Tag: Furnishing

SHOPPING

7 Awesome Stores to Buy Fabric in Commercial Street, Bangalore

I have lived in Bangalore for nearly 20 years now. When I first moved to this city, there were no malls. Weekend entertainment and shopping meant trips to the trinity: MG Road, Brigade and Commercial Street. A lot has changed over the years.: the crowd is still young in these places, but dwindling. Metro has taken away the beauty of MG Road. I still go here at least once every three months for old times sake and when I need a break. Indira Nagar, where we lived, was a quaint neighborhood that offered nothing in terms of shopping. There have been several requests for this post and I made multiple trips to take pictures. every time I was surprised to see lesser number of people than before on Commercial Street. Effect on online shopping? Perhaps. Here are my most trusted stores in Bangalore to buy fabrics for anything from upholstering cushions…

LIFESTYLE

I wasted two days to choose the right cushion covers for my black sofa. Blame this website!

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OK, so I wanted to buy two pieces of 16*16 cushion covers online for my black sofa in the living room. How tough can it be? I went to Amazon as I usually do and looked for cushion covers in light colors with either abstract or floral patterns. I thought I should be done choosing and ordering in less than 30 minutes. But, I wasted two precious days. Yes, you read it right. There are only two possible explanations: either I’m so jobless, or I’m so indecisive. But, it was neither. The real reason? I was shopping on Amazon. It is as wrong and time consuming as it can get to shop for such things I realized. With regret. I was totally frustrated. Am I that obsessed with patterns? I’m the one to believe that if I like something the first time, I will go for it, else it will…

LIFESTYLE

Here’s What You Can Shop At The Home Centre Sale To Make your Home Look a Million Bucks

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I have always been in awe of the gold jeweled products at Home Centre, especially around the festive season. Nothing does as much justice to your home as the golden votives, tea light holders or the blingy placemats. And truth be told, they burn a hole in your pocket if you go shopping during the season. So I like to stock up the prices are half for these products never go out of style. I stopped by Home Centre, Phoenix Marketcity last evening and made a mental note of what I liked. Oh! I’m not an impulsive shopper at all. I survey what’s on offer first, then come home to see what will fit and where. Over the years, I have seen that I tend to pick up the same colors during a season -a habit that totally annoys me. One year, I ended up having 6 hues and shades…

LIFESTYLE

Add To Your Cart: Set Up Your Guest Bed Room In Less Than INR 95,000

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If you had INR 95,000 to set up a guest room, what would you add to your cart to make the room functional and aesthetic? Check out my list. We live in an era where we understand and appreciate the merits of shopping online – be it for our personal wardrobe or taking it as far as setting up a whole home. The convenience of comparing prices, designs, returns if it doesn’t match our preferences or dimensions are unparalleled. I wanted to illustrate how to set up a guest bed room in less than INR 95,000. This is more along the lines of “Shop the look” you may find on many sites, but this is more comprehensive in that products are curated from multiple sites and chosen to fit a budget and a minimalist theme without going over the top. These are bare essentials for a room. Having said that,…

Uncategorized

Curtains : Readymade or get them stitched?

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Hope you had a great weekend. With family visiting us, it was an extended one for us and I had the opportunity to visit a few home stores as well. The sale at Home Town is worth checking out for ideas though they are at least 60% over priced. Some of the readers of this blog have sent in design queries that I’ll be answering this week. Please feel free to pitch in your suggestions. The first one in this series is “Should I buy ready made curtains or get them stitched? If stitched, why?” A superficially simple question, but interesting to answer. A few factors that will help you go the ready made or the stitched way: Apartment/house: One vital information that’s missing in the question is if it’s an apartment or a house. If it’s a house, the chances of getting a ready made curtain are rather bleak…

FURNISHING

Handcrafted Cushions from Shades of India

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Sometimes I think the best things in the world are handmade; Shades of India reaffirmed the belief. It was a pleasure to discover the Noida-based home fashion store that supplies to leading international retailers around the world including Selfridges, Heals, and Harrods in London, ABC and Barneys in New York. What sets them apart is the hand oven textile using fine silks, cottons, and fabrics. Shades of India is quite discreet about its collections. Despite registering, I’ve not been able to gain access to their website and take a peek into their 2009 collections. I share some of my favorite cushions from their latest range: As with all things hand or custom made, the collection is quite pricey as they are primarily meant for international market. Images from Jasmine Hall, a distributor of Shades of India in Australia.

