Home Time: Bring Touches of Forest Into Your House
These simple decorating and craft ideas can help you create a woodsy wonderland feeling indoors
When your vacation time becomes a faint memory, it’s wonderful to bring the getaway feeling from one of your favorite trips into your home. If a camping trip or cabin stay in the forest is your favorite kind of adventure, create the calm, peaceful feeling of the woods indoors with soothing green hues, wood, foliage arrangements and more. Forest-themed craft and DIY projects can also be a nice way to relax and keep the kids happy and busy.
A rehabilitated vintage dresser serves as a sideboard, where DeGoey arranged a display of clipped stems and fern fronds in vintage beakers, medicine bottles and other collected glassware.
She used a special technique to get the green look on the glassware. This is a DIY paint technique that is a form of fluid painting. “Fill a bucket with water, spray selected colors of spray paint into the water and then dip the glassware into the water. It pulls out with this great marbled effect,” DeGoey says. “There is no wrong way to do it. Spray as much of each color into the water as you want. If you get too much of one color, spray another color over the top of it. The more you spray, the more ripples and layers you will get.”
Wood touches with an organic feel include a slice of tree trunk, a wooden bowl and the rough-hewn wood mirror frame. DeGoey made the wall shelves from standard stock lumber and galvanized plumbing pieces.
Lumber, plumbing pieces: Lowe’s; wood slice: World Market; find glass vases
She used a special technique to get the green look on the glassware. This is a DIY paint technique that is a form of fluid painting. “Fill a bucket with water, spray selected colors of spray paint into the water and then dip the glassware into the water. It pulls out with this great marbled effect,” DeGoey says. “There is no wrong way to do it. Spray as much of each color into the water as you want. If you get too much of one color, spray another color over the top of it. The more you spray, the more ripples and layers you will get.”
Wood touches with an organic feel include a slice of tree trunk, a wooden bowl and the rough-hewn wood mirror frame. DeGoey made the wall shelves from standard stock lumber and galvanized plumbing pieces.
Lumber, plumbing pieces: Lowe’s; wood slice: World Market; find glass vases
Make a Terrarium
Terrarium making is a fun and relaxing project to accomplish alone or with the kids. Let them place their favorite figurines (such as Star Wars and Shopkins characters) inside the terrarium to really make it their own.
For complete directions, check out Houzz DIY: Make a Mini Moss Sanctuary.
See more DIY project ideas
Terrarium making is a fun and relaxing project to accomplish alone or with the kids. Let them place their favorite figurines (such as Star Wars and Shopkins characters) inside the terrarium to really make it their own.
For complete directions, check out Houzz DIY: Make a Mini Moss Sanctuary.
See more DIY project ideas
Clip a Few Small, Leafy Branches
On this landing, the wraparound windows provide views out to the tree canopy. Clipping a few leafy branches from outside is a lovely way to connect the interior to the surroundings. Try maple or oak leaves, as they have some of the most interesting shapes.
On this landing, the wraparound windows provide views out to the tree canopy. Clipping a few leafy branches from outside is a lovely way to connect the interior to the surroundings. Try maple or oak leaves, as they have some of the most interesting shapes.
Gather Dry Branches and Pinecones With the Kids
Bare branches arranged in a clear glass vessel are another beautiful woodsy touch. Take the kids out on a branch-finding mission and show them how to choose dried branches that have fallen to the ground. Pinecones are another item you can take home and turn into an arrangement. Bowls and large glass hurricanes make good vessels for them.
Another item to look for on walks with the kids is the perfect walking stick. At home, use a permanent marker to label each stick with the child’s name, the date and where it was found, then store the collection in an umbrella stand or urn.
Bare branches arranged in a clear glass vessel are another beautiful woodsy touch. Take the kids out on a branch-finding mission and show them how to choose dried branches that have fallen to the ground. Pinecones are another item you can take home and turn into an arrangement. Bowls and large glass hurricanes make good vessels for them.
Another item to look for on walks with the kids is the perfect walking stick. At home, use a permanent marker to label each stick with the child’s name, the date and where it was found, then store the collection in an umbrella stand or urn.
Arrange Found Objects on a Gallery Wall
Interior designer Shannon Ggem helped a nature-loving couple compose their vintage frame collection and the collection of small objects they’d found on nature hikes on a gallery wall. She took the backs off the frames and showed them how to use removable adhesive strips to attach leaves, nests and stones inside the frames. She intentionally left some frames blank for new finds and for easy swapping in and out of items.
Pressed flowers and foliage are another spin on this idea. Or for a more streamlined look, preserve larger finds in shadowbox frames.
Browse shadowboxes
Interior designer Shannon Ggem helped a nature-loving couple compose their vintage frame collection and the collection of small objects they’d found on nature hikes on a gallery wall. She took the backs off the frames and showed them how to use removable adhesive strips to attach leaves, nests and stones inside the frames. She intentionally left some frames blank for new finds and for easy swapping in and out of items.
Pressed flowers and foliage are another spin on this idea. Or for a more streamlined look, preserve larger finds in shadowbox frames.
Browse shadowboxes
Paint a Wall Forest Green
It hit the height of its popularity for walls and cars in the late 1980s through the 1990s, and now forest green is making a comeback. It lends a woodsy summer camp feel to a room and is a nice choice for a spot where you want to set a dark and cozy mood, like a library or dining room. For a lighter forest hue, explore shades of moss green; for something brighter, go with shades of leaf green.
Wall color: Vermoulu 6, Emery & Cie
It hit the height of its popularity for walls and cars in the late 1980s through the 1990s, and now forest green is making a comeback. It lends a woodsy summer camp feel to a room and is a nice choice for a spot where you want to set a dark and cozy mood, like a library or dining room. For a lighter forest hue, explore shades of moss green; for something brighter, go with shades of leaf green.
Wall color: Vermoulu 6, Emery & Cie
Share: Have you found a good way to create a woodsy feeling in the house? Have any favorite craft projects? Please share in the Comments.
Poplar bark shingles: Bark House; linens: Annie Selke
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New This Week: 3 Woodsy Kitchens That Welcome You In
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Poplar bark shingles: Bark House; linens: Annie Selke
More
New This Week: 3 Woodsy Kitchens That Welcome You In
Find an interior designer near you
Designer Holly DeGoey gave this dining room a woodsy fairyland atmosphere. Starting with a base of an antique farm table and a mix of chairs she painted Kelly green, she styled the room with woodland-inspired touches. “I wanted to show how to breathe green into a room,” she says. The tree stump side table serves as a plant stand and the organic scribbly pinstripes on the drapes resemble the bark of birch trees.
DeGoey gave inexpensive terra-cotta pots an aged look by whitewashing them. To do this at home, use a dry paintbrush to apply white chalkboard paint, then rub it in and rub it off with a soft cloth until you have the desired look. DeGoey planted succulents and other plants in the pots and covered the potting soil with sphagnum moss.
Chairs (customized with paint), macrame runner and copper tray: World Market; stump table: West Elm; drapes and copper pendant light: Lowe’s