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Wednesday, January 4, 2012

The Stationery Closet - A Small Project - Part 1

Some weeks ago I had shared this picture with you of a mini project I was doing in the house.

I have been working on Isabel's room a little at a time. The walls used to be painted in Benjamin Moore's Cotton Candy, a very girly pink which the girls themselves had chosen when they were littler. A year ago she chose Behr's Harmonious, a relaxing medium blue as a change for when the room became her own and in anticipation of turning thirteen.

We decided the accent colors would be orange and cream or white with a litte black, of course, to ground the room.

Of the two closets in that room I have converted one into a shared stationery closet for the girls. It holds their old music books as well as used colored folders from previous grades that can be reused. It also holds printer paper, pencils, some kids' craft supplies and so on. I connected the huge printer to an outlet outside the closet so that it sits on a shelf within and does not take up space nor is it an eyesore on the desk outside. This picture gives you a view of the inside on a typical day before I organized it further therefore the items are a little haphazard.  
To the left of the printer is an old Pottery Barn Kids lamp which, again, I connected to the outlet outside so that the kids have sufficient lighting when printing. Any lighting in a closet is a bonus. It was a simple solution and the lamp was a spare.

I wanted to incorporate the blue and orange colors of the room somehow into this closet. I have seen some great decorative work done within closets and thought this would be a perfect space to work on. A few months ago I had ordered this Moroccan Sun Flower stencil from Royal Design Studio because I liked the floral pattern. I decided to use this as each flower is a good size (7.5" x 7.25") and would make a perfectly fun yet bold statement in an otherwise regular utilitarian closet.

I keep all my paint samples as they are useful for little projects. I had these two samples from the Behr in Tibetan Orange (for something else, possibly) and Harmonious(from when we were sampling colors for the room.

I experimented with color combinations on paper, trying to decide whether to combine both the colors or do all orange or all blue.

The Tibetan Orange is a deeper orange (closer to red) than I was looking to use in this space.
I combined another paint sample, Benjamin Moore's Honeywheat, and mixed it with the orange to obtain a lighter and brighter hue.

I loved the color - it has enough punch. I also thought this pattern would look good in a wood-blocked effect.
I will show you the work I did on the closet in my next post so stay tuned!


Linking up this post to Passionately Artistic and the party at Savvy Southern Style
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Lisa
Please Note: I have not been compensated in any way for this post.