Love It or Hate It? Flax Manhole Cover Floor Mats

CasaSugar — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 08:30:38 -0700

These Manhole Cover Floor Mats at Flax Art and Design ($27.95) cleverly echo the designs of city sewer covers, with versions available for London, Paris, and New York. I don't think I'd want one in my house, but the indoor/outdoor rugs would look cute on a porch. What do you think?

Casa Craving Recap: Beauty on a Budget

CasaSugar — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 12:45:07 -0700

For the latest Casa Craving Challenge, I asked you to help design a living room for Karazzies, who needed your help finding an affordable and beautiful style for her living room. She has chocolate brown leather sofas and blue carpet, but needed some help filling in the rest.

Everyone did a great job at creating a list that was creative and worked within the sofa-and-carpet limitations you were given. My favorite lists carefully considered the budget portion of the challenge, and made economical decisions without sacrificing style. You can see all of the beauty on a budget bookmarks here, as well as the excellent lists the users created. (TeamSugar has a great tutorial on listmaking if you're not sure how.)

Here are my favorite looks:

Look #1 is designed by Nikkeeb, who writes, "When it comes to decorating on a budget, you need to go with basic but unique pieces to keep it practical and chic at the same time. That's what I put in my list, unique pieces for a great price that you'll still want to use 20 years from now. I tried to give as many options as possible, so I wouldn't recommend using all these pieces at once, but you get the idea...and along the same lines I'd paint the walls this taupe color becausc it's the most versatile."

There are some other excellent rooms, so read more

Look #2, designed by Toby321, created a beachy feel with ocean-inspired art and accessories and light colors. She shopped sale items from Pottery Barn and big retailers like Ikea and Target to keep her look on a strict budget.

Look #3, designed by Klynnmorton, used "lovely yellows to make the blue carpet a part of the color scheme, and not just a nuisance! And fabulous chocolate furniture, a flax-colored upholstered chair, and a magnificent vintage poster to pull everything together. Fantastically wonderful!"