Week 3 - One Room Challenge - My Living Room Makeover

It’s Week 3 already and I’m making slow progress. Many of the things I’ll need to pull this Living Room together have arrived. My Chair & Ottoman are here as well as my drapery hardware and some architectural elements I’ll be adding to the room. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuut I’m getting A Lot nervous about seeing the custom sofa I ordered 5 months ago. I spoke with the owner today and as of now the production facility is still closed and even worse, he is going out of business. This news absolutely breaks my heart!! I try so hard to shop locally and support small businesses but going three months without any income has just left no room for his recovery.

A very sober reminder of how important it is that we are in this together and should try as best we can to help these small businesses. I know this first hand because I use to have a boutique and the crash of 2008 was too much for my little business to weather as well. Sigh….

In regards to the progress I’ve made this week and the plans for next week, I had some fun creating some new textiles for the room. Next week I’ll be sending them off to print as fabric and wallpaper. My painting is coming along but it is a beast. This painting is huge but I hope to finish it this coming week so I can start on painting my fireplace wall. Other than my missing sofa, things are coming together nicely! Check back next Thursday for my next update.

In the meantime, make sure to head over to the One Room Challenge website to check out all of the Ah-Mazing Featured Designers and super talented Guest Participants.

Take good care & Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

xoxo Mari

Introducing Jane Gianarelli - April's Featured Creative - Episode 16

If you follow me, you probably have a love for Interior Design and Room Renderings. Well, I have a real treat for you today! Meet my friend, and fellow Italian, Jane Gianarelli! In today’s Episode we talk about how she combined her two passions of Interior Design and Fine Art into a thriving niche business!

I have followed Jane for a long time on Instagram because I love a good room sketch! Jane’s work is so incredibly beautiful and well executed. We have similar backgrounds as Interior Designers. We discuss how there is just no way you can illustrate a room like this without understanding all the details that go into Interior Design. What she creates is a true ART-FORM and can not be replaced by a tech app! Like Jane, I too loved the rendering part of the Interior Design process (which I am now turning into larger fine art paintings) where as she has created a thriving business rendering for top Interior Designers all throughout the United States.

Credit to Shay Geyer & IBB Design

This is such a fun Episode and just another amazing example of how you can turn your art into an abundant and joyful day job!

YOU CAN LISTEN & WATCH THE FULL EPISODE HERE!

You can follow and support Jane Gianarelli here:

https://janegianarelli.com/

https://www.instagram.com/janegianarelli/

https://www.facebook.com/jane.gianarelli

My 'Artist In Residence' Experience - Graduate Hotel, Berkeley

I recently had the most wonderful experience as an artist in one of my favorite towns in California, Berkeley. I discovered the charming boutique hotel, the Graduate, when moving my daughter into her dorm room at UC Berkeley this past fall. Not only is the hotel right next door to her dorms but it is incredibly charming and loaded with character!

You know when you walk into a hotel and there is an Ashley Longshore painting in the entrance, you are in for an intriguing experience! Once the Durant Hotel, now given new life as the Graduate Hotel, it is full of quirky college themed items based off of the 1968 movie The Graduate which takes place at UC Berkeley (although some of the scenes were actually filmed at USC - fun fact).

The rooms are fully appointed with everything you need and the attention to college themed detail is impressive. I’ve been an Interior Designer for almost 15 years and I can honestly say this hotel is at the top of my list when it comes to clever design. As an artist, the design is incredibly inspiring as well.

The mix of old world ikat rugs and houndstooth blankets, with original art and lamps that appear, a-hem…, ‘multi-functional’, one gets the impression that the person who stays here is well read and well traveled.

When checking in to the hotel you at first don’t realize the the entire back wall behind the reception desk is actually hundreds of National Geographic magazines! Come on! Who thinks of this stuff?! I die!

Of course there is a fun Bar & Grill next to the lobby I just had to do a quick sketch!

Also in the lobby, they have the most adorable vintage bikes you can use. In Cal Bear colors of course!

