Majjie's Blog

The next step - in my series of blogs for Yell.com called "Seven Steps in Small Kitchen Design" - is Make Your Kitchen Interesting. A lot can be done with the actual design of the layout, of course, but if you have any spare wall space at all ... then add some pictures! Make sure that - for your kitchen - small is beautiful.

Small square canvas pictures are great for tiny kitchens and tiny wall spaces. The lack of any frame gives them more impact - because they look less fussy - and they're very easy to clean. They suit kitchens with modern flat door styles, or they can be used, in conjunction with modern door handles, to give a contemporary feel to more traditional kitchens with plain, square panelled doors. They're not so suitable for more ornate styles.

If you're going to hang canvas pictures in your kitchen, make sure they're of good quality. There are thousands of them around these days but some are not made to last. The kitchen can be a very challenging environment for pictures - with grease and steam in the atmosphere - and quite extreme changes in temperature.

We have a range of kitchen canvas pictures available in Majjie's shop, with pictures exclusive to us, and which we've specially selected as being suitable for hanging in the kitchen. They have good quality timber stretchers (not MDF) with wedges for re-stretching, they're 35mm deep (front to back) and the surface of the canvas is protected with acrylic lacquer.

All the pictures are currently of plants and flowers (Majjie's favourites) and they're avilable in sets of three (as below) or four:

The prices will have to go up after Christmas, of course, with the rise in VAT - but as a Christmas treat we've reduced the prices of our canvas pictures until December 30th 2010. They'd make great Christmas presents!

We're planning to introduce some more dramatic pictures of fruit and veg, in the New Year - in our Black Fruit & Veg Range (again exclusive to us). Let us know if you like them ... or, indeed what sort of pictures you would like to see available. Here's a taster:

If the pictures in your kitchen are fairly emphatic and colourful, then they can act as accent accessories. You can't put colourful cushions in most kitchens (unless you're lucky enough to have a really big living kitchen) ... but you can use colour in pictures ... so try to have a theme or colour running through them all.

If you have a larger kitchen with plenty of wall space - or you don't like canvas pictures - then we've just introduced a new supplier ... Easyart ... to Majjie's Shop, to provide framed prints for the kitchen.

With Easyart you can, as you might expect, choose a picture for your kitchen wall ... but the real beauty of their service ... is that you can choose the type of frame you want - and you can also choose the colour of the mount (the border round the picture, inside the frame). If you're not a fan of pictures with large, dramatic and colourful subjects, then you can choose a small delicate print and add the necessary colour with the mount.

You can keep the colour scheme delicate, if you prefer, but having the same colour of mount and identical frames, for a set of several pictures will give you that designer look. For example, the collections of bread and vegetables, pictured below, are in 25mm polished silver frames and all have the same pale green mount colour. The finshed size of the framed pictures is 460 x 390mm.

The best frames to use in the kitchen are smooth ones, with no ridges or grooves. They're the easiest to keep clean and are less likely to collect too much grease or dust. Polished silver is a good choice for a wide range of kitchen styles, whilst frosted silver is good for a more modern look. Flat black frames are also a good neutral choice but with a definite presence. Black sets off most colours well. Timber usually looks more traditional, although a pale wood like ash (which has quite a wild grain pattern) can go well in a more modern setting.

In the pictures above, a small but brightly coloured print (200 x 200mm) has been framed in a dramatic 60mm flat, black stained frame and in a 42mm flat ash frame - giving quite different looks to the picture. The finished sizes are 430 x 420mm and 394 x 384mm, respectively. Of course, if you're kitchen is very tiny you could forgo the mount altogether, on a very colourful picture. Here's the same print in a flat, frosted silver frame without any mount ... giving a finished size of just 246 x 246mm:

There are more than 100,000 prints and photos to choose from on the Easyart website - and so much choice can be confusing - so perhaps Majjie's selections of colourful pictures, food and drink pictures and classics (with some suggestions for frames and mount colours) will be helpful. Look out for further additions in the coming weeks.

If you don't like our choices, though ... visit Easyart ... and choose for yourself (we will get a small commission if you actually buy - which helps with the upkeep of this website).

Or go out onto the high street and have a look. You can use wall sculptures. clocks, noticeboards and ... of course ... wallpaper (we've talked about Dulux Feature Wallpaper before) - to decorate your kitchen walls. But do use some sort of wall art in your kitchen - to make it more beautiful and more interesting!