Decorating Tricks: Touches of Style : Over 40 Quick-To-Do Projects, from an Hour to a Weekend

All in color! Create stylish accessories and stunning decorative effects in your home with these simple, time-saving, cost-effective approaches. Packed with more than forty new ideas to turn everyday "junk" into treasures, each project lists the amount of time needed from inception to completion. Make a lampshade using photocopied sheet music in less than an hour or completely make over your bathroom in just a weekend. A variety of decorating tips, including paint finish, trompe l'oeil

, stenciling, and decoupage, are accompanied by full-color photographs and illustrations to help you along the way. Arrange a beautiful bouquet of flowers, handpaint and glaze your terra-cotta ware, or woodgrain and stencil an old table top. Whatever your level of experience, you will bring out the ultimate home decorator in you with the secrets revealed in this handy reference. Trim size: 8 3/4 x 11 1/4.

In Decorating Tricks, Maggie Colvin uses paint, fabric, and sometimes a jigsaw to spruce up cast-off furniture and accessories from frames and window treatments to tables, cupboards, and beds. Her techniques include sewing, simple carpentry, basic upholstery, decorative painting, and lots of stenciling. Despite the insistence on ease and speed--there's a brief but good introduction to choosing a color scheme, and the project step-by-step instructions are reasonably well explained--Colvin's presentation presumes at least intermediate-level skill and probably a good deal more time than indicated. There are no pattern templates for any of the numerous projects requiring designs; yes, crafters can draw their own designs or find existing motifs to adapt, but that certainly requires extra time and some degree of experience. The trompe l'oeil kitchen cupboard, for instance, features intricately stenciled crockery surrounded by stenciled architectural details, but even an expert would be hard-pressed to design, cut, and paint these stencils in the time indicated (one evening). Also, since the text is British, American readers may occasionally be puzzled by the materials (one must know, for example, that emulsion means latex paint). Many of the items are nice looking; just be forewarned that they may require more than a nodding acquaintance with the relevant craft. --Amy Handy