Hassle free but frugal home decorations?

[Radiance]

I am tired (and a little depressed) by my empty walls
I went to a local store (Homegoods) and bought 4 pictures and hang them in my dinning room, what a difference! I spent $20 so $80.

I need to do the rest of the appartment, how would you do it?
I really dont want to hope from garage sale to garage sale.

Any other ideas to decorate on a clever, cute and frugal way?

[Frugal]

Goodwill. I know it sounds bad, but when I was studying abroad years back (e.g. out of the country in college), I was able to get some really great decorations for my modest apartment, as well as some nice, historic souveniers there. I was in Europe at the time.

I was able to find and cart home without a car a very nice, new lawn chair to put on my patio outside my apartment, as well as some dishes and some basic pictures and wall hangings. I found one very nice wall-hanging with a poem in another language, that I have kept to this day.

Sorry to ramble, but thought I should mention Goodwill and other discount stores that while not always the best quality, tend to be overlooked if you are on an EXTREMELY tight budget.

One more thing...I was able to barter down prices with the manager at a little bit ritzier of a home decorations store around here. She gave me 10% off on a frame that had been slightly nicked in shipping. You can often get discounts of 10-20% off by buying items with only SLIGHT defects that tend to be barely noticeable on the wall once they are up.

Hope that helps! ~~~~~~~

[kork13]

Look at getting area rugs. Particularly in a large room, a nice rug can really help a room. Sort of closes it up and makes it not look so gaunt and barren. Also, the easiest way to improve a room's appearance is with little accents... pictures, flowers, rugs, and so on. Also, when you do it that way, it's easy to make a change and re-arrange everything when you get tired of what you've got

[uRabbit]

My wife and I LOVE photography. It's quite the pass-time for us. We have 35 GB of pictures on our hard drive (21,849 individual pictures), all in high resolution. We use two cameras - a Fujifilm S1800 and an iPhone. On the iPhone, we use the app, Hipstamatic. It creates these awesome funky images similar to those produced by a point-and-shoot plastic swappable lens camera.

So how does this translate into wall decorations?
Yarn + Hole Puncher + Pictures = a beautiful web of your favourite pictures to display. String up some lights behind it for an added effect.

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

There must be some places in your apartment for your child's artwork? My kid is grown and gone but I still have an early finger-painting of his over my sofa. I love kids' artwork and also have two crayon drawings from other kids. Once we also had a kid-made papier mache mask with feathers and beads, as well as sort of a paint sampler done on the back side of a fiber board yogurt box from Aldi's.

I buy frames that appeal to me at thrift stores and have them on hand should I come across something that needs a frame. That way, I'm ready to hang just about anything on my walls. I've framed holiday cards and even a bookmark. I've framed a page from an art museum guide book.

I like to hang not just totally flat pictures but things with texture as well. For example, I have a small collection of molas from Panama Mola Art from the San Blas Islands of Panama* -* Travel Photos by Galen R Frysinger, Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Framing these without glass adds a softness to the room. Two of them are in the living room with the 3 kids' artworks. In the same room, I also have a wool Mexican rug in crayon colors hanging across the sofa. The room is a color explosion.

Next to my molas I've put a recorder (flute type musical instrument) that belong to my brother-in-law who died too young. He and My DH used to play duets. http://www.wwr.co.uk/products/i/large__KUNG2406.jpg

Some other decorative or interesting objects in that room have just taken a lifetime to accumulate. There's a gold encapsulated model of the Apollo lunar landing given us by a relative who works for NASA. There is a large blue geode I found in Arkansas when I was 12 years old, a bowl full of pea-sized fossils found when I was even younger, a Moravian star Kraft 12 1/2" Moravian Star Ornament review at Kaboodle and an origami flamingo sent to me by an internet pal. There are are least five handmade ceramic bowls from student art fairs. There is a student-made vase holding dried giant alliums from my garden http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_yGHvCyxYCo...um+-+Giant.jpg, an old somewhat Victorian looking tea tin full of tiny camera parts, a shallow tray full of colorful wooden blocks. Amazon.com: Educo Rainbow Block Set- 50 Pieces: Toys & Games Kids and adults alike start building with them when they sit in my living room!

