Decorating a mantle

Lately I have been trying to change up the look of my mantle in my living room. I have probably changed it at least 5 times in the last 5 days, and it just never seems quite up to par. I have been looking online for some fun ideas, and wanted to share some of my favorites.

I love this mantle from The Nester. It is so simple, but to be completely honest, I may be more in love with the detail on the front of the mantle. I do love the look though. There are some great tips on there about decorating your mantle, so I will share them with you here.

1. Scale–you want big stuff, you want small stuff, you want medium stuff
2. Layering–don’t be afraid to put stuff in front of other stuff
3. Height Variations–make sure you have tall stuff and short stuff
4. Texture–shiny, smooth, rough, glass, wood, soft, sharp? I can’t think of any more textures but you get the idea
5. Color–consider repeating the same color a few times
6. Natural–try to add in one thing from nature
7. Meaningful–kid made pottery, a grandma’s silver rattle, quirky photo, framed letter

I am super envious of this awesome mantle that I found on one of my favorite blogs, The Lettered Cottage. They did a mantle mania, and there are so many fab ideas on there. I will share some of my favorites.

I must say that this last one is my favorite! I actually drooled on my shirt a little...ok, not really, but I do love this!

Picture frame makeover

I am always interested in finding any type of frames, mirrors, or pretty much anything that has lots of detail on it.  I recently found these frames at a garage sale for $0.50, and I loved the detail on them.  I figured I could spruce 'em up a bit.  Frames are the easiest things to paint. seriously! A can of spray paint, some glaze if you would like, or perhaps just a bit of sandpaper, like I used.
Here are the frames as they were when I bought them :)

I mean, they were so great that I probably could have done nothing with them.  Look at those beautiful flowers printed on those cardboard backs..... Yeah, but anyways, I first pulled those beautiful flower pictures out of the frames, made sure the frames were dust free, and sprayed them with a couple layers of spray paint. Once the frames were totally covered, and dry, I took a piece of sand paper, and lightly ran it over the raised portions of the frame, and voila

Now I just need to figure out if I should leave them empty, or if I should do a little make over / cover up of te beautiful flowers, and have something actually nice in the cute new frames.....decisions decisions.