Welcome friends of The Inspired Room. 
As we continue on our Christmas Tour of Homes theme, I have a fireplace mantel before and after to share with you today.
This was also part of a Holiday Idea House {HIH} room at the Holden Arboretum that I did several years ago. The fireplace was the star of the room although it did not start out that way as you will see from the before photo.
The challenge with the HIH is that we cannot put holes in the walls and can’t change wall color, etc. So we all had to be super careful and were limited in what we could do to decorate the rooms.
You can see from the photo on the right that I was working with a pretty sad looking “before” – so stark and bare.
I thought using removable wall decals would be perfect as “artwork” above the mantel. I contacted Mary at Wonderful Graffiti and asked if they could make custom graffiti for the space.
They did and it was perfect for the space – it came off easily and made no holes! Love that. {BTW, for a limited time only wonderfulgraffiti.com is offering a 25% discount on their holiday decals. RUN there to get great savings! PLUS, with orders of $50 or more you’ll also get a free onament decal!}
So here is an after photo of the mantel after I worked some of my Christmas magic on it.
You notice that I did not use the typical green/red holiday colors. That’s because the wallpaper in the room is kinda blue/pink/purple. So I went with this inspired bronze and lavendar color scheme that I thought was stunning.
It took me hours and hours and more than 150 bulbs to create the mantel garland. I wired each bulb separately and then wired three of them together. Then I would wire the bunch of three to the garland.
Speaking of garland, I created the custom garland by combining about four different types of greenery. It was worth it in the end – the mantel was the featured photo in the big newspaper in our area – it it was a stunning focal point in the room.
To create garland like this, you have got to make sure that you tape your oasis foam to the fireplace mantel - this baby gets H-E-A-V-Y!
Below you can see the overall finished mantel. I placed purple and white glass stones in the two footed crystal vases and then nestled three paper white bulbs into the stones which added a wonderful touch of nature to the room {appropriate since this is for an arboretum}. Within a couple of weeks we had paper white greens popping from the tops of the vases.
About Diana
I’m a busy working designer & home stager who gets a lot of joy & happiness helping clients transform their houses into homes they love. I blog as part of that creative process. In our “spare” time my hubby & I are updating our Cottage in the Woods that we share with our cats. I’m a Christian & look forward to someday working for my Heavenly Father, the Greatest Designer of all, decorating mansions in Heaven!
{ 2 comments }
Love the saying and it looks so lovely. The make over is divine.
Thanks for sharing
It really is beautiful! Stopped by from the Inspired Room, Merry Christmas!
Comments on this entry are closed.