The campus of Berkeley is simply beautiful and loaded with history. Did you know there are 41 libraries on campus? So no excuses for not having a place to study. If it were me I would live at the historic Doe Memorial Library! It’s just so, so charming and cozy!

UC Berkeley

As a proud parent of UC Berkeley student, I’m looking forward to many more visits there and discovering more of the wonderful attractions Berkeley has to offer. While staying at the amazing Graduate Hotel we also discovered some super places to eat and shop, but that’s a post for another time. We will definitely be going back to stay at the Graduate, Berkeley not only for it’s great location to everything but because the place is so warm and inviting, the staff is so kind, and it feels like home away from home…and it didn’t hurt to know that the urinal in the men’s bathroom is Stanford red… OK I may have taken a picture of that too!

September's Featured Creative Entrepreneur - Amie Freling-Brown Artist/Designer - MeMe Hill Studio

It was such a treat to Interview Amie Freling-Brown of Meme Hill Studio for Podcast Episode 2!

You can listen to the Full Episode HERE!

Amie and I met via Instagram a couple of years ago. I was so intrigued with her creative journey because she was the first Artist turned Interior Designer that I had ever met and the similarities we had with our work and family lives were uncanny! Plus the fact that she is one of the kindest souls I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing!

Her creative journey began around her Grandmother Hill’s beloved card table always equipped with crayons, paper, glue and glitter! Little did her grandparent's know at that time what an influential artist and designer she would become! I love this Podcast Episode because she really shares a wealth of information on how her grass-roots business and love of hand painted objects led to her landing her product in Nordstroms! And that was just the beginning…

Now you can find Amie wearing many hats including brand ambassador and social media influencer. Her powerhouse portfolio of brands include, HomeGoods, Raymour and Flanigan, Sherwin-Williams, Delta Faucet, Laura Ashley, Progress Lighting,  Lipton, The Bon-ton, and many more. Amie is a recent winner of the Home Depot DIY think tank competition and is a 2018 Better Homes Magazine Stylemaker.

Even with a looooong list of amazing accomplishments, I think what I love the most about Amie is her warmth and genuine willingness to help other people. She paints these beautiful murals for children’s hospitals and donates many hours to community outreach projects.

Blog www.memehill.com

IG https://www.instagram.com/memehillstudio/

FB https://www.facebook.com/memehillstudio/

Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/memehillstudio/

Twitter https://twitter.com/AmieFreling

The New Living Lavishly Magazine Is Out!

Happy Friday everyone! Have you seen it yet? The New Living Lavishly magazine is out. I have some fun articles in there to show you how simple it is to design and decorate your home. If your not local, you can read the issue online here.

I'm sharing with you simple and easy tricks on how to make your coffee table look amazing!

This was fun! I was able to show off my good friend and fellow designer, Abbe Fenimore, and this Gorgeous Powder Room she designed as well as share with you some tips on putting the POW! in your Powder Room. Check out Abbe's online shop too! She has A-Mazing taste. 

And here I'm sharing with you a colorful and inexpensive Thrift Store make-over. Piece of cake!

These are just a few of the fun articles in the latest magazine! Pick one up today! They're FREE. Also, if you like learning these fun decor tips, come see me speak at the Home Expo on Saturday, September 17th at 1:30, Madonna Expo Center! Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

My Recent Rendering For Designer, Lisa Mende & Traditional Home Magazine's Napa Showhouse

I am really enjoying all the wonderful people I am meeting on social media and it gets even better when incredibly talented bloggers, designers, artists, & writers ask to collaborate!!! I'm so excited about all the fun, new projects happening with several of them! I was recently asked by the incredibly talented Interior Designer, Lisa Mende, if I could create a quick room rendering for her of her room design for Traditional Home Magazine's Napa Showhouse. Literally, I had about 2 hours to figure it out but I didn't want to miss this great opportunity to work with such a nice person! You can read more about Lisa on her blog! I can't wait to see the showhouse!!

