Healthy Art

By

Veronic.a F.ree

I consider my home a haven from the chaos and stress that exists outside the walls of my house. My home is a place to rest my body and renew my spirit. It is this belief that generated the idea of decorating my home with healthy art. My personal definition of healthy art is artistic creations that nourish the body, uplift the spirit, and are visually appealing.

When at home I like to be surrounded by things that I find comfortable and pleasurable. I like to change the appearance of the interior of my home often. I don't make major renovations, just simple changes such as rearranging the furniture or changing color schemes or wall dcor. My idea of decorating with healthy art is a wonderful way to not only change the dcor in my home but to also change my eating habits.

Daily I am reminded by medical reports, the news media, magazine advertisements and various other sources of the importance of establishing healthy eating patterns. I know that in order to live a balanced life I must not only take care of my physical body but also nurture my spiritual and emotional needs. Healthy art creations provide the perfect way to maintain the balance I need.

In an attempt to establish a healthier diet I have stopped buying cookies and chips for snacks and started buying fruit instead. I also have started eating more vegetables. Space is limited in my kitchen. Finding a place to store the replacements for my usual junk food required some creativity. Fresh fruits and vegetables are too beautiful to be hidden away. In keeping with this idea, I now use them to make edible artistic creations to beautify my home. This way they serve a dual purpose. Healthy food is always in sight and within reach.

Baskets and bowls can be purchased for minimal prices at yards sales and flea markets. These make excellent starting points for creating edible displays. These creations need not be confined solely to the kitchen or dining room. Fruitful displays can also add beauty to a foyer or family room.

I enjoy creating arrangements with unusual fruits and vegetables. Buying fruit to match a tropical theme, a holiday theme or a certain color scheme gives me an opportunity to experience and enjoy flavors, textures, and aromas that I would not ordinarily experience. I've found a large variety of unexplored fruits and vegetables at local Farmer's Markets.

In spring and summer I like to incorporate flowers and herbs into my creations. A basket filled with fuzzy, aromatic peaches and blooms from summer flowers makes a soothing arrangement. (I put the blooms in individual vials and mingle them in with the fruit.) An assortment of tomatoes arranged around a container of basil is fragrant and uplifting. Red is an energizing color and basil has a unique aroma which makes this a winning combination. Mint is easy to grow. There are numerous varieties available that make wonderful additions to healthy art displays.

Decorating with fruits and vegetables is a slightly challenging in the fall and winter. Braids of garlic and strings of dried green beans and peppers make great edible art items. Wire baskets become artistically lovely when filled with various shapes, sizes and colors of onions and potatoes. Pomegranates are a favorite seasonal fruit that I like to use in my artistic designs. There are so many different varieties of apples easily accessible in local markets, that just a collection of various types of apples becomes a work of art.

Since I started decorating my home with healthy art I have drastically changed my eating habits. Reaching for a mango, kiwi, tomato, or carrot is much healthier than grabbing a cookie or munching on chips. Having beautiful arrangements of fruits and vegetables in sight and within reach serves more than one purpose. Healthy art nourishes my physical body and lifts my spirit, and adds beauty to my home.

Decorating With Art

A Little Savvy with Framed Art Prints and Photographs Can Help Successfully Pull a Room Together

By Cel.este De.Sapri

Maybe you’re restricted by an older living space with existing furnishings, or overwhelmed by the possibilities a stark new space may offer. Maybe you’re decorating with unlimited funds, or on a shoe string budget. What ever the circumstances, framed art and prints can offer numerous solutions to decorating dilemmas, and they are often key elements in bringing a room together.

To use framed art successfully, as wall decor, color, and grouping, proportions and hanging need to be given careful consideration. Begin by thinking about the feeling or mood you wish to convey. Consider the colors and styles of existing furnishings, you may wish to reinforce, contrast or complement especially those that would be difficult or costly to change, such as flooring or bathroom fixtures. Study the space itself. Is it large and expansive, with high ceilings, or small and intimate?

