I had received a call from a client who had sold their house and most all of their decor and were embarking in building a new home with all new furnishings and needed help with shopping and pulling a design together. A busy working couple with 2 small children under 2 years, there just wasn’t enough hours in the day to shop for sofas and beds and dressers and pillows let alone appliances!
This was a challenge, for I had nothing to base my feel for what styles they liked and felt comfortable with. The clients were living in a furnished apartment while their house was being built. Pictures are worth a thousand words as they say, so I asked if they were familiar with Pinterest and if they would browse through and send me photos of design styles they liked so I would have a better direction when it came to decor purchases.
About 2 hours later, my email box was filling up with lots of Pinterest photos with comments of what they liked and didn’t like. This was perfect. I was able to make folders in my computer under their name by room and started sorting the photos to review. Next, I scoured each picture and took a few notes, building my shopping list.
One of the pictures I received was of anaccent table with wall mirror and hanging lanterns.
Inspired photo online to recreate for client
They had the perfect little niche in the wall between the living room and kitchen that I thought would be a perfect place to recreate this vignette. The hardest part was to find the table itself. Finding one in the budget, in the right size and right color proved to be the most challenging. The lanterns I found at Hobby Lobby, but they only had one and I needed 2, so I put in a rain check to order (of course, I waited until the week they were 50% off :-)) The wall hooks, glass vase and bird also came from Hobby Lobby and I stained it a bit darker to deepen the color a bit, but I loved the natural textural feel to the bird. For the chunky candlesticks, I found some on clearance at Michael’s craft store, then made one from taking a thrift store lamp apart-just the right size for a pillar candle. In another Pinterest photo, there were lots of decorative balls in different textures used in several places, so I used a few in the glass vase along with some moss rocks to help support the branch twig I found in the yard. Instead of throws in baskets underneath, I placed the matching candlestick, and a stack of baskets found on clearance at a furniture store, and a ceramic pitcher, ready to serve.
To achieve this Pinterest inspiration, it took many trips to different stores and even the yard to gather the components to come as close as possible to the desired look. 
After photo of recreated niche table from inspiration picture
It was so gratifying to see how the client responded to the recreation, keeping their budget in mind and finding the perfect “niche” for the project.
Many times, a component will be elusive and challenging to find, but that is all part of the evolving process of decorating. With the internet, or books, magazines abounding from all directions, there is plenty of visual aids to be inspired by trying your hand at recreating by reusing, repurposing what you already have plus adding a few new purchases.
It is also inspiring to go in a totally different direction- like using sconces instead of lanterns, or hanging a whole wall of varying sizes of mirrors, or setting up a bar on the table top….so many routes a design may lead and it’s all part of the journey…your journey.
