When I was a little girl, I would rearrange my bedroom every year. Drove my mother crazy! We really didn't accessorizes back then, but looking back, my parents should have known I had a natural gift for design. Unfortunately, they did not steer me toward that. :(

Now that I am older and have designed (and had built) my own homes, the accessorizing has become a natural thing, with the help of decorating magazines. I am still a minimalist, and do not like clutter.

My 24 year old daughter recently got married. I helped her some with her new home, but was floored when I visited for a party and found what she had done on her own! Her home is beautifully accessorized. My oldest daughter, and my son, have similar talent. :)

1) Reading decor books and magazines. Many many times. Visiting here at GWHD and many many home decor blogs.

2) Looking at all sorts of ideas at ALL kinds of place! Store displays, restaurant set-ups, hotels, antique shops and malls etc. Asking questions in fancy stores (and sometimes being ignored!) BUT sometimes -- somesone would any my questions and show me other ways that the table could be set up! Looking at window displays that worked so well -- and others that looked awful (to me!) And -- of course -- looking at rooms in all kinds of homes. (and sitting on my hands so I wouldn't reach over and change stuff LOL!)

3) This is the hard part: Articulating (to myself! LOL) EXACTLY which elements that I thought worked -- and which ones did not! ((the lamp? the number of items? the sizes? the shapes? the colors?)) And finally -- HOW would I change the setting to make the whole arrangement work better visually?? ((add a tray to cozy up all of the small items?; add a book to change the heights? change the tablecloth or lampshade?))

4) Changing stuff around. Remembering that things are not glued down (well -- at least here! LOL!) Trying a fresh arrangement with something new that might have arrived home .... ((it followed me home!! LOL!)) Carrying lamps around the whole house or shifting artworks around. Cats scrambling to stay out of the way!

Hope this helps!!

Jan at Rosemary Cottage

I learned by looking at how others do it. Ralph Lauren's stylists are amazing at creating vignettes -- I have a collection of all his ads & photographs because boy, they really know how to layer a room at RL. Also, when I go to stores with beautiful vignettes, I would take pictures of the arrangement and try to figure out why it works. Another trick for me is to take photograph of my room & see how the accessories work w/ in the whole scheme -- things that aren't so obvious in person can become very apparent in photographs.

You are not hopeless Zipd. You have amazing eyes & sense of style. All you have to do is to edit what you have, and combine them in way that are (1) interesting (2) cohesive (3) beautiful.

Accessorizing is the fun part of decorating -- It's the room planning, furniture placement part that stump me!

Ever since I was in elementary school I have also arranged and re-arranged my bedrooms and closets as long as I can remember - always decorating w/ whatever my mom would let me use.

Anytime I walked into any rm. my mind would just start to wonder about the possibilities.

I was also always confiscating boxes, white christmas lights and wrapping paper to make dollhouses just so I could decorate.

When I discovered decorating magazines in my 20's I thought I'd died and gone to heaven! That's when my real obsession began.

When I started buying books one of them was called The Art of Accessorizing. I didn't learn too terribly much from it per se' but I learned why things seemed to work so well for me when I, myself, couldn't explain it. Great book to have BTW!

Then I started working in home retail stores and I spent many a yr. at Bombay Co. They always had me do the windows, displays and beds.

My mom alsways says it's my artistic eye - that I can just instantly visualize things that others wouldn't see and my natural attention to size, shape and color. I call it obsessive/ compulsive.

I'll be posting this separately too!

Do check out today's Cote de Texas posting -- LOTS of gorgeous photos of a Southern Accents showhome ....

Jan

Here is a link that might be useful: Cote de Texas blog

A lot of people just 'know', but I had to learn!

Accessorizing has always been the hardest thing for me, too. I finally found a great article in some magazine that went through the different places of accessorizing - mantels, bookshelves, table tops, etc., and gave hints (like, cover your coffee table by 1/3 with accessories), and also some pictures.

I pulled it out and referred to it often until I finally got the hang of it. Sorry I don't have the article any more. It would be fun to go back through and give some of the suggestions.

The 1/3 of the coffee table I remember and on bookshelves, it said to put an accessory on the left, next shelf on the right, next on the left, etc., every once in a while in the middle.

And the mantle - if you don't want matching things, just make sure that each side 'weighs' the same. In other words, if you were to weigh each side with a scale, they should weigh about the same. Of course, you have to do this visually because some things look like they weigh a lot when they don't, etc.

And there's always exceptions, but I loved having some guidelines. Hope that has helped some. :)

Oh, I almost forgot. It also went into things like 'stair-stepping' thing in height, putting three things in a stepped down 'triangle', mixing a pointed thing with rounded things, or a box with cirlces, etc. You learn to look at things by shape and weight, and that helps. :)

Thanks for all of the advice and help, everyone! I have been trying to work on keeping my eyes out for attractive vignettes from all sources. I'm not sure why I have a 'block' in this area. Some things are really easy for me .. give me a kids room to decorate and I go crazy. I think part of the reason there, is there *is* no wrong with a kids room, over the top is all good. I'm also good at setting attractive tables, making flower arrangements and such, vignettes are a big stumbling block for me though.

I think anyone can learn by trial and error; buying and returning, setting up and taking apart. It takes time and a love of accessories. Learning that it's ok to hide aunt charlene's vase she gave you at your wedding. Purge, people. Keep only the good and fabulous. Trust your eye, don't leave anything out that makes you sad or cringe or find excuses for.

zipdee, maybe you're not a vignette person, I know I'm not, although I love table setting. I like resting places for my eyes, in the environment I live in.

There are also stages in our lives when we want to be surrounded by lots of stuff; then when the stage is finished, you don't want to go back.