So You Think You Can Decorate - Week 3

Thank you so much to everyone who voted for me last week.  This competition has been so tough, mainly because I am competing against some good blog friends.  One of them, Amy, was "sent home" last week.  Her work is so beautiful, so that was hard to see.  Make sure you give her lots of *hugs* this week. 

The theme for week three of So You Think You Can Decorate is "old."  This was the toughest one for me so far.  I own so many cool, old things; I just wasn't sure which direction I should go.  Should I repurpose something, should I showcase something...?  I recently rearranged my curio using family heirlooms and found items and these pictures kept speaking to me, so I went with my gut.  Here's my submission...

 I am blessed to have inherited a lot of beautiful things from my family.  Furniture, pictures, personal items, monogrammed silver, and linens.  I don't want to leave them packed away in boxes where they can't be appreciated, so I gathered some of my favorite things together to display in an antique curio that belonged to my great aunt.  Here are some tips on decorating with antique items, whether collected or inherited. 

1.) Group like things together.  I kept the arrangement in this curio monochromatic, but with lots of texture.  That makes it both pleasing and interesting to the eye.  Also, I kept mostly to ironstone, silver, wood, and natural materials.  A bunch of random treasured items shoved in a curio will get lost in the chaos. 

2.) Add lots of layers.  By layering pictures in front of ironstone platters and silver on a folded tea towel, it makes the arrangements interesting and showcases smaller items that might otherwise go unnoticed. 

3.) Make the everyday important.  I love antique items that were used in daily life...a hairbrush, a shoehorn, baby booties, letters, umbrella handles, a lighter, darts, and game pieces.  By grouping them together, they become art.

4.) Let your arrangement tell a story. Almost everything in this cabinet has some significance to me.  The silver coins speak to my grandmother's collecting habit, the seashells tell of summers spent at the beach, and the duck callers remind me of my grandfather's love for hunting. 

5.) Get personal.  Displaying pictures, letters, postcards, and mementos (like my grandmother's garter belt that she wore on her wedding day) make an arrangement personal and unique.  Every family has a rich history.  Be a keeper and sharer of that history. 

6.) Only display things you love. It doesn't matter what you paid for it or who owned it, if you don't love it, don't display it. No one else has to love it or "get it." A lot of people might scratch their heads at a shoe form, a rusted pump part, and a meat grinder being arranged in and on a beautiful antique curio, but I love these pieces and that's all that matters. 

I could only display 5 photos in the post, which was not anywhere near enough this week!  So, here are some additional photos of the contents of the curio.

This is a little backwards, but here is what the curio looked like before.  I had pulled some things out of it to use elsewhere, so it's a mess, but you get the idea of what was in it and how much better it looks now.

Every time I walk by this curio, now, I smile.  That's a successfull arrangement.  Make sure you go and vote for your top two favorite entries!

 I'm posting this to Met Monday and Make Your Monday.