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The Design Inspirationalist

~ Inspiring Ideas | Spectacular Creations

The Design Inspirationalist

Tag Archives: art

Creating Balance and Harmony at Home Using Feng Shui’s Five Elements

06 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by melissaoconnor in Everyday Design, Guest Posts, Maria Samuels, The Home

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abundance, art, balance, creativity, design, earth, energy, family, Feng Shui, Fire, harmony, health, In Style Modern, intimate relationships, manifestations, Marial Samuels, metal, water, wood, yin and yang

The art of consciously choosing the designs that support people’s life path is called feng shui. And the aspects of your life you consider as important, such as your family, health, abundance, intimate relationships and creativity, are mirrored by your home. The walls, tables and other accessories you place at home are physical manifestations of your beliefs on life in general. This also applies to the structures, patterns and colors that you surround yourself. Each one sends an energy vibration which may be useful or harmful to you.

Understanding how you use feng shui at home is the key to reaping the energy that helps you live a better life. But first you must determine what chi is moving through your body and your environment. This is where the concept of yin and yang emerges as these two dictate the energy that flows in people’s lives. The presence of too much yin energy has negative impact on health, affects the chi flow and shuts down the body. Meanwhile, an excess of yang energy also results in ill health, most noticeable effect include increased heart rate and blood pressure.

The most important part is to balance the yin and yang energy movements to establish a whole state, thus, paving the way for healing, emotionally, mentally and physically. It is also noteworthy to remember that no person carries an entire yin or yang energy. This is because our energy changes with the current season as well as the food people eat and the time of a day.

Here are the 5 enhancing element energy designs in feng shui that can aid you to controlling the yin and yang chi in your life:

Fire
Fire energy is synonymous with expansion and transformation. This means that you are more open to new ideas and are more willing to sharing your gifts with others.

Guest Post: Creating Balance and Harmony at Home Using Feng Shui’s Five Elements

You can add fire energy at home by using any bright color, such as red or orange, or any active color that helps energy and light to bounce. To send up more energy into a room, use the following shapes: diamonds, triangles, pyramids and sunbursts. You can also add lamps, a carved wooden box, spotlights, lanterns, red or green candles, backlit plants, palm trees or yucca trees, pillars, tall chairs, and any groupings of three.

Guest Post: Creating Balance and Harmony at Home Using Feng Shui’s Five Elements

Earth
Earth helps you become more grounded, thus, helping you to feel more protected, stabilized, secure and safe. Aside from moving downward, earth energy is slow on its motion and is represented by nurturing, soft objects as well as solid, heavy objects.

Guest Post: Creating Balance and Harmony at Home Using Feng Shui’s Five Elements

The goal of earth energy is to serve as reminder to people that the physical body, physical world and physical needs must be given due honor. Earth colors are subdued and are usually represented by yellow and brown. Also, the shapes and structures associated with earth energy stone, adobe, straw and brick. Think of warm cozy blankets, terra-cotta pots, a rock garden, brightly colored pillows, pottery, and pillows

Guest Post: Creating Balance and Harmony at Home Using Feng Shui’s Five Elements

Water
Water energy helps you to a relaxed state where you release the things that have been bothering you for the day. To attain physical and emotional healing, make it a ritual to start your day in a water environment and end it as well on similar surrounding.

Guest Post: Creating Balance and Harmony at Home Using Feng Shui’s Five Elements

Black and dark blue are the water colors, thus, adding white tiles around the bath, a curved path, a white vase, a black or dark blue birdbath. I’ve always loved indoor fountains and this copper fountain has stolen my heart, and hanging plants are perfect ways to experience water energy.

Guest Post: Creating Balance and Harmony at Home Using Feng Shui’s Five Elements

Wood
Wood energy manifests creativity and growth in your life.

Guest Post: Creating Balance and Harmony at Home Using Feng Shui’s Five Elements

Definitely not pastel, wood colors bring in clarity and energy in your life. And these are purple to allow expression and bring in abundance as well as green to grow and heal at the same time. To ensure growth is achieved, you must not pick colors that are too muddy or have lots of gray. Objects that are related to wood include vertical blinds, flowing curtains, a blue or green vase, sloping or tall furniture pieces.

