Free tips & ideas: furniture arranging; furniture placement; cheap decorating

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Now you can get One Day Decorating Tips, like the one below, sent to you FREE and automatically via email on a periodic basis to help you with your decorating projects. As readers of my ebook send me their before and after photos, I'll be posting them to this page and in the emails to show you some of their creativity to encourage you and give you more ideas than I have in my ebook, Decor Secrets Revealed.

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Arrange Your Furniture Right

decoate, redecoate, decoating, redecoating, arrangment, rearrangment, furniture placement, how to hang art, hanging art, instant decorating

INSURE YOUR REAL TREASURES
Highly Valued Possessions Usually Not Covered
When my home was robbed many years ago, I discovered the hard way that my insurance coverage was not going to replace my fine jewelry (nor any of the expensive art I had in my home). I lost a pearl ring that had been my grandmother's, a really unique 14K gold ring I had purchased myself, a pearl necklace that had been a graduation gift from my parents and many other pieces of fine jewelry that were much more valuable than my costume jewelry. The thief knew exactly what was valuable and what was "junk". My insurance company would not cover any of my good jewelry and told me that I would have needed to have it appraised and covered under a separate rider.

Fortunately for me, the thief was after small things he could put in a bag and leave without raising suspicions. He did not know that leaning against a wall in my living room was a $30,000 oil painting I was holding for a client. But had he stolen that, I would have had to pay my client it's value, because my insurance would not have covered that item.

So look around your home for your most valued treasures. Take photographs or digital photos of the things you know to be of high value. I recently took my video camera around and video taped every room in my house. I then gave the video to a friend to keep at his place. This way, should I ever have an unfortunate experience with a fire, flood, theft or any other calamity where my possessions are lost to me, I will have a good record of what I had. After the theft, it was a year or two later that I noticed something else was missing which I had not remembered and therefore I had not been compensated by my insurance company for the cost of that object.

After you have made a record of your most prized possessions and have gathered receipts for them or had them professional appraised, it might be well worth the time and effort to talk to your insurance company and get them properly insured.

BEFORE YOU BEGIN
redecorating
living room

Before you begin any decorating project, you need to stop and clearly define what you hope to achieve. When you are contemplating how to arrange and display your accessories, for instance, your aim should be to highlight the qualities of the objects themselves, but you don't want to overwhelm the other furnishings. You also want everything in a room to complement the overall decoration of your home.

So ask yourself some questions. 1) Do you have any objects that you want to show off in a singular, dramatic way? 2) Do you have a group of related objects that you wish to feature in a grouping? 3) Do you wish a group of objects to be seen as a unit? 4) Are you dealing with how to display a host of collectibles? 5) What do you want the display to focus on? Will it be color, form or material or two of these simultaneously? 6) How formal or informal do you want it to be? 7) Do you want objects to be fixed in one place for a long time? 8) Do some of your objects need to be flexibly moved from one location to another?

As you can see, you are faced with a myriad of choices which will determine many of your decisions. So the more focused you are on your end goals and the more clearly you have thought things through, the more successful the outcome is likely to be.

WHERE TO FIND IDEAS
There are many places you can visit to gather ideas and inspiration. True, you're not likely to be able to acquire the exact object, in many cases, but that's really not the point. The point is to look around at what is already there and let the creative juices within you activate. Visit local art galleries and museums. Look at store window displays with a renewed and focused mindset. What excites you? What do you consider to be innovative? These types of places, while very different from your personal space, may trigger ideas you have never thought of before.

This is a starting place. Look through books, ebooks and magazines. Cut pictures out of magazines that appeal to you and save them in a scrapbook or a special decorating box. Take trips outside your hometown or even your country, if possible, and study the shapes, designs and interiors of places unknown to you. Fresh ideas will appear.

decorating, redecorating, stone Let nature influence you. A walk in the park, a walk along a beach, a drive up a mountain, a visit to a local design center, a visit to the studios of local artists and craftspeople, a visit to a community fair -- these are all additional ways to look at the world around you and see what feelings and instincts it draws out of you.

Study the shapes of objects, their colors and texture. These are some of the ways you can add special interest and surprise to any room in your space.