Classic furniture, paint and woodwork create a framework for design, but the home decorations you hang on your wall give your design personality. The walls of your home are a blank canvas. The way that you fill them can define your style and personalize rooms that feel more like a stage set than your home. If you've never thought of hanging anything on your walls beyond a framed picture and a clock, you're selling your decorating short. Wall art comes in many themes and styles.

Purely Decorative

Paintings, prints and posters are purely decorative, and their only purpose is to pretty up your space. Consider samplers and embroidered signs in a country-style kitchen, a Happy Home plaque on your living room wall and a Welcome sign just inside the front door to make your guests feel that they've come home. Rustic wooden signs and plaques can set the tone for a country primitive kitchen or help your bathroom decor fit your design sensibility.

Shelves

Shelves serve two purposes-they're decorative touches that are also useful. Sculpted and carved shelves help bring country style to life while giving you room to display treasured figurines and knick-knacks. In the kitchen, a shelf with hooks can hold a collection of cookbooks and give you a place to hang your apron near at hand. A decorative spice shelf in the same wood as your kitchen table can help bring your kitchen design together, while a traditional white letter organizer with key hooks by the front door helps you keep everything together neatly while adding a decorative touch to your walls.

Blankets and Throws

An embroidered blanket, crocheted throw or woven fleece blanket can make a dramatic statement when you hang it on the wall. It's an excellent choice if you have a large, high wall where smaller pieces of art would get swallowed up by the space, or if the wall is small enough that the throw covers it completely, substituting for a wall mural. Choose blankets that have a dominant color or pattern, such as a Southwestern print blanket, or one with a picture that fits your decor. Blankets with pictures of kittens, flowers or sports figures are a great way to fill up space on a child's or teen's bedroom wall, and they offer the added advantage of helping insulate both from cold and noise.

Photo Frames

Nothing makes a room as cozy as family pictures on the wall. Photo frames help protect your precious memories from damage while accenting them and complementing the subject and colors in the photos. There are literally thousands of styles of photo frames, which opens up unlimited possibilities for arranging photos and frames on your walls. Tradition dictates that 8x10 frames and larger are suitable for wall hanging-but that tradition fell by the wayside long ago. Choose the pictures you love without regard to size and then find the frames that display them best. Your choices include collage frames, which hold many photos, as well as groupings of frames hung on ribbons so that you can hang several photos in a row. Don't forget that shelves provide even more space for displaying your photos in standing frames.

When you're choosing home decorations, take a step outside tradition and consider unusual and non-traditional wall decor and wall art that shows off your personal style.

Making handmade decorations for your home is easy. This is another way of giving your home a makeover without spending too much. As long as you have the right materials, you can make these handmade charms provide new life to your home.

- Come up with a budget that will work with your plans. Since you will make handmade decorations, check if the materials you will use won't burn a hole in your wallet.

- Select the area that needs decorating. Making handmade decorations are fun, but to make it less overwhelming, you need to do it by area. Working by area helps maintain your momentum.

- The first thing you have to do is to come up with a pattern for your handmade decors. If there's a theme or an occasion, you can work around it to be able to come up with interesting home handmade charms. Don't know where to start yet? You can go online in search for an inspiration. You can even go outside and look around for ideas.

- Inspiration can be found everywhere; the same thing can apply when you look for your materials. You can purchase the materials of your handmade charms at local craft stores. The tools you need will depend on how big and intricate your handmade decorations will be.

- Once you are able to come up with a design, make a pattern out of it. Since you will work with a lot of handmade decorations, to avoid any confusion during the work process, a pattern will help serve as a guide. Make many patterns as you can. You can make a prototype or you can trace your design using a tracing paper. Choose which best works for you. After tracing your design, it's time to work on your handmade charms.

With Christmas right around the corner you may be looking for some new decorations for you home or office. Or some crepe paper flower decorations you can make with the kids this holiday season.

Paper flowers can be a wonderful way to decorate your home, inside and out. You may be wondering how a paper flower is going to be a great decoration. The answer is simple - have you ever seen a Christmas tree made from a crepe paper flower? They are so easy to make you will want to make them for all your family members and friends.

How about a crepe paper snowflake? It is probably easier to imagine what one of these flowers looks like.

Aside from a little imagination you will need a few supplies, a book on how to make paper flowers, one that includes step-by-step instructions and a picture of the finished flower is the best kind of book to have. You will also need an assortment of crepe paper of course you will want red and green and what ever other colors you like. For the snowflake flower you might want white crepe paper or a light pastel color. You will also need a pair of scissors, a ruler, and some clear drying glue to get you started. Any additional items you will need will be listed in the book.

Christmas Tree Flower - Technically this is a flower but we will refer to it as a Christmas tree. The first thing you will want to do is choose a flower the flower will be the top of the tree (just like an angel or a colored wreath you would set on top of your real tree.) You will need floral wire and tape for this project a heavy gauge wire. Decide what flower you want let's say for example a rose. A rosebud is a good choice because the flowers are medium size and the actual rosebud will not be so large that it tips the tree over.

Decide how tall you want your tree to be then cut your wire according adding a few extra inches. You will need to make enough of the leaves to fill in the tree section say 24 leaves for a 12inch tree. Attach the leaves to the stem and see how "full" it is, if you want it fuller then simply make more leaves and fill in any gaps. Your rosebud will be the treetop. You may want to pick up a small piece of green Styrofoam to insert the bottom of the stem in first; this will keep the tree flower steady as you attach the leaves and eventually the rosebud. You can dress your tree crepe paper flower up with a few tiny plastic Christmas ornaments from a craft store or a thin piece of Christmas garland.

Snowflake Flower - For this project you will of course need a book for instructions, crepe paper and floral wire and tape. As well as the other household tools mentioned for the Christmas tree flower.

The snowflake flower is very easy to make. Choose some leaves that you like and make them. Then using a piece of crepe paper make a snowflake and attach it to the top/front of the stem. You can also use a green piece of Styrofoam to insert the stem into. The snowflake can be any size, shape or color you like. These snowflake crepe paper flowers also make a great garland for doorways, fireplaces, and to hang on the Christmas tree!

You can turn almost any Christmas decoration into a crepe paper flower Christmas decoration!