Can you believe I’ve been in my new house for over two years? It’s weird – it’s one of those things that hardly feels like any time at all, and yet I can’t imagine being anywhere else.
When we moved in I spray painted my bed pink in an act of newly single rebellion, and then I had the wardrobes built, but apart from that I’ve done very little to my bedroom. (Can you imagine if I had had to share the wardrobes? What a nightmare. It was almost worth breaking up just for that.) For ages my bedroom has been basically like a cheap hotel room – a bed, the wardrobe and a couple of bedside tables, and that’s it.
For quite a while I didn’t even have curtains, which added a fun, extra dimension to getting dressed, but then I got the new blind and it started to feel a bit more like a space I wanted to enjoy being in, rather than just somewhere to go to sleep.
The next step then was pictures.
I always say that plants and pictures are what make a house into a home, and yet for the last two years the only picture I’ve had in my bedroom has been a black and white photograph of the inside of an abandoned factory. I love the photo, but it’s not exactly bedroom vibes. It doesn’t scream sexy.
What I needed was some kind of lovely collage of beautiful images that made me feel uplifted and inspired and like I might at any moment fly to Venice or stand in a field of wheat with my hands in the air. You know the kind of thing.
Enter Desenio.
Desenio sells a massive range of primarily Scandinavian inspired prints, posters and frames, some from well-known artists and photographers and other designed exclusively for Desenio.
Desenio is really big on gallery walls, so they have loads of collections of pictures put together on different themes if you want to choose and customise something that’s been curated for you, or they have a brilliant tool to help you create your own gallery wall, where you can pick your favourite prints and frames and see how they look in different combinations.
You even get to choose the background colour so you can see how it would look in your room. It’s a really useful tool.
I spent a loooooong time choosing my pictures and in the end I took a couple of different routes. On the wall above my bed I picked out a couple of text based prints – one to replace the abandoned factory photo and one to create a cute mini scene above one of my bedside tables. I will say here that I’m not a fan as a rule of motivational quotes – the whole ‘dance like no one’s watching’ thing – but I can be swayed by a sassy affirmation.
I mean come on, they’re pretty cool aren’t they?
I chose them not just for the sassiness, but also to pick out the pinks in my bed and ceiling light, and I think they both work really well. They’re the first thing I see when I go in the room and honestly, who doesn’t like being reminded what a badass they are? It’s like my plants are giving me a pep talk and I love it.
On the wall opposite my bed, which you only really see properly when you are IN the bed, I wanted something a bit less ‘early Spice Girls’ and a bit more ‘sophisticated woman of the world’. I wanted to carry on the pink theme, but to bring in an accent colour too. Inspired by one of my hanging plant pots, I picked out a selection of pictures in pale pinks and darker blues.
The way the sea in this picture mirrors the colours in this pot is extremely satisfying.
The theme for my collage is travel, because having the time and the money to explore the world a bit more is only really something that’s happened in the last few years and I want to remind myself of how much I enjoy it.
I started by searching Desenio for ‘Palm Springs’ as I’d recently seen a feature in a homes magazine about a pink mid-century bungalow in Palm Springs and I was positively lusting after it. Why wasn’t I hosting casual outdoor cocktail parties around my outdoor pool? Life seemed so unfair.
The Palm Springs poster was initially my main image but after a lot of backwards and forwards I’m so glad I switched to the Amalfi coast shot as I am absolutely in love with it. The colours are so beautiful in real life, and the frame suits it perfectly.
I was nervous about the mix of frame types in the gallery – white wood and copper coloured metal – but I’m really pleased with how it turned out. Despite being known for my slightly unpredictable DIY skills, (we’ve had a lot of shelves that you can’t put anything round on), I think I did a pretty good job with the layout and the hanging too, especially given that I found the central point in the wall by stretching my arms out until my hands were equal distances from the edge and then marking the middle with my nose.
Now my bedroom is somewhere I actually want to hang out. A couple of evenings last week I actually stayed up until past midnight, practically unheard of for me, sat on the bed, listening to an audiobook and knitting a striped pink beret.
It might not be a poolside cocktail party but it comes pretty close for me in terms of personal happiness levels.
Get 25% off prints at Desenio until September 5th
If you’ve been inspired to create your own gallery wall, then you can get a super special 25% off prints at Desenio* for a very limited time. Simply visit Desenio, choose your prints, and use promotional code SLUMMYSINGLEMUMMY at the checkout for 25% off.
You only have until midnight on September 5th to take advantage of the offer, so get shopping!
If you really like my look, my prints are called:
- Badass
- Good Vibes No1
- Visit Palm Springs
- Paradiso
- Diagonal Pier
- Amalfi View
*Offer valid 3-5th September 2019. Does not include frames or handpicked/personalised prints.