Homage to Eddie Ross

Hi,

When we last met, I was looking at this:

It was my booty from a day of shopping at the White Elephant here in Dallas.  Now the White Elephant is sort of a word of mouth kind of place, and at first glance, it is not very promising.  There are some stalls there with truly dreadful (in my humble opinion) things.  But there are several stalls there with treasures, and they are priced so reasonably.  I always find wonderful and interesting accessories there.  At any rate, my project is to fill the shelves of an antique Chinese chest with some things that will evoke a bit of the feel of my second floor hallway.  Most importantly, ala Eddie Ross, I’ll show you step by step how I did it and why I chose the things that I did. 

The hallway is anchored by the boys study and it is styled with vintage globes, games, and educational materials, with the odd sports reference thrown in.  Ordinarily I would not have chosen these chests for this space, but I love them and this is the best place for them.  So, the first thing I did was to have the interior painted so that the colors were more in keeping with the rest of my scheme upstairs. 

It’s not clear in this photo, but the interior is sort of a muddy duck egg blue. 

Here is what I have to work with:

I have some vintage sign holders, old badminton racktes, a rubber stamp holder, wooden barbells, wooden decorative balls, a stack of teal vintage books, a carved fragment head, a box of vintage flashcards, a pair of John Derian plates, an old clock face, an ironware gravy boat and some framed French handwriting exercises.  Most of these things made it into the vignette, but some are saved for the other Chinese armoire that I am styling later this week and will post when it’s done. 

Here I did my background layer: a handwriting exercise, two small flashcards and one vowel chart.  I selected the pony flashcard for a reason – the John Derian plate that I want to use features a whimsical horse.

I added some of the lovely books at an angle and leaned the plate against them for a nice pop of color.  The vintage stamp holder echoes the shape of the plate (when you look down on it, it’s a hexagon).  I promise you though, that until I started writing this I had no idea why I selected it to go there.  It just seemed like a nice height and width for the spot.

I added some more vowel cards and a pictoral flashcard for the background of this next shelf.  I love the ivory of these pieces – it stands out without being too visually demanding. 

Here I added those wonderful books – they are a Junior Reader series – so perfect for the space. 

The wooden dumbells lean against the books.  ( I confess I may substitute something else for them as I miss having them in their previous home).  And here is the ironstone gravy boat and platter.  I added the ironstone for the color, and the dumbells because they are wood and the texture relates well to what I’ll add to the shelf below.

Final fun detail.  Not quite a jug, but you get the point.

I added the other two handwriting exercises to anchor this shelf and to add more symmetry I flanked them with the vintage flashcards.  I also like the juxtaposition of large and small.  And to add something to the mix so it’s not too symmetrical, I placed the vintage clock face in the mix. 

I added the wooden balls – two on the left to make it more dominant than the right, as I discuss in my post  Details, Details.  The balls work for three reasons:  they echo the round form of the clock face; they are a color that works with the frames in the background, and they have a texture which blends nicely with the dumbells.  They are also interesting in their own right. 

Another close up with the flashcard “toys”.  The other one says “books”.  These are not details that anyone else but me will ever notice, but I will get enjoyment out of them whenever I pass by.

The finished product – sort of.  I am sure that I will play around with it a bit more.  I am not in love with the badminton rackets, but I am living with them for a few days.

Anyway, a lot of us are blogging about how to do design on a budget.  Joni at Cote De Texas is doing a lot on this lately.  This styling cost very little.  The box of flashcards cost me 5 dollars, the rackets were $5 a piece, and so were the balls.  The barbells were around $15 and so was the rubber stamp holder.  The books were originally $55, but were 40% off and the same is true for the ironstone.  The clockface was a bit more pricy – $35.  The John Derian plate I already owned, so it was free to me, but any prety little plate could have worked and those can be had for very little.  Basically, I filled this whole space for just over $200.  Pretty good, considering that just one decorative accessory can cost that much.   Eddie is a master at finding tarnished treasure and turning it into something wonderful so I always try to check out his blog, so hop on over there too!

Kristin