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If you have been following along with the Revamp, Restyle, Reveal makeover I took part in last month then you may recall that I had a whole lot of art planned for the wall in my new space. When I first set about planning the new upstairs hallway design I got in touch with my favourite online poster store Desenio to ask for some of their new botanical prints. Stay tuned to the end of piece (or scroll down if you just can’t wait!) as I have a special discount code for you valid for the next few days.

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Image: Design Soda

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Having worked with them before, I knew the quality would be excellent and I really loved the new botanical designs they had in. If you saw last weeks makeover post (and if you haven’t you really must, check it out here!) then you’ll know that I went to town a bit creating colour walls with geometric shapes. I decided that a gallery wall on top of this was going to amount to over gilding the lily. But I had all these gorgeous prints, including the mark making ones I’d created for the makeover. I knew I couldn’t shelve this idea completely, I loved the prints too much, so I started to think about other spaces I could jig things around in to refresh the space.

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The cocktail room was the obvious choice. When I was originally approached to take part in RRR, my first thought had been this space. I love it, but it doesn’t feel finished yet. As I’m so in love with the wall colour (Prussian by Zoffany) I decided that I couldn’t bear to commit to a whole new makeover here, and actually after my MADE.COM shoot in the summer where the cocktail room scooped a fabulous new armchair and botanical print (below) I had been surprised by how much of an impact a few small changes had made, so this space requires some updating but I didn’t want to go back to the drawing board.

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Fast forward to last week, where I had over 20 prints laid out on the study rug upstairs and a sense of doom about committing these lovely designs to the walls up there. I thought I’d have a look at the cocktail room as testing ground. We have a corner of the room which is my biggest bug bear, it houses a cocktail cabinet, a vintage record table that probably shouldn’t be in front of a radiator(!) and often the weekly wash hanging out to dry (oh the glamour!). I have moved furniture around here regularly, never quite sure what will work in it, its not the biggest space but it currently feels quite empty and unloved. The walls had a simple triptych of three convex mirrors but they always felt a little small for the wall. So I have moved my gallery wall here, I didn’t know when I started just how much of a difference this would make. I love these prints here, they bring both interest and a touch of sophistication to the walls, just what the space needed.

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Image: Design Soda

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If I’m entirely honest, I’m a little over Gallery walls in general. So many soundbite slogans and predictable pictures of particular fashion models (if you know what I’m talking about, you know who I’m talking about!), sometimes I think they look a little generic and wonder if one may as well just buy all their artwork from the same barn if we’re all going to have the same things on our walls. The beauty of Desenio is not only is it great quality design priced at a fiercely competitive point, but the sheer breadth of their collection of prints means that you are pretty well assured your poster choices won’t be exactly the same as everybody else’s. I honed in on their natural history photography and illustration for my selection and I love the contrast of vibrancy amongst the quieter paintings of leaves. The cactus print in particular packs quite a punch and is so perfect against the blue of the walls. I chose quite a few prints, and some of them are still to find a home, but I’m so happy with my choices. You can see the prints I chose in montage below, followed by my current favourites that are new -in, aren’t they all fabulous?

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What I Chose:

If you like what you see (and bearing in mind there are thousands of others to suit every taste) you can purchase from Desenio with a special 25% off discount for Design Soda readers over the next 48 hours using the code: designsoda. Offer excludes handpicked and frames, there are so many great designs to choose from, go have fun! Im more than a little tempted by the second design in on the top row bellow…

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Current favourites:

This post is a collaboration with Desenio. As ever, I only choose to work with selected brands that I love and feel you will too. All opinions are honest and my own, thanks for supporting the brands that support me.