So, now that you’ve begun thinking about mood, space, color and placement, here are some thoughts about materials and tools. If conservation is an important concern, the matting material should be one hundred percent acid free rag board. This is what museums use. Double mats may work well in situations where you want to maximize an accent color. The accent colored mat is usually placed under the lighter mat so only about one sixteenth to one quarter inch (about three to five centimeters) of it shows. Mats are usually four ply, but thicker, eight ply mats can really draw in the eye. They work best with photos and very small prints. Silk mats may be used in more formal and classic situations. If a mat is not used there are spacers, called fillets that may be used to prevent the piece from touching the glass. This prevents condensation from forming. UV glass does not prevent, but will cut down the amount of fading, over time. Always make sure your mat and frame are not distracting the viewer's eye away. They should compliment the piece, not compete for attention. And, finally, I suggest a level and a good sturdy hammer, if you’re doing the hanging yourself.

Careful hanging, relationships, and grouping will help give a professional look. Unity is most important in bringing a display of pictures, prints and photographs together. Grouping frames for your walls are will give character to the setting. Frames in the same color and finishes unify a collection, even if pictures are of various shapes and sizes. Framing different subjects with the same color mount also helps unity.

Placing all the items you wish to group for a particular wall, on the floor in that room is an easy way to visualize a plan. You can rearrange the items until you are satisfied. Then, step back and check the arrangement, before going to the wall. Remember, a consistent spacing factor between each item is important. Picture cords and large hooks may be hidden under bell cords, ribbons and decorative rosettes. For formal settings, chains can hang pictures on traditional picture rods. Large, bold pictures can be further away, in more open rooms. Small detailed pictures should be hung in intimate halls and baths. The most common error made in hanging pictures is to hang them too high. Standing eye level of an average person is fine for halls and entryways. In living and dinning rooms, pictures should be at eye level when seated.

Interior Design Psychology, Tapping the Foundation of Mood

You may have heard of the interior design concepts incorporated within the practice of Feng Shui. If not, I don’t blame you. The term, Feng Shui, not only sounds ridiculous when pronounced in the English language, it is usually only uttered by a select few of the population; namely, interior designers, decorators and the owners of those spaces who are looking to enhance not only the look but also the “feel” or “sense” of their interiors. If you haven’t heard of it, (my advice?) don’t bother with it. Feng Shui appears to be a dying trend that found its peak of popularity and influence only a few years ago but has since wilted into other such outdated design movements.

Boiled down? Feng Shui is the concept of item placement designed to elicit a specific, and therefore an intentional feeling of mood, particularly a tranquil or peaceful sense of space. This item placement varies from all things found within an interior. It can include anything from the walls of the structure to the art on the walls, from counters and cabinets to the exact angled positioning of furnishings and furniture. Feng Shui often seems to go a bit overboard in its pursuit of providing that perfect space that it becomes near laughable in its highly structured pursuit of serenity.

The practice of design psychology differs from Feng Shui in that many of the practices of Feng Shui are based on ancient practices lingering on the superstitious. Whereas design psychology claims a heightened sense of the human psyche tested through science, Feng Shui simply doesn’t. Interior decorators are beginning to understand the importance of design psychology by implementing the techniques with their various clients.

Procuring the correct understanding of the concepts required for each specific house vary as widely as the dweller. There is not one single theme that can be “cookie-cuttered” to fit all interiors everywhere. There are, however, basic themes that can be applied to a specific group of people, such as those looking to buy a home. The effects of design psychology work best when the owner of the space is consulted and their specific lifestyle is taken into consideration. Colors, accessories, furnishings and the like are all unique to the individual. The same color combinations that illicit positive memories in one, may not induce in another.

Interior Redesign: Getting the professional interior design look without the professional budget

There are several new trends emerging in the interior design and decorate fields, giving interiors a professionally decorated feel, at a cost even nonprofessionals can afford. Two of the newest trends in interior design are home staging and interior redesign. They share similarities, but the general approach and desired outcomes vary.

