Master Bedroom Reveal: Bedroom Decor

You already know where one of my bedroom wall decorations came from if you read my article on the Wine & Paint night.

Dog silhouette wall art (aka Dany art)

The rest of my theme was based on dutch delftware (painfully obvious I guess).

Close up of the new wall art over the bed

The hanging plates above my bed came from inspiration from a old Martha Stewart Christmas book that my mom or I found at a thrift store.  (Did I mention I’m working on a full collection of old Martha books?)

Look at how young she is on the cover! And you can see the plates I used as inspiration hanging above the fireplace behind her. The plates are actually held up by invisible plate hangers (these ones are awesome and removable) and the ribbon is simply taped to the back to give the illusion that they are hanging from it. I discovered this website for ribbon during my wedding and use it every time I need a large amount of ribbon.  The plates around the room are mostly from thrift shops, but of course when you need to find something at a thrift shop you just won’t so I gave up and bought the two small ones above my bed from the Christmas Tree Shops.  (Don’t tell anyone, but I worked there throughout high school.  I really I wish I still got that employee discount…)

Oh and I thought I’d mention my earring holder – I actually made this in high school but fixed it up recently.

Gotta love that a grown woman has bat earrings in her line up.

I took an old frame, some old screen and fitted a piece of screen to the back using tacks.  I then added some padded stand offs (the little felt ones you put on the bottom of chairs to prevent them scratching your floor) so it would sit far enough away from the wall so I could hang my earrings with ease.

Please do a better job than me nailing the tacks in…

And finally my zen corner…

Meditation Corner

I started meditation a couple years ago when my work life became extremely stressful.  If you’ve ever tried meditation, you’ll find it is necessary to sit/kneel/etc with good posture.  Since I usually sit in some form of lotus pose (legs crossed) it is helpful to prop myself up on a pillow to allow my hips to tilt forward a bit to force me to straighten my spine.  They call the little cushion you sit on a zafu and the mat below your knees a zabuton.

I used this neat little pattern and old scraps of fabric to create these buckwheat hull filled zafus.

They all have a zipper along the bottom so I can add/remove buckwheat as needed or wash the covers. Since it seems to be a question on many meditation forums I have to add that the buckwheat hulls are from buckwheathull.com which were a great price and quality – and as an added bonus they are a nonprofit that provides jobs to disabled adults. I used 6 lbs of hulls per zafu. The big pillows you see on the floor are from IKEA – pillowcases and all. I was going to make my own zabutons but these serve the purpose just as well and were much less expensive. For perspective the first hit for “zafu and zabuton” is this set on amazon that sells for $97.95 + $16.00 shipping. The zafu cost me about $18 to make which was mostly the cost of the buckwheat hulls. The “zabuton” pillows were 2 “ÄRENPRIS” King pillows for $13 each, and a 2 pack of pillowcases for $10. This brought me to a grand total of $54, less than half the cost of the one on amazon.

The rest of the zen corner consists of a little woven chest (have I mentioned I love baskets in all forms?), a real orchid (this is version 2 – version 1 was shaken apart by Dany the dog one lonely day), a yard sale find lamp and a fun little hour timer I found on the clearance shelf at home goods (though I have yet to meditate for an entire turn of the timer). If you’re interested in learning about meditation there are lots of free books out there to get you started!