Metal
Metal represents the mind energy, with two essential aspects: the intellectual left-brained and the creative right-brained. Too much of this energy, however, can influence people to be sarcastic and overly critical of others.

For the left-brained, the colors associated are gray, white and silver. These are most beneficial for people engaged in accounting or computer programming or any job that requires detailed tasks. To avoid any sharp edge, you can color your room with a soft warm color as well or just opt for creamy or rosy white. For the right-brained, rainbow colors are ideal to bring out your creativity at the same time allow body healing.

Adding bells, metal chimes, a brick pathway, long comfortable sofa, low, wide furniture will bring in the metal energy in your life

Written by Marial Samuels 

Repurposing Canvas Art

02 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by melissaoconnor in Art & Design, Edward Stuart, Guest Posts

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art, Canvas Art, canvasgalleryart.com, design, Edward Stuart, frames, home decor, Repurposing, Starry Night, Van Gogh, yard sales

The economy is down and our bank accounts are deflated, but that doesn’t mean we have to go without great art. The major difference is that we can’t afford supporting good artists to get it. Obviously that’s pretty harsh since we should want to promote good art, but if you can’t afford it then that’s that. Instead, here are a couple of ways to make bad art good or to find good art for cheap.

Enhancement
There are few better feelings than walking into a thrift shop and finding a great framed piece of canvas that you already have a plan for. These bargain basement values will often set you back little more than $5. I like to take the content in these frames and use that as a jumping off point, creatively. For instance, I’ve often seen framed art that has a nautical theme to it, be it an ocean landscape or maybe a lighthouse safely guiding ships in with a beacon of light. Take those boring images and use some acrylic paint to add a sea monster ravaging some fishermen, a dragon terrorizing a village, or an alien space ship hovering above the beach. The problem with a lot of this cheap art isn’t that it’s particularly “bad” so much as that it’s boring. If you’ve got the necessary painting skills (or not if that’s how you roll) you can take cheap generic stuff and make it your own.

Purposeful Ruination
This is exactly the same thing as the above category, except that it involves using prints of extremely good but overplayed pieces that just about anyone is liable to recognize like this awesome blog showing a variety of altered versions of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”.

Guest Post: Repurposing Canvas Art
Photo Credit: Popped Culture

Stencils
Yes I know, stencils are for amateurs, if you’re that awesome you can use a paintbrush. For those of us who are awful at typographical things, we will cheat. Hip boutique stores sell framed art like this for far more than it’s worth, but you’re smarter than that. You’re savvy. Take a forest landscape and stencil “Vintage Solar Cells”, or “Carbon-Emission Free Energy before it was cool” across it. If you’re not into the hipster thing, stencil something inspirational over the classic evergreens and mountain lake as a pick me up for a rainy day.

Yard Sales
This isn’t so much repurposing as it is simple reuse. If art modification makes your skin crawl then yard sales are for you. The fact is that a lot of people can’t tell the difference between good and bad art. That means some people overprice bad art, but it also means heavily underpriced good art. If you go around every weekend and look through local yard sales you will absolutely find some priceless stuff at absurdly low prices all because someone didn’t know or care that grandma was an art aficionado.

{Edward Stuart wrote this on behalf of canvasgalleryart.com.}

Inspiration Photo Friday: Reflection

26 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by melissaoconnor in Inspiration Photo Friday

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art, building, city, creativity, dark, design, explore, inspiration photo friday, light, manhatten, mind, modern art, MOMA, museum, new york, new york city, perspective, photography, Reflection

This will always be one of my favorite photos I’ve taken. It was captured about 5 years ago while I was visiting the MOMA in the city. I turned around to look out the window and was fascinated by my reflection and how the light perfectly lit up a scene outside where people were gathered. The street seemed bare and quiet except for that one entrance area. And I just happened to be standing right above it.

The dichotomy of this photo will always amaze me. On one side, the dark city. On the other, a moment captured through my lens showing the lighter side. Here my reflection acts as a shadow allowing the darkness to come through while the light that surrounds me, brings attention to the subjects outside. Two worlds coming together. What do you think the main subject is here? Outside the window or in?

