Decorating with Sparkle and Shine (and little animals too)!

So, sparkle and shine.  Love them.  Love wearing them.  Love looking at them.  Why not live among them?

Ok, having an apartment literally covered in sparkles and shine would be a bit much even for me.  But little pops of sparkle and shine in an apartment - love it.  Another obsession of mine is little animals.  Have always loved them, probably always will.  Who doesn't love a little cute figurine, even better if it is sparkly!

Many years ago when I was on a traveling marathon for work (gone a week, home a week for about 8 months), I went to Baltimore, MD a few times.  We had a series of meetings at a hotel.  The hotel kind of sucked, but their meeting space was AH-MA-ZING.

They spent millions renovating an old, historic Masonic temple.  The stained glass windows were beautiful, the linens were custom made in Europe (France, I think), and the most amazing thing that I fell in love with?  The custom-made French wallpaper in the first floor Ladies' room.  It was made, literally, from crushed pearls.

These pictures don't really do this magnificence justice.  How do I describe it adequately?  It had an amazing, beautiful, sparkly, lustrous texture and hue that was pretty unreal.  I think my meeting planner at the hotel said it cost about $300 per square foot or some ridiculousness like that.

I've tried googling "wallpaper made from crushed pearls" and many derivations of that to see what I could find, but nothing has come up.

How pretty would that be in a bedroom?  So sexy and beautiful!

Love.

I love fireworks.  My favorite are the colorless ones that seem to drip like waterfalls in the sky.

This is a picture I took at Kaboom in San Francisco in spring 2006.  For you fellow San Franciscans, you know that fireworks in July are somewhat of an oxymoron - you usually just get colored fog.  But fireworks in May when it isn't foggy are quite stunning.

All of my life, I've been obsessed with fireworks that look like this.  How amazing and unique would it be to have a ceiling or wall in your house outfitted somehow with LED lights or something so that it would sparkle like this?  Crazy, I know.  But I want it.

A good friend, Cecelia, has this amazing mirror, lamp, art piece in the luscious house she shares with her fiancee.  My sister took this picture of me staring into this piece of art a few months ago.

It is hard to describe how it looks in person.  It is a gigantic circular mirror surrounded by a ring of light bulbs.  The bulbs reflect and reflect and reflect creating this tunnel of light and shine effect.

Not exactly glitter, but shininess and sparkly-ness that I love and covet.

So, not exactly sparkly or shiny in the exact definition, but a translucent porcelain ambient light lamp does add a little "sparkle" to a room.  This little owl is super cute and affordable ($54.99).

Imagine it in an entryway or a bedroom or in a little corner of any room, peeking out from it's perch.

Like Carrie and Big talked about in SATC 2, they needed to work on the “sparkle” in their relationship.  They didn't exactly mean it needed to be glittery, but they needed some excitement, some uniqueness, some je ne sais quoi.  Some sparkle.  These unexpected little things add that "sparkle", in my opinion.

 I also love this little squirrel lamp ($88 at Anthropologie).  They also have a little bunny lamp too. 

Also translucent porcelain.

Also would be super cute and unexpected on a bookshelf, a night stand, or some other little nook or cranny in a space.

Calypso St. Barth is unveiling a line of goods for Target on May 1, or so the internet tells me (and a few magazines too).

I scrounged around online to find the look book and an image of the metallic poufs that will be part of the collection.

I want the gold one - Look 69.  I think around $60.  Target.com here I come on May 1st.

Extra seating - check.  Place to stash a pile of magazines - check.  Place to rest your feet - check.  Multi-tasking metallic loveliness!

A way to add a little shine, spice, sparkle, something to furniture or cabinets is to change out the knobs.  Found this store in SF - Bauerware several years ago.  A magnificent store chock full of every kind of knob or pull you could imagine.

I saw these mercury glass melon knobs on-line at Anthropologie.   At $8 per knob, a somewhat inexpensive way to add a little sparkle and interest to a piece of furniture or cabinet.  They come in several colors, but I love the gold.

I also thought these knobs were pretty unique.  If the mercury glass is too much gold / sparkle, why not try a little mother of pearl and gold knobbery?

These little cuties are $10 a piece.

Would look super cute on a dark-wood dresser or cabinet.

Like a little cluster of pearly flowers!

Plants that require no soil?  Yes, they exist.  They are called air plants.  And they literally need no soil.  No soil = no dirt = no need for an outdoor garden.  You can read a little about these plants here.  But really, truly, they don't need dirt.  I think some require different watering regimens, but seem easy enough to take care of.

I saw these air plants in glass orbs on-line at West Elm.  They range in price from $9 to $24.  Wouldn't several of these grouped together look amazing in front of a window?  Yes, not glittery, but the reflections on the glass orbs does create some nice shine!

Flora Grubb gardens and Paxton Gate in San Francisco also have some great air plants for sale in all kinds of interesting containers and configurations.

Now on to a little DIY project I'll be embarking on soon.  I have seen these cardboard animal heads for a while now and they always make me smile.  I recently found a mini-version at Therapy in the Mission in San Francisco.  I couldn't walk away from the mini-elephant.  It came home with me.  Therapy's on-line shop isn't up as of this posting, but I did find the exact same item on-line here.  They have other animals too, so you aren't just limited to an elephant.

What am I going to do with a brown cardboard 3-D elephant head?  Why, I'm going to spray paint it metallic gold and get a fabulous gold frame to place around it and hang it on the wall in my entry way, of course!

I will delve into my obsession with animals and birds in a subsequent post or posts, I'm sure.

Until then - how will you add some "sparkle" into your life?