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Inspirations for a retro living room – more garish vintage storage!

You may remember this blog post that I wrote  when I found my first record box from the vintage vinyl fair at Southwold last year. I have never loved a record box, or any storage for that matter, “at first sight” but this time it was different. Because it was orange. And floral. And tastefully garish.

retro record case floral

vintge vinyl record box

But my obsession didn’t start and end in that record fair on that day. Once I’d bought the box home, I couldn’t help myself and trawled the internet looking for more of these pretty little cases. Unfortunately, they are pretty rare and if any do pop up for sale they are invariably too spendy for my liking and with a heavy heart I have to step away from the laptop and reaffirm to myself that I must earn more money…

Don’t be too sad for me though, lovely readers, because I found a new one! In my local charity shop, can you believe it?! I couldn’t! There was a seriously swift grabbing motion in the general direction of the record case as I snapped it up and skipped home with a genuine beauty in blue. When I later peeped inside I found that it even had the old retro label from Boots and the original receipt for it tucked away at the bottom of the case. No key though, but you can’t have everything and I’m not in the habit of locking my records away.

Vintage retro record case lp box blue orange storage

I thought that was it. Until Ebay tempted me. There was an auction for a trio of mini record cases in the same OTT pattern; tiny boxes that much have been for 7 inch records and although I liked these little cuties, I couldn’t justify the hefty price-tag and the storage space gained wouldn’t have been enough to give them the space on my sideboard. So they too passed me by. But after a couple of months, ‘greenie’ popped up and set my watch-list a-fluttering. Noone else was bidding and I kept my fingers crossed until sale day, and thankfully I won the auction for the starting price – not cheap when you consider the cost of delivery, but nowhere near as pricey as some of the LP cases I’d dribbled over in the past. There’s only one downside of buying online, which is that you can’t see it and look at it from all angles. The case arrived in near-perfect condition, with exactly the colours and pattern expected, but with one tiny difference. It was half as deep at the other 2 cases. You’d never know it from looking at these three lined up (thank goodness) but it only holds half as many records. I’m sticking with my story that this is a good thing, as I can barely lift the bigger ones when they are full of heavy vinyl, and the with the slimline one, I can! 

Retro living room interior design record LP storage cases from Boots 70s 60s floral pattern green orange blue

I love my record boxes but that IS IT now, I am all collected out and there’s no more space in the living room for the collection to be added to (and you are welcome to give me a good telling off if I come home with more in the future). I can store my old LPs safely and I’m even using one of the boxes for stashing packs of candles – multi-purpose stoage at its best!

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retro 70s living room wallpaper striped orange yellow vintage


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Inspirations for a retro living-room: Wall coverings

I hope you remember that, for most of last year, I have been working on the decor of my living-room of my new home, and although its taken ages (due to limited funds and time-consuming bargain hunting!), its nearing completion. Here’s the link to my mood board if you’d like to see what kind of style I’m aiming for. So with the furniture sorted, the soft furnishings in place and even artwork chosen, I am finally sorting out the walls.

Choosing a colour or pattern for your walls is the most significant decision in interior design, as it will be the first thing that you will notice about your room, either bringing all the elements together to complete your theme,or be completely wrong and make you want to move. So, even though a lick of paint is probably easier (and certainly simpler to change if it’s not right) my retro living room needs some garish patterned wallpaper as was traditional in the 60s and 70s era that I’m trying to replicate.

retro 70s living room wallpaper pattern samples orange brown avocado green

Throughout the process I’ve chosen bright oranges and browns and now is not the time to chicken out. So I’ve looked at some old 70s photos to get an idea of the (albeit kinda garish) patterns and colours of the decade, which will influence my choice of wallpaper for my living room.

retro 70s living room wallpaper striped orange yellow vintage

retro 70s living room wallpaper circle pattern brown orange yellow

retro 70s wall paper kitchen orange floral brown

From looking at these images, I realised that I don’t want an oversize pattern and I couldn’t cope with clashing combinations of bright orange, green and yellow. Nor would I like a dark, oppressive brown or striped pattern, both of which would make my already-small living room appear even tinier. Finally, a pet peeve of mine is anything floral (soooo noughties) so nothing too ‘pretty’. So I’ve picked out a few modern wallpapers that I can get my hands on that I quite like and spent sometime comparing samples and imagining what each would look like on one, two or more of the walls in my living room.

retro leaf orange pattern wallpaper living room

retro g plan living room orange-pattern-wallpaper

And I’m pleased to say that I have made my choice – this lovely Monroe wallpaper below from Next. It’s kind of shimmery so it reflects the light and doesn’t make the room appear smaller. Most of the circles are muted, neutral shades of beige and brown, apart from the juicy orange accent colour. I also really like the Orla Kiely-esque leaves in the background of the pattern. Luckily, when I went to Next to purchase the paper, it was in the January sale and so, at only £6 each, I bought every roll on the shelf ! So my next weekend challenge is to get the room empty and start papering – and in the meantime I’ll have to decide which walls to paper!

retro monroe orange vintage floral leaf pattern wallpaper from next

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Pumpkin princess nails

To create a cute pumpkin look for Halloween, and also for the upcoming bonfire night celebrations (I think my nails look a bit like a bonfire, no?), I tried out the new glitter varnish that I ordered last week from Avon.

I painted a couple of coats of no 27 Orange polish from Asda’s make-up range topped with a layer of sparkly gold nail topcoat by Color Trend (currently on offer for £1.50 at Avon online). I was genuinely surprised by the quality of this polish – usually Avon’s cheaper ‘teen’ range is a disappointment in terms of quality and coverage, but this one was worth the cash (I actually bought it at £1.99, so I might go back for the purple and silver shades now that they are reduced).

I often find that glittery polishes catch my eye and I snap them up, only to find that the coverage is so poor that I only end up with a couple of crumbs of glitter on each nail and it takes many coats to get a good sparkly effect. In these images I have used only one coat of the ‘Gold Flecked’ nail polish and I think it’s delivered a great amount of glitter with both large ‘sequin’ flakes and tiny glitter specks. I’ve only had it on today so can’t comment on how long the polish will last, but I am certainly glad that I bought it – especially with christmas coming up, as I like to ramp up my glitter usage around the festive time of year!

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My retro-inspired living room – an old armchair rescued!

I am pleased to say that I’ve got another freebie for my retro living room design project - an armchair that was on its way from a vintage furniture shop to the dump. It didn’t exactly look like this when my hubby brought it home to me; it had a cream damask patterned cover over it which went all the way down to the floor and hid the chair’s legs. When I first saw it, it would be an understatement to say that I was disappointed, in fact I may have even used “urgghhh”. But my husband had already looked beneath the cover and knew that underneath was this lovely original brown and orange patterned fabric.

Okay, I say lovely, and I know that to some people it’s probably even less desirable in this state, but to me it was absolutely perfect for our 60s/70s living room, especially with the orange line running through it. And best of all, it was completely free and I’d previously been looking for a small retro armchair for the living room and all had been out of any kind of price-range that I could afford!

So that’s another item of furniture kept out of the landfill site, recycled and reused in my living room – and that make’s it even more special for me!

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