It's Live! Living Lavishly Magazine!!!

It's Live! LivingLavishlyMag !!! WooHoo! Pop The Champagne!

There's a New Home Decor Magazine in town & I'm honored to have been able to contribute to it! Check out my Design Trends and let me know what you think! If you are local to the Central Coast, you will be able to pick it up around town this weekend -or- read it online! Follow Living Lavishly on FB & @LivingLavishlyMag on Instagram! Have a wonderful weekend everyone!!

Rosa's Boutique's Colorful Dressing Room Make Over!

Today I want to share with you a very fun interior design project I recently completed. I had the wonderful opportunity to give this women’s clothing boutique a dressing room make-over.

What made this project so fun for me (other than the fact that it’s women’s fashion!!) was the ability to really design how I like to, colorfully!!! Of course we had a limited budget, every project does, but it’s what you do with the dollars you have and relatively speaking this project had a lot of bang for our buck.

One of the least expensive ways to create drama and atmosphere is with paint. I’m so grateful that my clients had full trust in me when I showed them the bold color choices I had selected. The dark pink is Sherwin Williams 6854 Impatient Pink and the light pink SW 6581 Verbena Pink.

We all fell in love with the Petal Pusher wallpaper from Hygge and West but because the wallpaper is a little on the pricey side we only used it on the two largest focal walls and as a wainscot down the hall. In the other dressing rooms, there are a total of six, I painted the back wall with our dark pink and added artwork.

I’m so excited when I get an opportunity to also create the wall art for my interior design projects. In this case I wanted each room to have it’s own identity so I painted six different designer Purses with Peonies. (In my Shop soon!) That way the customers could choose if they wanted the “Kate” (Kate Spade) or the “Co Co” (Chanel) room, the “Louis” (Vuitton) or the “Stalla” (McCartney) room. I was told today that the customers really liked the idea.

One of the owners had requested a solid door so I replaced the existing saloon doors with a light-weight solid door and added MyOverlays in white to dress it up! I would like to add that the people at MyOverlays were incredibly wonderful to work with! I highly recommend their products. They customized these panels for me and I couldn't have been happier with the result.

Another one of my favorite tricks to dress up a plain mirror is to frame it out with a small crown molding. Just remember you will need to paint your molding on the front AND the back when you do this because the back will reflect in your mirror. My painter also painted the picture frames I found at Aaron Brothers in the same gold metallic paint so everything tied in together perfectly.

The hooks, knobs, trim, base and molding are from Home Depot. The light fixtures are from Lighting Universe and the accessories, including the fabulous pink chairs, are from Home Goods. That was definitely a Home Goods Happy Day!

It was a lot of fun! I hope it brought a little color into your day and maybe a few resources and ideas you can use for yourself. Thank you for stopping bye and letting me share it with you!

The Evolution Of A Concept

In honor of my friend, Jennifer, over at The Pink Pagoda & her Blue & White Mondays, (today she is sharing gorgeous blue and white bedrooms!) I thought I would share a little snippet of a recent project. (BTW I'm thrilled with the new Squarespace format because now I can really show you some of the projects that I've been working on!) 

WM Design Consultants

This was a gorgeous house that I had the pleasure work on from the beginning. During the design phase, prior to building, there are several conversations between the client, architect, designer and builder. It's the best time to hammer out all the details. So when it came to a long hallway my clients had, (most of my design friends know that I have an issue with Hallways - Not a fan of bowling allies unless I actually plan on bowling!) my clients were open to jazzing it up a bit. I suggested adding french doors and a fabulous reading nook, which I have to say, is now one of my favorite architectural details of this entire house. Fortunately my clients are very design conscious and were completely open to the idea and we repeated the arch detail in several other places throughout the house. (I Love repetition of form!) My client picked these great fabrics and now this thoughtful and creative feature looks out upon their gorgeous pool and landscaping. The perfect place to crawl up with a good book or take a nap!

Rendering By Jennifer Martin - Architect