Easy Kitchen Makeover: Add Color & Style for Pennies

 It's easy to add color and art to your kitchen without painting the walls. I'll show you how I transformed my kitchen from bland to colorful without spending a dime.

Before: I opted against painting my small rental kitchen. Color is added with my retro signage collection but I wanted a bolder statement and more functionality.

After: The two large pieces and various smaller ones and accessories add color to the kitchen.

Making Art: On Monday I showed you how to make art from scrapbook paper. I repeated the process to yield three matching Japanese style food themed art pieces. Frames were on hand, thrifted gifts from the mom. You can also frame:

 Art in progress. Chaos!

• Foodie Calendar pages
• Beautiful fabric
• Illustrated version of your favorite recipes
• Pages from vintage magazines or magazine collages
• Your own acrylic or watercolor paintings

Adding Shelves: These twin shelves were another thrifted gift from my mom from a year ago. Shelves will add color and functionality, they're found in abundance in thrift stores and even languishing in your friend's garages. (Just ask: do you need that?)

Display Your Aprons:  My apron display isn't just pretty, it's functional and gives me easy access to my aprons. People try to buy my thrifted sea horse hooks all the time!

Display the Necessities:  I like easy access to my cutlery, so I arrange them in colorful tiki glasses. I've broken two tiki glasses this way- be careful not to place anything top heavy in glasses like these!

Group Like Objects: Collections look best when displayed in groupings of like objects; this creates a better statement. 

How do you add color and life to a room when you can't paint the walls? Sometimes that limitation will inspire creativity. Drop the despair-enduing Perfect Home Kitchens 3000 catalogs and don't look beyond what you already own to spruce up the homestead.

Be Back on Monday! I'm going on a cruise to the Bahamas from today to Sunday, it's a much needed break. I'll be back and writing blog posts on Monday!

This post is linked to: Get Your Craft on Thursdays / Somewhat simple / Transformation Thursdays / Show off Your Stuff / Hooking Up with HOH / Just a Girl / It's Party Time