Guest Post - furniture upholstered in Toile by Mari

Hi, I'm Mari and I write for Arcadian Lighting, a wonderful resource for light fixtures and lighting trends online. I'm so happy to be here at Beau Lifestyle doing a guest post about furniture upholstered in one of my favorite fabrics--the appealing and enduring Toile de Jouy. Born in the 18th century, toile (literally cloth in French) with its naturalistic scenic designs printed in a single color has seen a real rebirth in recent years. Today's toile is a merging of the old and the new, sometimes coming from the same design houses as the originals. Thanks for letting me share these lovely pieces of furniture all dressed up in beautiful toile. Enjoy!

Toile is an expected element in this very traditional space, but its color not so much. The turquoise Chinoiserie toile upholstery and slipcovers freshen the design and bring the room to life in combination with the glamorous ceiling light.

This chair upholstered in a "heading out West" toile fabric would be perfect in a ranch home or mountain cabin. It's an all-American take on the historic textile.

A black on cream toile illustrates just how easily this historic fabric and traditional upholstered pieces can merge seamlessly into a contemporary setting. Even the lighting fixture, a completely contemporary floor lamp seems right at home besides the totally traditional seating.

Oh, so French, this lovely settee is covered and draped in blue on white toile. Wouldn't this comfortable seating be the center of attention in either a formal or shabby chic bedroom?

This toile upholstered wingback chair is anything but stuffy. It may be formal in style, but the combination of solids and different colors in the toile gives it an updated look and decidedly quirky appeal.

This bold pink living space just begged for an element of surprise. The designer answered back with chairs upholstered in an unexpected deep pink on brown Chinoiserie toile.

What is more feminine than a pale purple or lilac palette in a bedroom? Perhaps a French bed upholstered in soft purple toile with matching bedding? In such a lovely setting, one can imagine a glamorous pendant light or ornate chandelier hanging just out of sight.

Last, but definitely not least in design impact is this amazing toile with an orange background. Upholstery and drapes against the same design on wallpaper, now that's a toile statement! Images 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

Now its your turn to combine great toile upholstery with inspirational lighting fixtures that you easily can find at Arcadian Lighting!

Matteo´s chair

Yesterday I had a busy day in Madrid visiting customers, had no time to post sorry.
I am trying to travel as much as possible now and get everything done for work, because the bump is growing and soon I will not be able to travel.
A year ago my mom and me we found this little childrens chair over at a local triftshop, and I knew I had to have it. Now I had the best excuse to get it upholstered for the nursery, they delivered it today at my office, can´t wait to see it in the nursery.
The fabric is calico corners diamante, and I ordered a few more buttons on it, this is the after:

           The before was a very ugly color, but sometimes you have to look through it:

pictures taken with my iphone

So what do you think of Matteo´s chair?

before and after

I did find a before picture of my 2 found armchairs.It was taken in front of the place where I got them upholstered. As you can see I was choosing fabric, and I also liked the circle black one.
But I went for the black with the white piping as that can be used even in 10 years from now, it´s ageless.
So here is the before:

and after:

In yesterday´s post you can see more pictures.

Upholstery projects

The first post I placed on my blog a few months ago, was about two faux bamboo armchairs that I had and wanted to upholster with fabric cross section corcoal from Calicocorners, well it´s finally done!!!
                                                                This is the result:

i have 2 of these armchairs, They look fresh and clean. I do have to repair the

legs with white paint, during transport they got damaged.

                                                     I do love the way it is upholstered.

This is a picture of what it was before

Another project that I don´t have a before picture of ( I am such a quick DIY-er i always

hurry up to get it going that I forget to take pictures of it before)

Anyway try to imagine a chair with simple white fabric.

And look what it is now:

Ain´t it pretty, this upholstered Louis armchair with the nailhead trim?

This chair I bought when I was 18 for my first apartment and fabric at a market back in Amsterdam.

I have no idea where this goes, for now I will leave it it my office untill I find the perfect place for it.

