So what the heck is a vignette, and why do I want one. A vignette is simply a collection of your crap that looks pretty. So there are plenty of websites that tell you specific rules…use odd numbers of items…various heights…incorporate specific color…blah, blah, blah. I figured I’d just walk you through how this vignette came to be, and why I like it. Mostly it’s a happy accident.
Here’s my blank canvas. We found this light at a thrift store, originally I wasn’t thrilled with the lamp. It’s sort of reminded me of a western restaurant decor, but it’s grown on me. Not a bad buy for $35. This is a spot next to our entertainment center where we keep the dogs food and water bowls. Pretty boring right now.
While it may be easy to leave this space blank, it could do with a little dressing up
I thought the scale was right to put up our wedding photo. Rather than getting a sign in book, we used a matte for people to write down messages to us. I think it looks great.
Now I could have stopped here, but it still was a bit on the boring side.
On our honeymoon we went to New Orleans and picked up a set of Mardi Gras masks that I just didn’t know what to do with. Inspiration hit me, why not add them to the wall. I played with a few different ways to hang them up, and finally decided to hang them on the wedding photo. I definitely like the look. To give more visual interest I hung them at different levels. This draws they eye into the picture.
I could have stopped there, but I felt like I was missing balance. While symmetry can be pretty, asymmetrical vignettes are more interesting to look at, but they need to be balanced. Have you ever walked into a room were all the furniture was on one wall? It feel sort of off some how, like your tilting to one direction. That’s because it lacks balance. When you evenly distribute the furniture it feels more cohesive. So to achieve some balance I added a smaller piece of framed art to counter act the weight of the lamp. While it’s not a perfect balance, it’s enough to make the vignette appealing.
Again this looks pretty nice right now, it’s balanced, the pieces are interesting…but it was missing something. All the pieces are very white and black. Its missing some color. While most of the time you want your pictures to be at eye level for viewing, don’t forget that sometimes you can hang things lower. This wall has very tall furniture on it, so it looked a bit sad with so much open space at the bottom. So to give it a touch of whimsy, a bit of color and drama I put up this poster. I love the irony of the Tournee Du Chat Noir, behind the dogs food dishes.
The final touches are the functional side of this. A dollar store bin to hold the dogs toys, and its short enough that they can help themselves. A scale my husband insists on leaving in the living rooom…I don’t know why, and a simple magazine storage box for catalogues and store inserts help to keep us organized. Now its interesting, and functional…which always important.
Pretty and functional…what do you think? So the key here was creating balance. Balancing asymmetrical items in a way that draws your eye up the wall and around to each item. Balance doesn’t need things to be the same size to balance each other out, but they need to create a similar visual impact. This can work with color, stark white on a dark background; or groups of similar smaller items to make a larger image, like hanging several smaller framed pieces together or a group of wall decals in one area. Remember if you’re using a lot of vertical space on a wall, keep going with it. Pictures can go down as low as you like them if they are balanced right.
The total cost for this was $0. I reused stuff we already had. The smaller framed art and poster were from friends, the wedding photo was a gift from my parents, the masks were souvenirs from a trip and everything else I had lying around the house or being used for other things. I love this sort of rearranging. Look through your stuff, and see what kind of cool treasures you have, you’ll be surprised by what you can do if you just play with things a bit. While I know a little about visual aesthetics from learning to paint, I’m not an expert, and most of the time I just try putting various things together to see how they look. If you have a variety of things you can try tons of different combinations to get the right look. With a little practice you’ll know what you need and where, and be able to find something to work.
1undomesticgoddess 