Home File: A Realistic Decorating Guide for Real Life

A complete guide to stylish and creative home decorating on a budget offers a host of helpful tips on interior design, from innovative window treatments to dressing up found objects to color and paint effects, in a beautifully illustrated handbook.

These project books contain quick, do-it-yourself decorating ideas with easy-to-follow instructions. Lynn and Dimmick cover sewless fabric projects, decorated picture frames, etched glass, and napkin rings, among other things. Maflin shows gilding, stenciling, paper crafts, painting, printing, and mosaic projects using an Engish modern style. Lynn goes into more complicated projects such as rug painting that are covered in more detail elsewhere (see Caroline O'Neill Kuchinsky's Fabulous Floorcloths, reviewed below), but her "Shabby Chic"-style projects include a guide to the type of store that will carry needed materials. Dimmick, whose projects will appeal to twenty- and thirtysomethings, includes a mostly New York resource list and the approximate cost and time needed to complete each project. All good additions where there is a great interest in crafts, with Lynn's perhaps the most highly recommended because of the variety of projects.
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