How to Reuse Old Décor

Featured Guest Post

I absolutely love decorating. But, I don’t have a huge budget to do it with. So the easiest way that I have found to decorate without spending a fortune is to shop my own house instead of a store. If I want a new accessory, or even a new look for a whole room, I check out what I’ve already got and try to figure out how to use it in a new way to fit the look I’m wanting. I think about how it can be made over to feel like a brand new item. With a little creativity, even the cheapest of items can look nice.

Things that I like to have on hand for making changes to my décor:

• Mod Podge (a glue/glosser)- I use this stuff when I want to recover an item like this photo box-turned-recipe box. I was tired of the original red color, so I covered the box with cut out recipes from an old cookbook.

I also used it here, to cover this frame with broken glass.

• Spray paint, in a couple neutral colors like black and white- The look of an item can be completely transformed using spray paint. I paint and repaint items around my house all the time depending on what look I’m going for.

• Hemp cord (also known as Jute)- This is very versatile and can be used in many ways to decorate with. I like it for wrapping around vases, pots and bowls to give them a new look.

Even grass planted in a disposable plastic cup looks nice when the cup is wrapped in Jute.

• An old book that I can rip pages out of- Book-page-covered items are everywhere and for good reason- somehow everything looks smarter when it’s covered in text. Use pages torn from a book to recover everything from picture frames to flower pots, or even the backs of shelves. Make art for your walls by cutting shapes from book pages and using Mod Podge to apply them to a canvas.

I don’t believe that decorating a home needs to be expensive, and reusing what we’ve already got is a great way to keep costs down. When we’re craving a change to our décor, we don’t always need to run out and buy new stuff. We have the old stuff for a reason: once upon a time, it was something that we liked, and with a little creativity it can be again!

Brooke
Inside-Out Design