Home Decorating With Natural Materials

Weeds can be decorative                              Image:Marie Vonow

If you are looking for something free to use to use as a decoration around your home think about using natural materials such as shells, twigs/branches, seed pods or weeds. Yes, I did mean to write weeds, it's not a typo. Many natural materials are attractive without any embellishment and others can be transformed with a bit of spray paint and perhaps some glitter.

Natural materials can add effective decorative touches to a home. As a bonus they are usually free, unless you have chosen to buy exotic shells.

Shells
A couple of houses ago I had a real thing for shells. I sewed small ones onto net curtains. I had found some shells with a natural hole in them and the others needed to have a hole carefully drilled through them.

I arranged larger shells onto a couple of glass plates with a pillar candle in the centre. I glued some onto a piece of wood and sprayed the shells gold. I put a circular mirror in the middle. Other shells, I left natural and displayed in a cane basket.

Seed pods and gum nuts
Seed pods or gum nuts and some leaves make great decorations too. You can choose to pick them when they are green and put them in a vase of water or collect them when they are dry.

A few gum leaves and gum nuts in a pottery vase         Image:M Vonow

Pine cones
I have piled dry pine cones in a cane basket and placed it in an unused fire place in a couple of my houses in the past. However, my last three homes haven't had a fire place so I haven't been able to do that.

Acorns
A few years ago I collected acorns and displayed them in a wooden bowl. I reckon they looked very 'country'.

This image by Lubos Houska from Pixabay shows walnuts, another natural material.

Jacarandah pods
Another time I found a number of jacarandah pods that had three 'wings' instead of the standard two. I wonder what caused that mutation? They made an interesting decoration, a good talking point.

Weeds, yes weeds
Weeds are not usually thought to have decorative potential. When I see weeds my usual reaction is to grumble, pull or dig them up and throw them in the green bin. When I was doing pottery as a hobby I realised dried grass would look great in a pottery vase or jug. I picked some brown weeds which had interesting knobbly seeds from the banks of a creek. I hadn't taken much notice of them before. When they got dusty I just put them in my green bin and replaced them with other weeds.

I think these are rather attractive even though they are weeds                Image:Marie Vonow

After that I used weeds in different pottery jugs and vases on numerous occasions. Using natural materials is such an easy way to ring the changes when decorating and they are free.