Some shabby chic decorating

A while ago, I suddenly realised that I'd grown out of the style of decor that our bedroom had been done in (6 years ago).  We had one feature wall that was a bright raspberry colour, with 3 cream walls.  It was a nice bright, girly room (luckily OH doesn't mind girly decor!), but I was ready to move away from girly to a more grown up space. 

Bye bye bright pink!

What with blogging, Tweeting and Instagraming I realise that my tastes have changed vastly over the past few years.  I used to love bright pinks of all shades, sparkly, cute and girly.  I still do love all of these things, but I also realised that I love the vintage, shabby chic style that has also been huge lately.  If you'd told me 3 years ago that I'd love all things Cath Kidston, vintage and floral, I'd have laughed in your face! If you told me 3 years ago that I'd love nothing more than rooting around charity shops for bargains, there is NO way I'd have believed it either! 

Well, it seems I have changed, for I now love all of these things.  I've always been a bargain hunter, but there's something extra in gaining a real gem of a bargain from a charity shop or car boot sale now.  This also comes with the satisfaction that you aren't buying something off the shelf of a high street shop that thousands of other people also have.  

This brings me to the next part of my room renovation - accessorising the walls!  I had a very lucky find in a junk shop a few weeks ago - I got these 2 wooden picture frames for £1!

I was very excited about these as it finally meant I could have a go at trying out some 'shabby chic' paint techniques!  So I gave them a quick, light sanding and applied 4 thin layers of paint (I just used the tester pots of wall paint we had already), then gave the edges a sanding down to give an old and bashed about look.  I was extremely pleased with the result, here's 1 of them -

I decided to try the other one out using the paint the same shade as the pink wall, -

The next job was to decided what to put in my new frames!  Fairly quickly, I decided upon a gorgeous rustic floral heart cross stitch for the cream one, from the book A Rainbow of Stitches. 

I chose a natural coloured evenweave - the first time I've sewn on this, and cream thread.  I stitched it up quickly over a couple of days/evenings - I was so eager to have something to put in my new gorgeous frame! 

After a lot of eye squinting - working with the evenweave, a few wonky bits here and there, (I'm sure no-one will notice!), I finally got my work framed and hung up!  And I *love* it!!

Ta-da!  Doesn't it look so pretty? 

And here's a peek at how the rest of the decorating turned out -

Pale, light and relaxing!  The bedside tables also got a bit of the shabby chic treatment too!

Linking up to -