Customer Reviews

Decorating Cottage Style

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A cottage brings to mind a more carefree style of living than does a house or condo. It brings back the thought of summers spent in small dwellings in the mountains or along the shore somewhere. And in those cottages, you were likely to find mismatched furniture, dishes, silverware; a random collection of art work hung on the wall; fabrics from god only knows where, or when, or even why; and the finish on the wooden pieces of the furniture may or may not have paint.

In this book Ms Scott shows what can be done with such low cost (or no cost) items in a way that would fit into nearly any home, and yes, even in a condo. She has broken the subject matter into four major areas: Cozy Cottage Colors, Nurturing Nature, Decorative Displays, and Decorative Furniture.

What I find most impressive about the book is the sense of color that comes through. The photography is well cone and the printing is excellent so that the woods, the fabrics, the glassware simply sparkles. While this type of decorating isn't everyone's cup of tea, her sense of style, color, and selection of individual items might make it fit your sense of style better than you think.

This is a beautifully photographed book written by NEVA SCOTT.This book is exactly as the title states.

The ideas are very do-able and easy to duplicate. Each chapter is filled with various insights into the making of a casual cottage-style home.

The author also gives "how-to" directions on duplicating some of the photographed ideas. Easy to follow,once again!

Since the author also owns a small boutique in Richland Washington, I hope to visit her store soon!

very good book, lots of ideas but in the product listing it has 512 pages but in reality the book only has 128 pages. Thought I would receive a book with more pages and , of course, more ideas.

If you give the author some latitude and assume that her intention is to show how you can effectively integrate cottage style elements into regular settings, then this book is probably adequate. However, I tend to buy books and magazines whose country and cottage aesthetic represents pure escapism where the photographs never give you any reason to think of anything but a charming cottage room, lived in, but untouched by cheap modernity. I found it jarring to be constantly confronted with glimpses of thermofoil cabinets, plastic coverings on furniture upholstery, obvious fake flowers or plants and plastic fruit as I thumbed through this book. (Honestly? You prove that a glass cloche can turn anything into an objet d'art by photographing one over a plastic pear?) Add Scott's apparent unwillingness to remove her store labels from many of the items photographed and most scenes became unbelievable and unsatisfying.

Scott has made the effort to include a number of projects, and I may try one or two of them, but I haven't come away from my initial perusal feeling inspired or even that there was important information in the project instructions. For example, "Trunk Restoration" had the following three steps (slightly abridged): "1. Scrub off the dust and dirt. 2. Spray the entire trunk with an acrylic varnish. 3. Let the trunk dry." There is so much more that could be said under the heading "trunk restoration". These are not instructions, this is one tip.

Even projects with more involved instructions, seemed like they included a lot of common sense masquerading as instruction. I doubt most readers will need a book to point out that wider bases add more stability to the candle holder you are constructing - and yet, I believe many readers might appreciate more detail on mitering molding to fit your base than "...cut the molding to fit the base. 5. Miter the corners of the molding."

The crowning touch in a book that seems marked by a lack of attention to detail is a typo in one of the section headings.

There is some lovely furniture in the book and for that, I'm content enough to have it in my library, but I paid $5 for this book. I would be more than disappointed if I had paid more.