If you'd like to have flowers indoors year-round, bring window boxes into the house. They give a cottage look to any room. Try decorating them in fanciful ways for different looks. Carol Schalla, interior design director for Country Sampler Decorating Ideas magazine, describes several treatments, then explains how to make a window box rustic by attaching twigs to the outside. Add different types of hardware in the shapes of flowers and leaves to a red-painted window box. Picture hangers were nailed in a row on the bottom. Nuts and bolts were applied in circles to look like flowers. Wire was wrapped around nails in leaf shapes. Brads, hinges and washers were used to make bugs and birds (figure A). Paint a wooden window box plaid, using red, purple, green and yellow paint (figure B). Mask the upper and lower areas of a window box, and paint on a black-and-white checkerboard pattern. Paint the center yellow, and add cut pieces of wood to make daisies (figure C). Paint a window box black. Hot-glue or nail multicolored beads on the outside. String beads on wire, and loop them to the top edge of the window box (figure D). Start with a white window box, and paint red and navy squiggly lines to resemble the stripes on an American flag. Paint wooden star cutouts yellow, attach them to the ends of wires, and place the stars in the soil along with the flowers for a festive all-American window box (figure E). Sponge-paint the background of a window box, and stencil birdhouses on the side. Add a wooden bird cutout (figure F). Natural Stick Window Box Materials:
Purchased wooden window box
Plastic liner
Twigs
Brown acrylic paint
Paintbrush
Twine
Nails
Hammer
Wood glue
- Paint the window box with a couple of coats of brown acrylic paint. Let dry.
- Along the corner of one short end of the window box, hammer two nails approximately one-third of the way from top and bottom. Measure two pieces of twine double the circumference of the window box. Fold each piece of twine in half. Place the fold of the twine on each nail, and wrap around the nail head so that each piece is now doubled and has two ends. Bring each double piece of twine along one long side of the window box so that there are four strands of twine, or two double strands (figure G).
- Place a twig between each double set of twine pieces, and twist the twine around the twig. The twig should be flush with the bottom of the box but should extend above the top of the window box. Continue placing twigs between the twine, alternating the strands to anchor the twigs. Hammer nails through the twigs into the window box occasionally to keep them in place (figure H), or add a little wood glue to the twigs, and glue them to the box.
- Work all the way around the window box, and tie off the twine. Line the window box with a plastic liner, and add plants.
GUESTS :
Carol Schalla
707 Kautz Road
St. Charles, IL 60174
Phone: 630-377-8000 ext. 27
Fax: 630-377-8194
Email: country@sampler.com
Website: www.sampler.com
Interior Design Director, "Country Sampler's Decorating Ideas" magazine
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