Cheap Chic

Reviews / Votes

Transform your home into somewhere highly personal and individualistic with this super book by stylist Emily Chalmers. Full of cheap and cheerful ideas for brightening your home, beautifully photographed by Debi Treloar, it shows you how to turn your rooms into something extra special on a shoestring. Junk shop finds and car boot bargains; oriental exoticism from your local Chinese, Middle Eastern and Indian stores; antique shops and bric-a-brac stalls. All are wonderful sources of the sort of things you think would cost a fortune but don?t and that add a touch of class or fun to your home normally only seen in magazines. Emily highlights the best way of displaying your finds, of storing them, and utilising them as practical pieces in the home: a collection of Tunisian tea glasses make a wonderful display, especially filled with flowers from the garden; old hampers and baskets become homes to all those things you never find anywhere to put; mismatched dinner services, when based on a theme, add a quirky touch to a dinner party and become items to be treasured as well as used. Piles of fabrics, perhaps collected over the years but never used, if organised into colour or pattern become decorative features in their own right and beloved childhood toys become attractive additions to any room when suitably placed. Anyone looking for a taste of quirkiness, anyone with an eye for the unusual or the pretty, anyone looking to do up their home cheaply and effectively will find this an inspirational read.