Finding affordable art

   Happy Halloween, I hope you all have a safe and fun filled time trick or treating.

  I can't believe a week has flown by since I started up again.  Today's post is all about finding affordable art, and by that I mean under a $100 bucks.  As you might have noticed gallery walls are becoming a popular trend in home decorating. Some of my favorite places to look are Consignment stores, Goodwill, Ebay, and especially my go-to Etsy, as well as a site called Minted. Here are a few finds from various sellers on Etsy.

Abstract paintings and prints.

I absolutely adore this print.  You can check out the Source here.

Okay, so this one is well over the $100 budget but I can personally say it's worth every penny.  I received this as a Christmas present last year and love it.  I've yet to frame it, so that might be my Christmas present this year.  You can check it out here.

Here's a modern twist on a classic subject.

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The Pink Pagoda is one of my favorite shops and I've purchased a few prints from her before. Source

Here's my own gallery wall, located as soon as you enter my home.

I've used a combination of photographs, prints, paintings as well as note cards.

Sorry for the grainy pictures, this is the extent of my photography skills as well as equipment. :-)

Do you Polyvore? If you don't, maybe you should.

     I'm super obsessed with a website called Polyvore.  You can use it to put together outfits or design any room you wish.  I could spend hours on it and I'm pretty sure I have. The nicest part is I don't have to have a budget when I design my imaginary rooms.  Now, who wouldn't love that?  It really is a great way to try out new floor plans and furniture pieces, lighting, bedding all before purchasing, and if you should want to purchase a particular item, it links you to it.  I try to use a combination of Pinterest as well as Polyvore to design a room.  It's helped a lot in nailing down a design concept, yet giving me options on how to style and design a room.  

     Here's a few pictures off of my own Polyvore boards.  The picture below was my design from today of what I imagine to be, a little girl's bedroom.  I love the use of pink and orange in this bedroom.

      The next bedroom is pretty close to what I would want for my dream master bedroom with a sitting area for when I want to hide from my children.  

Here's a fun game room/library/craft area.

These chairs are fabulous and make for a fun and bright area to dine.

If only there were just a few toys on the play room floor and not everything possibly dumped all over the place.  As you can see my imaginary home likes clean spaces.

No more babies for me, but this was fun putting together an imaginary nursery for twins.

I would never leave this next space.

I would love to one day have a formal dining room.

I designed this room with 2 things in mind.  The first being ironstone on display and the second, is that cow painting in the background.  I own that very same painting, which I still have yet to frame.

I think it would be pretty tough to get me out of this room as well.  I used this design to help me decide on my sofa as well as the leather chair.

I love color although at times really long for an all white space.

The only downside to Polyvore is that it doesn't have a lot to offer in terms of designing a kitchen or bathroom.  You can find lots of kitchen items but to find cabinets, etc. it's limited.

You can follow me here, as well as check out other rooms I have created.

Antique malls and Ironstone haul

     This Saturday was spent driving through the country side in York, Pennsylvania.  I love this time of year with the changes in the color of the landscape and the farm animals leisurely grazing in the pastures.  It makes me long for a farm of my own, and a simpler more self reliant kind of life. We had an opportunity come up to visit a couple of small farms, and of course we jumped on it.

     The first house we went to visit was built in 1750, it is a stone farmhouse located on 22 acres of beautiful green pastures, complete with a creek and a large red barn.  It was like stepping back in time as we toured the house, the barn, and some other out buildings.  I wish I would have snapped more pictures, but I was so in awe with everything that surrounded me, as well as, watching my 3 kids run about chasing after the barn kittens. Sounds dreamy right?

 

    This was actually a separate farm that had 3 horses and goats for the kids to pet.

     We stopped for some lunch at a local restaurant and then hit up an Antique Mall nearby.  If you are ever in the area, you should check out the Shrewsbury Antique Mall, located in Shrewsbury, PA.  This was just one vendor that left me drooling.  I should have grabbed at that moment all these ironstone pieces as I had intended, but 5 minutes later when I went back, almost all of these items were snatched up. Lesson learned.

    I love ironstone pitchers as well as coffee pots.  These pieces were relatively pricey, and I was looking more for platters and soup tureens.

I'm a sucker for almost anything Eastlake, and this piece had been restored beautifully.

My heart skipped a shopping beat when I ran across this compote.  I don't usually run into these and when I do there is a steep price tag attached.  This one wasn't exactly on the high or the low end of pricing, but there was no way I was letting it go.  I left behind the artificial Fall arrangement.  It's incredibly heavy.

   Here was my actual haul from that trip.  The compote, 2 soup tureens and 1 wheat platter.

                              I love how the sun is shining off of this.  

Here's a glimpse of the handle.

                           The smaller of the 2 soup tureens.

     I know I should invest in a quality camera instead of taking snap  shots with my iphone.

Here's the wheat platter.  It's super heavy and I got it for a steal of $20.  It has a crack and some crazing and for some people that would be a turn off but in Ironstone it just adds to the character and charm of the piece.  

Here's the pattern down below.

                               I will definitely be visiting the countryside again.

Spotlight on Etsy

     Alright, let's give this Blogging thing another go around.  I've missed it and yet I'm worried about all the pressures that fellow Bloggers have recently been writing about.  This for me, is just for fun.  I don't want paid advertisers and I recently turned down adding a thing called 'adsense' to my blog.  Essentially ads located on my blog.  What motivated me again is when a favorite Blogger wrote about how much fun it has been to document the last 5 years of her home and more importantly her family.  That was my light bulb moment, as Oprah would say.
     Today I want to bring you some brass eye candy found for sale on Etsy.  (Not sponsored by Etsy or any sellers).  If you noticed a lot of blogs as well as magazines are featuring a lot of brass.  I've been on the hunt as well to incorporate this look into my own home.
                                       
                                          Brass in Lighting

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I recently won at auction a pair identical to these candle holders shown below.

 

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Now can anyone recommend a good Brass cleaner?