The mind has amazing powers, feed it with certain information and it can create its own illusions. When I am working with groups I often take a picture in with me to help stimulate creative thought. It is a painting with a turquoise background and a narrow gold line running through the middle.

I hold it up and ask the group to describe what they see, without fail in every group, most people will say, the sky, the sea, and a beach, or a desert island, rarely will anyone say it’s a canvas with turquoise background and a gold line.

There are certain colours, which are evocative of the coast, shades of blue, shades of white, shades of cream through to yellow. Added into this can be the brighter colours of buckets and spades, lighthouses, deckchairs.

If you want to create a coastal feel then a good place to start is to create a style board. With limited time it is all too easy to rush off to the nearest DIY centre grab some paint and get started. Building a style board can be much more fun, buy some magazines that can give you inspiration, e.g. Coast, Country Living, Condé Nast Traveller, or other interior design magazines. In our This Month We Love we have featured two fabulously inspirational books Coastal Style and The Way We Live: By the Sea. This stage can be great fun, gathering colour pots, testing out colours, getting fabric swatches, gathering pictures, looking to create the same look and feel of living by the sea. Although more and more people are opting to live by the sea, you can create the same feeling wherever you live.

One thing you will soon notice is that creating a coastal style can take many forms, it can be very cool and chic, or it can be more rustic and natural, if you choose the latter, its important to recognise the difference between shabby chic and messy chic. Done well it can create a wonderful natural feel, done badly; it can just look like a collection of clutter gathering dust.

The secret is to combine the colours with the textures and to take the theme through the room, or rooms. Often less equals more, so think carefully about how you want to arrange your accessories, or collections.

Much of creating coastal style is about textures, wonderfully smooth pebbles, gritty sand, bits of driftwood, glass smoothed by years of being tossed onto the shore.

You don’t have to take the theme throughout your whole house or flat, the coastal palette naturally lends itself to bathrooms and this is an area that can easily be managed as a first step. Here is an opportunity to add glassware, or pebbles, or a lighthouse, boat or other nautical object. There are several shops that specialise in coastal, or nautical themes, and there are three wonderful examples in our This Month We Love:

www.gardentrading.co.uk www.beachhut.co.uk www.nautical-living.co.uk

If you want to change your colour scheme Farrow and Ball have a great selection www.farrow-ball.com Another way of creating a coastal theme is by incorporating nautical tiles into the decorating, we also featured Reptile Tiles www.reptiletiles.co.uk and they have a wonderful collection of very unusual tiles and they will work with you on special commissions, large, or small. As more and more us are turning our bathrooms into a sanctuary for relaxation, developing a coastal feel can also be extended across the senses for example, through fragrances, or

How to create a coastal style

wherever you live

products, particularly in the bathroom, that can invigorate, or are beneficial to the skin. Sounds are very much a matter of personal taste, some people find listening to waves relaxing, others less so. There are many collections available and you can usually hear a sample first through www.amazon.co.uk. If you prefer a more minimalist look, you may want to invest in paintings, when you can bring the coast into your living room. Placing a wonderful painting on a plain wall can by itself transport you to the sea. If you wish to select a painting by a local artist there are numerous art galleries around the coast, or there may be

special events showcasing the work of local artists for example Dorset Art Week from May 24th–June 8th www.dorsetartweeks.co.uk which is a great opportunity to meet artists in their own studios. Alternatively there is the Affordable Art Fair which showcases work of numerous artists, the next fair is in Bristol from 16th-18th May www.affordableartfair.com Or you can create your own canvas, coastal scenes are ones of the most fun to do, so much can be created with bands of colour, remember the turquoise canvas that I mentioned at the top of the article. For many people the only thing that stops them expressing themselves in paint is a fear that they are not good enough, and yet if you look at some of the most iconic seascapes much is based on exquisite use of colour, rather than detailed technical drawing. Of course, our greatest artists use both, but experimenting with colour is a great place for the amateur to start. Some mixed media artists stick items from the seashore on their paintings, to create even more atmosphere, or write words about the coast on the canvas. Another way of recapturing the scenes from the coast is with photography, either by buying photographic images, or having your own enlarged, or mounted onto canvas, we currently have an offer with Intercanvas. Please go to our Hot Offers area. Alternatively you can create a collage of your favourite photographs from the coast, but rather than just sticking them on with bits of blu-tack why don’t you create a mood board, with postcards, photographs, words and other collectables, so that it becomes more of a real memory. For some people creating a coastal feel to their home isn’t enough, eventually they decide that they want to move to the coast.

The owners of Reptile Tiles, Carl Briscoe and Ed Dunn moved from London to Pembrokeshire. Looking to find a space to live and work resulted in them finding an old butterworks to establish their business. Their wonderful home has been featured several times in national publications including Coast and Saturday Times Magazine. In one of our earlier features about living the dream we profiled Emma Flanagan who runs her business www.beachmodern.com from a laptop in Sydney Australia even though their holiday house Beachmodern No. 28 is located in Bude Cornwall, she says “It seems to work out OK that I am over on the other side of the world, I’ve got a good support network in Bude, so in between raising 4 daughters under 8 it seems to be working out pretty well! I’m protecting my brand by not growing too big too fast. I want to be able to offer a personal service and have time for our clients. It’s important to me that we offer an honest, reliable service and that I have enough time to talk people through whatever they need to know. In a way it’s great that we’re in Australia because all my kids are in bed when the UK is awake and I can just get my head down and work. What advice would she offer to other people? “Positive thoughts achieve fantastic results. Going with your instincts is a liberating, thrilling experience. Don’t dither, be decisive.!“

Veronica Henry, one of our featured authors Just a Family Affair moved to the coast.” Nearly six years ago, in a moment of impetuousness disguised as a grown-up decision to make a sensible investment, I bought an unassuming upside-down house with a breathtaking view overlooking the beach at Woolacombe, to use as a writer’s retreat come holiday home. It proved to be the best investment I have ever made in terms of the pleasure it has brought to our family - we loved it so much that in the end we decided to move down to North Devon permanently, with my husband selling his business and our three children changing schools. The change in life-style has been incredible - everything is so much more laid-back and stress-free, the children can be given free rein, and the surroundings are stunning whichever way you look, with both the rugged coast and the wilds of Exmoor on our doorstep. And if you’re in need of a shot in the arm, Exeter has a fabulous new shopping centre, Bristol can just about be done in an evening, and London is only two hours away by train“ www.veronicahenry.co.uk Ultimately whether you create a coastal style in your own home, or you move to live by the coast, it can be a wonderfully uplifting feeling.

“As I looked out over the beach to the impossible blue beyond, and out still further to where the sky touched the sea, I smiled

a quiet smile, I knew I had come home” Anon

© Kaye Thorne 2008