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Just Fun Decorating for Tweens & Teens

This book includes helpful hints, money saving tips and fun ideas for furniture layouts, color schemes, lighting, window treatments, designer tricks, theme rooms, accessorizing and more. Learn how to make your room a comfortable retreat that reflects your own interests and personality, plus creative ideas for customizing your décor using fun craft projects.  Size:  5.5” X 8.5”, Paperback, 96 pages, ISBN: 978-0-9790618-3-7   $7.95 

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Designs That Sell: How to Make Your Home Show Better & Sell Faster

A quick reference guide that’s filled with practical tips and designer tricks to help give your property a solid advantage over your competition and get a faster sale at a higher price. It includes helpful suggestions for furniture layouts, accessorizing, lighting, home staging, de-cluttering, designer tricks and more—all the information you need, condensed into one short volume to save you time. Size:5.5” X 8.5”, Paperback, 60 pages.   $6.95  

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Decorating Basics: For Men Only

A step-by-step guide for the millions of men who live alone, whether single, divorced or widowed. Decorating your home is simple when you follow the suggestions in this no-frills, down-to-basics manual with helpful tips for clearing out the clutter, making your rooms more functional, and creating an attractive living space that you’ll be proud to show off to friends and family. Size: 5.5” X 8.5”, Paperback, 76 pages. ISBN: 978-0-9790618-9-9   $7.95  

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Interior Decorating Books

Ten Common Home Decorating Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

Your home should be a comfortable, inviting space, but a few common decorating mistakes might be causing trouble. This book offers helpful hints and creative ideas for furniture layouts, color schemes, lighting, window treatments, accessorizing, designer tricks and more to help you achieve the results you want. It can show you how to make the most efficient use of your space, choose the right furniture pieces for better function, add lighting to make your rooms sparkle, and create an inviting mood that will make the time you spend there more enjoyable. Whether you’re starting from scratch with an empty room or planning to use what you already own, this simple step-by-step guide can help make your rooms more functional and more attractive, using whatever budget you choose. Size: 5.5” X 8.5”, paperback, 72 pages. ISBN: 978-0-9802244-4-3   $6.95

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Conquer the Clutter: Simple Steps for  De-Cluttering Your Home E-Booklet

Clearing out the clutter and getting organized not only saves you time and money, it can help relieve some of the stress in your life and provide a more comfortable, relaxing environment. This booklet offers easy steps to help you identify some of your clutter-causing habits, tackle that mountain of  clutter and get you back on track with a less stressful, more organized lifestyle. 24 pages. E-Booklet sent to you by e-mail for printing or viewing: $3.95   

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Creative How-To Books

Interior Decorating Basics: A Beginner’s Guide For Decorating Your Home

Decorating your home to reflect your own personal style is easy when you follow a few basic guidelines. This booklet offers helpful hints for furniture layouts, color schemes, lighting, window treatments, accessorizing and more that can help you achieve the results you want, whether you’re starting from scratch with an empty room or planning to use what you already own. 24 pages.

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No Rules—Just Fun Decorating

This book offers helpful hints, money saving tips & fun ideas for furniture layouts, color schemes, lighting, window treatments, accessorizing, designer tricks & more. It’s a totally new concept for stress-free decorating. Forget the rules—Just have fun!

Size: 5.5”X8.5”, soft cover, double wire binding, 108 pages. $8.95   

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Ignoring the focal point in a room is a very common decorating mistake. When planning your design project, make an effort to highlight an architectural feature in the room or create an attractive vignette on one of the walls, which can serve as the room’s focal point. It will make the time you spend there more enjoyable, and that is, after all, what decorating is about—adding more beauty to our lives. 

You can use a symmetrical arrangement of accessories over the mantel shelf as shown in the photo above (called “formal balance”) for a more traditional look.

Or you can create a more casual arrangement (“informal balance”) from a group of objects of varying sizes and shapes, like the one in the photo at right. With this type of arrangement, you’ll need to do some experimenting with different combinations of objects until you feel the balance looks right.

The focal point can be a fireplace with attractive decorations above the mantel, a window with a beautiful view, or artwork arranged over a sofa.

If you have a room with a nice view, make it the focal point of your room. Arrange the furniture to draw attention toward it. Frame the window with drapery panels or fabric swags and position a tall plant or topiary on either side to help make it stand out, as shown in the photo at right. 

If the fireplace is an attractive architectural feature in your living room, orient your furniture toward it. The focal point of any room should create sufficient impact to draw your attention.

When using the fireplace as the focal point, arrange a group of accessories, such as framed mirrors, paintings, vases, candles and other objects on or over the mantle in order to create a pleasing composition and make your focal point stand out. 

Try to make the composition large enough in scale and extended high enough on the wall above the mantel shelf to establish its importance. How do you know if your arrangement works? Just stand back and observe. Does the composition appear pleasing and relatively balanced? Does it create enough of an impact to draw your attention? As long as you’re happy with the results and you’ve taken the time to check the overall impact, then go with it!

Painting an accent wall in a darker or more vibrant color that contrasts with the fireplace or other objects in your focal point is another way to make it stand out. For example, if your fireplace has white wood trim and your room is painted a neutral beige color, then painting the wall that the fireplace is on with a darker shade of beige (or one of your accent colors in the room, such as medium blue) will draw the eye to that wall. It will also make the fireplace “pop” because of the white paint of the wood trim against the darker wall color. Placing any object in front of a sharply contrasting color makes it more visible.

If you don’t have a fireplace in your living room, you can create a focal point by arranging decorative objects and artwork over a sofa or an attractive piece of furniture, such as a chest or entry table. Painting an accent wall in a contrasting color behind these arrangements will also create more impact for your focal point.

Focal points should not be reserved for just the living room. Whether it’s an arrangement of plates over a buffet in your dining room or an attractive curtain panel behind the headboard of your bed, have fun experimenting with arrangements in other rooms in your home, to create attractive vignettes you can enjoy throughout your house.

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