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"   Annie Selke, founder and designer behind an acclaimed trio of interior furnishings companies: Pine Cone Hill, Dash &amp;amp;amp; Albert and Potluck Studios, is a master at decorating creatively with color. Here are a few of her tips on using it in your own rooms: Guide to Decorating with Color \u2022 Choose colors that you love or that evoke the emotion you are hoping to achieve in each space. \u2022 Keep a picture journal. Photograph scenes or items whose color schemes you respond to and figure out how you can use the same scheme in the space you are working on. \u2022 Remember that magazines are your friends. &amp;quot;Tear and file the pages that attract you even if you aren&amp;#039;t working on anything at the moment\u2014when you do start a project you can refer to them,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I find looking for the similarities in the chosen images often helps you focus on what you really are drawn to.&amp;quot; \u2022 Test drive a color. If you&amp;#039;re trying to decide on a paint hue, get large pieces of foam core and small cans of colors you want to try. Paint the foam core and look at each color at various times. The light in any space will change quite dramatically during the day. \u2022 Don&amp;#039;t play it safe. &amp;quot;Shake things up and put some of your personality into your space,&amp;quot; says Annie. &amp;quot;Your space is for you to love and live in. Don&amp;#039;t concern yourself about what others may think.&amp;quot; Up Close with Annie What are your favorite colors? I am pretty democratic when it comes to color but if I had to choose one it would be robin&amp;#039;s-egg blue. I use it in all shades and intensities. It is relaxing and uplifting at the same time. Do you collect any kind of objects? I collect blue-and-white Staffordshire plates and platters and hang them all over our kitchen. I also collect pink lusterware and a Minton pattern called Pink Cockatrice. I collect stick-and-ball furniture and these amusing conchshell dioramas. What are your pet peeves? I can&amp;#039;t stand fake flowers and I won&amp;#039;t allow margarine in the house! Which is your favorite room? I love all the rooms in the house for different reasons. At the moment, I am completely enamored with our very recently renovated mudroom. It has changed my life. Order has been created from chaos. Everything has a place, there is even a drawer devoted solely to lightbulbs! Where do you find most of your bargain items? I love a bargain anywhere I can find it. But for house stuff I count on the Brimfield Antiques Fair three times a year. How do you make rooms family friendly? I say banish anything pretentious! Keep the scale of furniture human-size. Also, I like to use slipcovers so if a red wine disaster or sippy cup spill happens you can just take the slipcover off and wash it. Annie Selke has her creative eye sharply focused on the home. She is the founder and designer behind an acclaimed trio of interior furnishings companies: Pine Cone Hill, Dash &amp;amp;amp; Albert and Potluck Studios. Starting with a bedding line she sewed at her dining room table in 1993, Annie has since applied her creative vision to thousands of engaging home accents\u2014from vibrant rugs and bedding to eco-savvy furniture and tabletop pieces. The creative entrepreneur says she finds much of her inspiration in her own home\u2014a shingle-style, circa 1886 Berkshires farmhouse, which she shares with husband, Whit, and daughter, Charlotte. &amp;quot;The rambling house is a great backdrop for experimenting with fabrics and finishes,&amp;quot; Annie says. Building upon her professional background in art history, merchandising and product development, Annie approaches home decor as a process of layering color, texture and pleasing shapes. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not a fan of following firm decorating rules,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Pleasing your own eye and creating comfort are key.&amp;quot; She&amp;#039;s also a firm believer in decorating resourcefully. &amp;quot;Style doesn&amp;#039;t have to be expensive,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Target and Home Depot have very good looking pieces at great prices as long as you go for classic, well-constructed items.&amp;quot; To brighten up her utilitarian spaces without spending a bundle, Annie says she used &amp;quot;Marmoleum tiles in two-color checkerboard patterns in three bathrooms and our laundry room,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;It is really affordable and lends interest.&amp;quot; Conserving resources in these spaces enabled her to splurge on furnishings and wallcoverings in others. In her living room, Annie selected a striped terra-cotta wallpaper as the backdrop for furnishings covered in a mix of robin&amp;#039;s-egg blue and exuberant print fabrics. The dining room, which features a tropical scene painted on the walls and sports a vintage, palm-frond chandelier overhead, also expresses Annie&amp;#039;s emphasis on comfort. Here, she included citrus- green wingback chairs of her own design where guests can linger for hours. In her kitchen with its adjoining dining alcove, white-painted cabinets and molding are in keeping with the traditional architecture of the house, while more affordable checkerboard flooring adds energy underfoot. Here, in lieu of costly art, Annie displays her collection of Staffordshire plates to bring in shots of color. In other rooms, Annie likes to add interest to walls with collections of low-cost art from flea markets or local artists. &amp;quot;You can find paintings by amateur artists for between 20 and 80 dollars,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I have a painting of flamingos painted in the 1940s that was in a yucky frame and now it has been elevated to &amp;#039;true art&amp;#039; simply by reframing.&amp;quot; In the master bathroom, Annie displays a whimsical collection of conch-shell dioramas she amassed at flea markets. &amp;quot;They are silly, but make me smile,&amp;quot; she says. The house&amp;#039;s bedrooms are where Annie lets her talent for mixing color and pattern shine. She favors vintage wallpaper prints, a passion sparked during her student days at Miss Porter&amp;#039;s School, Annie says. &amp;quot;All of the bedrooms had Colefax and Fowler floral print wallpapers, and I have been in love with them ever since,&amp;quot; she says. In the master bedroom, an upholstered sleigh bed is set against the wallpaper&amp;#039;s sprays of delicate white flowers. An upholstered Swedish bench picks up one of the hues of the star-pattern rug she designed. In other bedrooms, her own bed linens mix damasks and stripes against backdrops of vintage wallpaper prints of briar roses, peonies, and other favorites from the garden. &amp;quot;Pile on the patterns,&amp;quot; Annie advises, &amp;quot;but balance color and scale. Botanical prints in the bedroom are rejuvenating and never go out of style.&amp;quot; Click here to view the resources. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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