If you don’t visit decor8 for a daily dose of inspiration, you’re missing out.  Not only does Holly have really good taste, but she posts often (= more fun to look at) and saves you from needing to comb through thousands of webpages to find the best stuff. And she’s really good about finding lower priced alternatives, which is nice for people on a budget (= moi).

After my surprise “get a hobby” win, I think I’ve used up most of my luck for a while. But I decided to put together an inspiration board for her latest contest just in case.

I’ve been wanting to make a wall board for a while anyway after seeing a pattern in a recent issue of Martha (can’t find a link - sorry) and the really incredible ones made by Shim + Sons. Let me assure that, after making my own, I have a lot more respect for how hard it is to get the fabric to lay nice and flat like Sally’s does. Maybe you’d better not really look at my fabric. Or the way that my camera didn’t like to photograph lots of white. The ochre pockets at the bottom were really fun to make, though, as were the fabric-covered thumbtacks (there’s a very nice tutorial for those here).

Of course, making the board was only half the project. I also got to search through my not insignificant stacks of design magazines, develop a theme, and start tearing out pages.*

*This was the source of a little disagreement between husband and myself. Is there anyone else out there who really dislikes ripping up your magazines? This is one of the things that has kept me from making a board like this in the past. Josh assured me that there are thousands of copies of Domino and Martha and Elle Decor out there just waiting to replace my damaged ones, but I’m still not convinced. I told him that I might tape the pics back in afterward and he said that he would laugh very, very hard if I did that. Is this really that neurotic of me?

The room I picked was the living room - our living room, to be specific. I think it’s really hard to decorate something in a vacuum instead of working with a specific set of walls, ceiling, and carpet. So, my goal was to come up with objects and colors that fit the very real living room in our very real apartment were I to have the opportunity to re-do everything with no budget. :)

It didn’t take very long for me to figure out that a lot of my images were falling neatly into a grey + brown theme. I kept the yellow/ochre and teal accents that I have now, but conveniently left out the ol’ forest green couch.

And what would an inspiration board be without something wildly beautiful that you cannot possibly afford?

Of course, I am now wishing that I had done this before moving in rather than after. I think I might have found another couple of hours to add a coat of soft grey paint to the walls, along with renewed/prolonged furniture searching. But I think that the point of an inspiration board should be opening yourself up to new possibilities instead of making you ungrateful for what you already have, so I’m going to be thankful for my little living room and dream about making a few changes in the future.

(You can relax, dear, I said “a few.”)