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Best Buy : 50% Sale at @ home

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@home is running a 50% sale from 10th July until 16th August. I like browsing the Saturday paper to see what is on sale but I’m not the kind who would rush to buy something just because something is available at a discount. Last weekend, I indulged in some balanced retail therapy. New cushions and covers for the sofa was long overdue. Can it get better if what you want badly is on sale? With guests expected to arrive Sunday, I rushed to @home Saturday afternoon to buy some fancy cushion covers. It helped knowing what I needed – synthetic; and what I didn’t want – nothing in cotton or silk. And this is what I got. Price: 1. A pair of blue cushion covers : Rs. 175 2. A pair of brown cusion covers: Rs. 200 3. A pair of 12″ brown cushion covers: Rs. 150 4. A pair…

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Shopping Tip: Portico’s Classy Bed Linen Collection

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Good Morning! It’s Monday morning; the weather is perfect and my head is spinning with a set of fresh ideas to post this week. Let’s get started..

Do you live in a rented house? Does your house owner object to drilling holes on the walls? Are most of your collectibles and prized frames neatly packed in boxes and stored away in the deepest corners of your loft? And you see them only when it’s time to move again wondering why you ever bought them? Having lived in a rented spaces for a better part of my life, I’m familiar with this.

Over the years, however, I’ve learned that dressing up your walls is not the way to decorate a room. Curtains, elegant bed linens, the way one makes a bed or arranges a sofa in a living room makes all the difference. And none of these will put a hole in the wall :)

There are only a handful of good branded bed and bath makers in India : Portico, Spaces, Welhome, Bombay Dyeing, and Fabindia. My personal favorite has been Portico. For all you Fabindia lovers, read no further. Portico, the only one with a full-fledged website, showcases their collection in an organized manner that can you spend hours admiring the designs.

This post is a collection of my picks from Portico’s latest offering :

DIY

How To : Paint Zebra Stripes on Cushion Covers in Three Steps

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After yesterday’s stimulating pictures of zebra print, let’s get down to do some dirty work today. Once I realized, it wasn’t going to be easy to get zebra stripes-printed cushion covers in Bangalore, I set down to painting one of my recycled cushion covers inspired by this throw pillow.

Things you’ll need:

Pencil/chalk
Brush
A small cup/palette if you have one
Plain Cushion cover in any color, preferably old
Water
Some old clothes if this is your first painting project

A few tips before we start the project:

It’s better to use recycled cushion cover for this project because you wouldn’t want to paint odd looking stripes on a Rs.300 cushion piece and fret over it, would you ? I used one of the recycled covers from this project.
A plain cover of any color will be ideal for this project so that you will have a good background to draw the stripes on. Use contrasting colors for the stripe that gels with your decor. For instance, if your cover is white or ivory then use the natural black or orange or yellow.
Fabric paint can be washed with water. Ensure to read the instructions on the bottle and clean the brush using water after use. In order to preserve the colors for future use, close the cap tightly before putting it away.
If the paint is very dilute, then the results will be blotchy. More often than not, you will see patches on the back of the cover as excess paint from the top layer gets absorbed beneath. Get the correct ratio of paint+water by experimenting on a waste piece of cloth. As a precautionary measure, place a cutting board or something hard inside the cover. This will protect its rear side.

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Ideas to Recycle Silk and Cotton Curtains

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Cushion covers are easily the most over-priced items on earth. Seriously. Every visit to a home store lures me to the soft furnishing section for want of possessing a good set of silk cushion covers: the ones in bright color printed with trendy design or the lovely, hand-embroidered ones or some plain yet elegant ones with wooden buttons or some painted ones with great detailing? But their price is a huge letdown. Something like these come in the range of Rs.150-Rs.300 per piece …

Even the less fancy ones such as these are not worth the price if you are up for a little DIY project.

If you’ve been dying for a change in decor for your living room or bed rooms, then the easiest thing to do is to change curtains or rearrange furniture. And if your curtains are a couple of years old, then it is perhaps times to replace and recycle them. If the cotton or silk curtains are in good condition, then this project might just be for you. There are a number of ways to recycle old curtains based on the material and purpose.