There is a photo done by my husband next to the fingerpainting done by my son. A dried curly willow branch just sort of billows up among some of the other objects. Curly Willow | Corkscrew Willow | Fresh Cut Flowers - Denver Plants I found that branch on the sidewalk on a winter walk. I often bring inside natural objects, but most don't stay too long. For a while I had a vase of this beautiful but invasive Ampelopsis vine I found growing in my garden. ampelopsis elegans - Google Search I just love it, but cannot let it grow in my garden, but I could enjoy it in the house for a few days.

Good grief, this is a really small living room and I promise it is not stuffed to the gills but there is so much more--a cheap souvenir kerosene lamp my grandmother got on a car trip in the 1960, a piece of a wood chair my 5 year old and I painted and decorated with the year, 1993, that we moved into this house. We had found the chair as a discard. When it wore out I saved the part that had the date on it and it sits in front of a bunch of books, next to the soapstone bear my dad gave me (from Goodwill!). There's also a nearly spherical construction made from the toy Zometool. Zometool Polyhedra There is one of the same shape made out of paper from a kit. At one time there was also a kit-made paper airplane of intriguing shape and proportions.

Nothing was really purchased to decorate with. The things were either given to us, things that one of us or someone we know made, or just something that is interesting to us personally. That is more satisfying to me than picking up something at a store for the express purpose of enlivening the house. But it has taken 30 years to get there.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

[ecellis26]

I also really like to do candles. Candles are super easy and they really (excuse the pun) warm up a space. There are really inexpensive candles and candle holders at craft stores like Michael's.

[acat29020]

Thrift stores!!!! You can find really great stuff for super cheap. I recently got a dining room set for $100 (table and 4 chairs). The chairs needed to be recovered... but i didn't mind because it allowed me to personalize them. And I recovered them myself so all I had to pay for was the fabric.

Also, if you have a large, close family I would just ask if anyone has anything they want to get rid of... my aunt, grandma, and mom are constantly moving furniture or re-decorating and therefore trying to give stuff away. It can never hurt to ask!

[SnoopyCool]

I LOVE to repurpose things from Goodwill, yardsales, etc. Here are a couple of websites to help:
Storage | Glee - mostly storage
* Remodelaholic *
Contemporary Furniture Store, Home Decor & Accessories | Urban Barn - has a tool in which you place your room dimensions and decorate accordingly.

[alphadore]

I recommend IKEA. They have many options of inexpensive good decorative items for walls.

[Frugal]

I just found a beautiful portrait (Reproduction, of course, at this price!) of a nice painting to go in my restroom at home that is for guests. It was only $3.99 at a local grocery store/clothes retailer! I waited two weeks or a week, and got it marked down on clearance first to $10.00, and then waited until it went down to final clearance at only $3.99! Week before that, got two other pictures for $6.80 each at the same store that look fabulous on the wall in my hall way. You have to know when to buy a clearance item, and sometimes you have to wait patiently until low clearance markdowns increase to something like 75% off. The only problem is, sometimes people buy the item before it gets marked down that far...
It helps a lot if you can figure out the store(s)'s sale/clearance cycle.

[Frugal]

Plus, I go online and search the clearance section and Special Buys section of sites like Bed, Bath and Beyond, and Pier 1. Have seen some great deals this way.

[Staceyy]

Buy a nice large calendar and frame the pictures.

[alphadore]

Did you check IKEA already? They also have a brilliant website that you can order the items you want.

[scotland]

My wife groups together old birthday card photos and puts them under frames.
Its a bit miserly but it helps us to save for our holidays in the med.

[snafu]

Every Art Shop or Craft shop sells inexpensive, wood, stretcher frames [mostly for canvas] but they work wonderfully to staple any fabric you like, any size you like. You can cut up cheap drapes from any thrift store, fabric from a shop or even a garment whose design you love but you no longer wear for whatever reason.

There are lots of frames dirt cheap at charity outlets. Check the corners, the wood ones can be 'painted' with craft paint from the Dollar Store. Clean the frame with paint thinner if you have it, acetone, polish remover, rubbing alcohol or even a miniscule amount of TSP will work, gently rub with 000 steel wool or fine sandpaper. I find it easiest to apply craft paint with a cloth or foam make-up pad. Any photo can be re-sized to fit your frame, redi made photo mats come in several colors and are inexpensive at WalMart or the really large Dollar Store.

If you find very ornate frames, they can be hung or set on a shelf without any inset. Use gold or silver craft paint or even gold or silver leaf if you like craft projects.