Now rember my first upholstery project I did about a black wing back chair with white piping?

read about it here

When I bought that chair at the thriftshop, my mother in law found it silly and dirty, she

doesn´t understand that with upholstering you make it ´´new´´ again.

My mother in law throws away furniture, and she never ever had entered a thriftshop in her life.

When I got the wingbackchair delivered to my office, she changed opinion and told me she

wanted to have that chair for herself, so it went to her house.

I have found, YES FOUND 2 beautifull, heavy and superior quality armchairs a few weeks ago

on the street near my house!

(again, don´t have before pictures, the fabric was worn only)

and got them reupholstered in black with white piping again.

I did liked that look.

Now these stay in my office for when I have visitors.

Those legs are so detailed, they look like lion paws.

The upholsterer was so sweet to make me 2 matching pillows as a gift.

Ok this is not such a good picture, but I wanted to show you the height of my office, do you

see the curtain behind the chairs? Behind the curtain is where I keep stock and other stuff that I don´t want to see all the time. This curtain is another DIY project made on the sewing machine by my mother and my father

hang up the rod. The fabric was purchased at IKEA and it´s Gunvor.

I did all the chairs at one and got a discount, but even so my DIY budget decreased, now I have to

go get back to work, but will have a smile on my face seeing these pretty chairs.

DIY bulletin board

This weekend I have made some inpiration boards for a good friend of mine.
She told me recently she felt that her office was lacking some girly chic stuff, i remebered she had
3 boring corch bulltin boards hanging on the wall behind her desk and I got the idea to DIY cover them in fabric with nails. I got inspiration from various bloggers who did this before.
Here is the inspiration:

                                This is the Bulletin board from Alaina  - Live creating yourself

                                
                                                           Sara - The estate of things

This is what we needed besides the easy DIY bulletin board:
-nails/studs
-fabric (if wrinkeled, iron it before)
-fabric glue
-a stapler
-siccors

        

         Glue the fabric, staple it on the back ( you can see my red nails)

          

    push the pins in, we did them every 5 cm.

    Voila, here you can see one done, and one still to do.

P.s. picture were taken at night and with my iphone, excusez moi for the bad quality of the pictures.

white piped upholstered wing back chair

I fould this wing back chair in a local triftshop, it had such a sad look and the colour and fabrick were awfull, but i could see through it and imagined the beauty of this chair upholstered in black fabrick with white piping.
It took a few weeks before it was ready, but it was worth the wait, now the chair is in my office.
This is how the chair looked before:

and after:

Other inspiration:

source: 3 men and a lady

The inspiration came from:http://www.cococozy.com/search?updated-max=2010-09-07T06%3A37%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=10

p.s. my mom asked me if I knew why these kind of chairs have these 2 bulky parts on top of the chair. I told her that I thought it was for sleeping, so you could rest your head against it. But no, she told me that  the houses many years ago were not isolated and it was often cold and to avoid being bothered by the cold draft they designed them like they are.

Learning something everyday.

Calico Corners fabrics

During my vacation in the states last month, I was very happy to be able to vistit this beautifull store for fabrics called Calico Corners. I have to admit that here in Spain we have many fabric stores, but 98% of the fabrics are so classical or ugly. For me Calico Corners was a breath of fresh air to find graphical kind of prints. I have made a purchase of 3 fabrics at Calico corners for some upholstering proyect in my house.

If you visit the Calico corners website you can download a 20 dollar discount coupon and print it out.

I have to admid that they give the best service ever!

Cross section charcoal was a steel at 11 dollars a yard. Its even more prettier in real! I want to use this fabric for the bamboo armchairs.

This is Diamante in color seamist, probably I will use this to upholster a childrens armchair or make nice pillow.

This is Jafar sunbrella, it was the most expensive of the three, but o so worth it.

I would like to use this fabric for my headboard. In the store they had an ottoman in this fabric, it was gorgeous.

I hope to post pictures of our apartment any time soon, but it looks like its going to be a long proyect before we are anytime near to take pictures.