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Advice for Designers

The Rule of More

07/21/2012
22 Comments

source I chose two different faucets for both of Mom’s bathrooms in the carriage house she built last year. Because I’m in her house and see them all the time (different from a client’s home) one day I said to her, I like the faucet downstairs so much better than the one in your master….

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Advice Every Designer Should Give

07/15/2012
8 Comments

I’m featured on Tobi Fairly’s blog today with my expert advice, more on that in a minute! This is my sweet nephew Noah and it’s his birthday, he’s seven! My sister Anita (his Mom) has a stunning brand new white kitchen that I helped her with last summer. The reason why you haven’t seen it on…

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Two Ways to Know if You are a One-Trick Pony Designer

07/13/2012
19 Comments

I have a confession. Lately I’ve been feeling like a one-trick pony. Because I’m specifying the same grays over and over and over. Thank goodness I know better. Shaker Beige (source) Because here’s the thing. When the brown trend was here, it was the same, “Oh, you have an espresso brown sofa, brown floors, and…

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How to Inject Fresh into Your Earth-Toned House

07/01/2012
22 Comments

Yesterday I posted my Styled Interiors board from Pinterest on my Facebook Fan Page and one of my readers commented that it was her favourite board and wondered if I would post more images on tablescapes for coffee tables and end tables. So I clicked over to Ralph Lauren Home because I adore the styling…

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Do You Give Your Client Exactly What They Want?

06/09/2012
16 Comments

The best part about the designers, decorators and homeowners who attend my workshops is they already know me before they get there. So it’s like I’m your friend, teaching your colour class. Paula (below) and I have been emailing back and forth forever because she comments a lot on my posts. Comments are almost like…

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Best Quotes from Blogfest 2012 in New York

05/22/2012
8 Comments

Traci Zeller (We do this a lot in New York) Darryl Carter was part of a panel this morning at breakfast at the top of the Hearst tower. He said his family was first generation so he pretty much had to be a doctor, a lawyer or an Indian Chief. His decorating career was launched when his…

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6 Ways to Choose the Perfect Neutral Paint Colour

05/06/2012
59 Comments

I received this question the other day and realized that even though my ebooks covers it in comprehensive detail, I don’t have a single post that answers this question directly. So here are the 6 best ways to choose one: 1. Start with the living room because that’s where the entire colour scheme for the…

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Advice for Designers: Why your Project isn’t Published

04/29/2012
42 Comments

After I had finished decorating this living/dining room for my lovely clients Jim & Carol I sent the photos to some magazines. Only to receive zero response. I tried to figure out what was wrong with it.

Then in February, at the Design Bloggers Conference in LA I got to chatting with Kimberley Seldon. She is a celebrity designer from Toronto. She had a show called Design for Living for many years and is the editor of a fabulous on-line magazine called Dabble

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How Important is Pretty?

02/22/2012
31 Comments

When I had my first website designed, I consciously chose to show only after photos in my portfolio. I did this because when I looked at interior design portfolios that I admired, I saw just one pretty picture after another. Pinterest My advice is to show just the after, keep your website as pretty as…

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Vancouver Interior Designer: How to be Legendary with Your Clients

01/24/2012
7 Comments

So I’m in a workshop for facilitators here in Vegas. The difference between training which is what I mostly do in my True Colour Expert Workshops and facilitating is this:

1. Training. I need to get my participants from A – B and I have the answers (it is MY system after all).

2. Facilitating. The facilitator stands inside the gap between A – B and you bring activities and resources to lead your participants to B and you don’t even pretend to have the answers.

There’s parts of my course when I’m facilitating and other parts where it’s full on training.

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What I Love about Patina Style

11/26/2011
8 Comments

Images from Giannetti Home I have been following Velvet & Linen for as long as I’ve been writing this blog because we started our blogs around the same time. Brooke and I emailed back and forth a lot and I finally met both Brooke and Steve at High Point last year! They are both such…

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Three Ways to Write a Design Blog People will Read

10/02/2011
23 Comments

I’ve been percolating on this post for a while so to celebrate the launch of my new website, here is my best advice if you are considering starting a design blog or just need some inspiration for yours:
Be Bossy (but in a charming way)
Every time I make a statement like ‘Accent tiles are bad’, ‘White Kitchens are the be all and end all’ or ‘Gray only works in the company of colour’, I get comments like “OMG Maria you talk like having a White Kitchen is like a religion” for example, and well, it’s true.

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