Sometimes if you step outside yourself for a moment, you can see a much different perspective than before. Reflections don’t always show you what everyone else sees. They can offer a glimpse into a new realm where the mind can wander and explore.

Inspiration Photo Friday -  © 2012 Melissa O'Connor-Arena

Guest Post: Decorating Your Home with Original Art

23 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by melissaoconnor in Art & Design, Guest Posts

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

art, art galleries, color, decorating, design, exhibitions, greece, greek, greek artists, original art, painting, Spiros Amerikanos, Technosfaira, Vasileios Arapis, Vasiliki Tambouri

Why Not Decorate your Home with Original Art?
When you decorate your home, you think very carefully about the color schemes you will choose for each room and about matching furnishings and so on. Then you go out and look for something to put on your wall, perhaps as an afterthought. You go around the usual stores and pick a picture that will suit your color scheme and will probably pay as much for it as you would for an original work of art, which will appreciate in value, if you choose wisely.

Guest Post: Decorating Your Home with Original Art
Painting by Vasiliki Tambouri

Where Do You Buy Original Art Works From?
You could go to a gallery of course, but you could consider visiting some art exhibitions, where you can talk to the artists who are displaying their works and discuss their paintings with them. This gives you an insight into their thoughts as they were creating a painting and you can better understand the creation that you like. Galleries are good, but you have to pay commission and it is so much better for the buyer to buy works direct from the artist.

What You Can Expect From an Exhibition
Recently I had the privilege to be invited to a week-long exhibition of Greek artists’ works and would like to share some of them with you, in order for you to have a flavor of what you can expect for probably less than 1,000 Euros.

Guest Post: Decorating Your Home with Original Art
Painting by Vasiliki Tambouri, not in the exhibition

There are usually various sizes of paintings to choose from but the bigger the canvas the more they tend to cost. Sometimes an exhibition will have a central theme, but others will be more diverse, with a mixture of styles to choose from. There could be abstracts, or more traditional types of art, including sculptures and icons, if you are interested in religious paintings.

Guest Post: Decorating Your Home with Original Art
Painting by Spiros Amerikanos

Guest Post: Decorating Your Home with Original Art
Painting by Spiros Amerikanos

You will, of course, have your color scheme in mind as well as the type of art that appeals to you. I particularly enjoy having artists explain their works as this gives me a deeper understanding of what it is I am seeing in their paintings. I find this particularly fascinating.

Color Scheme First, or Painting?
Personally, I would go to an exhibition first, and find a painting I liked and then build my color scheme around it. A good painting is always a talking point when you have guests to your home. I have found that people are impressed when they see something original on a wall, and if you care about their opinions, they will probably think that you have spent more than you actually did on an original painting.

Once you have found something that you really adore, you can fit your colors around it. You will probably be living with your choice for a few years, so make sure you actually like the painting and can comfortably live with it.

I have illustrated this article with paintings that would typically cost less than a thousand Euros. They were displayed at the fifth exhibition mounted by “Technosfaira” which is a relatively new association of Greek artists. It encompassed various genres of art, and I apologize for not being able to include the works of all the artists who participated in the exhibition. However, I have chosen my favorites, and the rest may be viewed online at the Technosfaira Omada site on Facebook.

Guest Post: Decorating Your Home with Original Art
Spiros Amerikanos, Vasiliki Tambouri and Vasileios Arapis on October 1st 2012 deciding where the pictures should be placed for the exhibition

It actually makes no difference where you are, there are always exhibitions which feature the works of good artists, so look for these in your local events page online or in your newspaper. Visit an exhibition and I am sure you will be very pleasantly surprised.

{Lynne Evans lived in Pakistan for four years and worked there as an English and social studies coordinator in an English-medium private school. She has written short stories, has a novel awaiting publication, and has also helped to produce text books for students of English. Lynne has also worked as a writer, proofreader and editor for Hillside Press, Athens, Greece and has travelled widely, both for work and for pleasure. She is currently back in Europe and still traveling.}

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