a loop. Â She was trying to decide if having gray walls and gray bedding would be too much.
Since she’s only lived in her house since December 30th, her bedroom was essentially picked up from her apartment and plunked down in a much larger room when she moved.
The new bedding she loved was $150, so we decided to take a little shopping trip to see if we could restyle a quilt to achieve the same look. Â After searching several stores with no luck, we found ourselves at Target, where this purple chrysanthemum quilt was calling her name.
Cara has always loved green in her bedroom, but it was time for a change. Â Purple and gray are a great color combination, and this purple quilt in person has just the right amount of texture and color to break up her future gray walls. Â She’s wanting a soothing, dark bedroom that’s cave-like and perfect for napping. Â A dark gray wall color would be great for that – something along these lines perhaps?
This is the paint color we used in Stephen’s studio, on the stripes in our closet, and in our soon-to-be complete master bathroom. Â In person it reads much more charcoal.
While we were at Tar-jay, she decided to take a peek at their lamps (dangerous territory – that lamp aisle!). Â Of course she found the perfect pair and some inexpensive shades to go with them.
The only problem with the shades? Â In a room with dark gray walls, dark purple bedding, and dark wood furniture, bright white shades would stand out like a sore thumb. Â So, we decided to embellish them with some fabric, ribbon, and beads from Joann’s.
A candle + circles of shiny gray satin + 3 sparkly beads = a fun accent flower!
While Cara was busy (trying not to burn the house down) making the gray flowers, I set to work with the purple ribbon.
I hot-glued the end under, then I proceeded to fold and glue the ribbon accordion-style until it started to take on the shape of a flower.
After much burning of the fingertips, we had three flowers for each shade.
And after a little more gluing, here’s how they turned out!
By this point it was about 11:30 at night.  We thought we’d make the shades and call it a night, but once they were finished, we just had to see the whole room pulled together. So, 30 minutes of bed-making, lamp-switching, and carpet-vacuuming later, here’s Cara’s room before and after!
I’m so excited to see how it looks after the walls are painted gray like the throw pillow. Â Those cream curtains will really pop!
She’s also planning on switching out the artwork for something larger and/or lower and adding a few more throw pillows.
Here’s a look at one of the lamps with its new embellished shade.
Doesn’t it go great with her new bedding?
In my opinion, the best part about this little switcheroo wasn’t how quickly it came together, or even how cute it turned out. Â The best part is that now her room matches her cat!
You’d better believe Max made himself a little nest at the foot of Cara’s bed the minute I left, and probably hasn’t moved since. 🙂
I hope you’ve enjoyed a little peek into Cara’s home. What did you think of the makeover? She has lots of projects and painting on her to-do list, so we might be visiting her again soon.
On another note, Mr. Heard and I toiled away on our master bathroom makeover this weekend, and it is looking awesome! Â I can’t wait to share all the projects that have gone into making it a room we can be proud of.
Hope you had a great weekend, and thanks for reading!
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