Making A Traveling Design Board

In addition to my work as the in-house designer at Vintage 61 Storehouse (In Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania), I am the owner of West End Vintage and Interiors. “Interiors” as in I am an Interior Designer for private clients. The best part of my work in this capacity is the very diverse design styles I get to work in. I am a firm believer that a home should reflect the owner and not the designer. It’s my job to pull a client’s likes and dislikes and guide them to their dream home based on their desires, taste, and inspiration.

Inspiration is best selected, beginning with this question… “What element(s) are not variables?” What I mean by this is, what will still be present after a space is finished? Is there a family piece that will remain? A special rug? A collection? Or will something architectural, like the stonework of a fireplace, that will remain unchanged. This is where we begin. Don’t fight against what will be a presence in a space; embrace it and begin your color pallet with that element.

Inspired By A Collection Of Vintage Pottery

As an example, I will begin with a collection of vintage pottery that will remain and be a huge part of our design choices. Let’s just say our MUSE.

Making Color Sample Sticks

I know that I want to paint some current furnishings to blend into our new pallet. Miss Mustard Seed’s® MilkPaint™’s wide range of colors will allow me to accomplish this just this. “Aqua Sky”, creates just the marriage of color that I am looking for. Here is where I will begin my design board; however, I am going to lose the board and make my choices pocket/purse friendly.

I begin with the purchase of a pack of wooden stir sticks. Leaving the plastic wrap on the sticks, I find a center spot on the handle and drill a registered hole through the whole package

Next, I shorten the sticks with a saw, remove the wrapper and lightly sand the cut end.

The wooden stirs are then attached together with a large binder ring. 

 Along with the Miss Mustard Seed’s® Aqua Sky, I have also selected their color “Ironstone” as a second paint color for furnishings. The crisp white is a great balance to Aqua Sky, and so we start to build our traveling design board by painting two of the wooden sticks with these two colors.

Shopping For Wall Colors

We now have a quick and portable color reference that we get to take shopping. (Remember that color is subjective, and memory cannot distinctly identify the subtleness of huge, tone, and tint.) A design project should never begin without accurate reference at hand.  So Let’s get shopping.

And so we move on to wall color(s). I have selected multiple colors that work together. This will give me options as I move from one space to another in my or my client’s home.)

Next, I cut down the color samples and attached them to additional wooden stirs with a spray adhesive. I made sure to label the back of the wooden stirs with the correct product name, just as I had done with the MMS paint stirs.

All are connected with a large binder ring and placed in my purse so that I am always prepared to shop my design elements as I travel through my day. This saves me from being caught without reference at hand.

Shopping For Fabric

A trip to the fabric shop is exactly the time you want to be ready with your traveling design board. The quick reference sticks add in eliminating fabric choices that seem correct to the eye but actually are not. And it also confirms the choices that truly do work for developing the design.

Fabric stores these days typically will not provide you with a free sample; they will, however, sell you as little as 4 inches.

Our sticks have helped us narrow down our choices, but I highly suggest that you purchase a number of 4-inch samples, so you can play around with combinations within the space being designed. 

The final choices and also cut down and spray mounted to sticks of their own.

Our traveling design board is now at the ready for each element we need to shop. Flooring, tile, cabinetry, hardware, bedding, accessories, lighting, etc., are easily selected now that we are prepared with our reference elements.

So what’s your inspiration?