Interior redesign seeks to produce a stunning interior you normally see in the homes of the rich and famous, at a fraction of the cost. Home redesigners keep your costs down by keeping their overhead down. They have several means of doing this, but one of the most prominent, and best ways, is by using much of your existing furniture and accessories. There is no need to purchase an entire new set of furniture, if you don’t need it. Interior redesigners work with what you have, but deliver results that would make even the rich and famous jealous.

However, it’s not just about having the right furniture and angling your desired way. You need a professional redesigner to get you the tips and techniques to make your rooms flow together and provide a seamless transition, not only between rooms, but between furnishings and accessories too. Having “the eye” is what makes these professional redesigners worth their weight in salt.

Home staging is another popular trend that, similarly, tries to use many of the current items found within the home to redecorate. However, the main difference between home redesign and home staging is that home stager’s main goal is to get the house sold at the best price and the shortest time. This usually means decorating a house that will appeal to the broadest audience. Where home staging seeks to appeal to everyone, interior redesign has one person, or one family, in mind.

You might be discouraged everytime you look into your living room or family room or even your bedroom. Maybe you’re just not sure how it should look to get the most out of it. Where do you put the couch, the coffee table, the artwork? Using your own furnishings can be daunting, because that is exactly what you have had to work with till now anyway right; how can one setup really make it look any different than another? Home stagers and redesigners can help you get that perfect look, with what you already have.

Home Staging with Accessories

If you haven’t heard of home staging yet, you’re missing the new trend in real estate to get your house sold faster and at a better price. Essentially, home stagers work on different levels, depending on what the homeowner (now home seller) decides, but with the same goal in mind: get the home sold quickly and at the right price. The differing levels depend largely on how much the client wants to spend to get their home in top selling condition. However, a home stager should never be left out of the equation and their suggestions, though sound pricey, are always better than having your home go through a series of price reductions.

Generally, the first level of home staging is fairly basic: rearranging and using only the current home’s furnishings and accessories. However, this proves cumbersome and is often avoided because the main idea behind home staging is to make the house appeal to the most amounts of people. The home needs that universal appeal characteristic of model homes and magazines. That’s the look were going for; something that appeals to the most amount of people the most amount of time, therefore getting the most amount of results.

So, one of the first steps most home stagers will do when they work with a client is to “de-clutter” and organize, making the space look open and clean and ready to be used. Essentially, home stagers are looking to get rid of anything that does not fit that universal appeal, and this can entail many of the homeowner’s personal furnishings and accessories.

With those cleaned up and gone home stagers then move on to the second level: using some of the homeowner’s items as well as items from their own inventory accrued through their business. These accessories range from furniture such as couches, chairs, tables and even patio and outdoor furniture to smaller items such as cookbooks, wall mirrors, flowers , vases and wall art. With a stager’s inventory in place, the home now appeals to a broader audience, expanding the number of people interested in the piece of real-estate and who are willing to make an offer.

However, there is one other level that more and more home stagers are beginning to work on: vacant home staging. Essentially, vacant home staging is setting and staging a home that has no furnishings and accessories, requiring the stager to use only their inventory and resources. This is a difficult market for some home stagers because it requires a larger amount of inventory to give the house its universal appeal. Many home stagers have neither the inventory nor resources to fill a house and make it look comfortable to buyers.

Home stagers work on different levels of home design, which all require different levels of business aptitude. Home staging is still in some of its infant stages of business, but is most likely soon to explode into a standard practice, possibly even a requirement for successful home selling.

Brass tacks? Home stagers need good deals on good inventory that will last hundreds of home stagings without wearing out or needing replacement. Home stagers have begun finding Imagekind a valuable resource for finding high-quality fine-art-prints to accessorize their various staging and design jobs. Home stagers appreciate the discounts offered and the millions of frame and matting options available. Whether you like abstracts, floral or landscapes, matted and framed with glass, or you prefer the canvas wrap option making the print light, easy to transport and move and ultra-durable, able to withstand hundreds to thousands of stagings with no worries of breaking glass or dinging frames, home stagers have found Imagekind to be their number one provider of fine-art-prints.