Shopping your home - 4 Creative ways to reuse, rotate and revamp
- Claire Douglas
- May 8, 2022
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 11, 2024
Tips for shopping your home and getting creative with DIY home decor.
Shopping your home is the process of assessing and sorting through items you already own to use for new projects. This might involve rummaging through cupboards and storage areas like lofts and garages or even relocating items currently displayed on the living room or bedroom shelves. It's fair to say that I have a few (hundreds of) home accessories and that I'm quite fond of (obsessed about) styling shelves. I have cupboards full of vases, bowls, candle-holders and ornaments that I have accumulated over the years and regularly shop my home to save money - cycling them from room to room and then back to a cupboard for a while (when I inevitably get bored of looking at them), this whole process can be completed in a matter of days sometimes! I also love a bargain, so a large chunk of my collection are pre-loved, charity shop or Facebook Marketplace finds or Homesense bargains (the ones with the red stickers that are either damaged or just plain ugly!) that cost next to nothing. I usually share the details of my upcycles and restyles on my Instagram and Tiktok if you're interested.
To get the best results from shopping my home I often customise and revamp items. Sometimes, this glow-up is as simple as changing the candle in a candle-holder or swapping the dried or faux foliage in a vase, but other times I feel inspired to give the item a complete makeover using all my money-saving decor hacks. This approach works well because it stops me from buying new things (this makes Mr D happy!) and means I can regularly update and restyle my home (essential when you get bored VERY quickly as I do!).
If you fancy giving this a go, here are some ideas to get you started. Let me know if you try any of them.
Top tips for shopping your home
1. Paint to match your new colour palette
If you change the colour palette for your room, it doesn't have to mean ditching your old decor. Most decorative items can be painted (really!) after a good clean and maybe a coat of primer, depending on what they are made of.
Below, you can see where I was trialling a minimalist and monochromatic vibe on my built-ins. This look was really easy to achieve by painting all the accessories in a single colour (a colour match for 'Bancha' by Farrow and Ball, mixed by Decorating Centre Online).
The beauty of a quick paint job is that it can be done time and time again in different colours and styles and even incorporate different painting techniques. Below, you can see how the same shelves had a revamp recently, taking on a softer, pastel-based palette. Check out these painting hacks before you embark on a new paint-related project.
Top Tip: Use black as an accent colour. Painting some accent pieces black can create a really striking look as long as your room palette allows.
2. Create a cordless lamp
Another fun DIY home decor project and a great way of upping your lighting game without an electrician is the lighting hack to upcycle a vase or jug into a cordless lamp. I did this recently (pictures below) using a ribbed vase from Dunelm, painted in Oval Room Blue by Farrow and Ball and added a cool white ceramic shade that I picked up at a charity shop for £3.00. I added a remote-controlled, battery-operated, puck light under the shade and Bob's your Uncle, a beautiful, bespoke lamp was born for under a tenner.
3. Go big on texture
There are lots of ways you can add an interesting surface texture, here are a few of my go-tos;
- Use a stone effect spray can. Rustoleum have a brilliant range.
- Add baking soda to paint and apply to the item.
- Apply Polyfiller or similar directly onto the item and create the texture of your choice. Top tip: Use an old fork to create a ridged texture.
4. Create a bobble effect with modelling clay
This was a super quick and easy revamp I did recently, see pics below for the outcome.
4. Repair a broken vase
The below vase was sent through the post and arrived in pieces. To save it from the bin, I glued the pieces back together and then covered the whole vase in layers of smoothing filler (the type you use for repairing cracks in a wall). Once dried, I was able to paint the now textured and interesting vase and no-one would know it narrowly avoided being thrown away.
5. Go foraging
Another great way to elevate your home styling on a budget is by foraging flowers and foliage. Pop over to my Foraging page here for all my top tips on styling with foraged sticks and foliage and how to forage flowers and foliage for your home. I've got lots more tips that I hope you'll love just click on one of the links below to be taken straight to the relevant page for all the ...
...and why not pop over and give me a follow on Instagram too.
Feel free to share this with anyone who enjoys a good IKEA hack, or just wants to transform their home without spending a fortune.
Thanks again.
Claire
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