SLAPDASH DECORATING

The authors of Slapdash Sewing (1975) return with tips for decorating your room, but they are mostly the same fix-up ideas that teen decorating books have been recycling for years. Suggestions range from slapdash furniture (a desk made from a piece of plywood and a readymade chest or crates; stacked storage units or a corner cupboard from cardboard cartons) to pencil holders and plant hangers (try a basketball hoop). Bedsheets are big here for all sorts of purposes, and there is the usual attention to ""jazzing up"" old window shades, bedspreads, rugs, furniture, and lampshades with paint, contact paper, patchwork trim, etc. Admittedly, Berkin and James avoid the shlocky excesses of Liman and Panter's Decorating Your Room (1974), and kids without many ideas of their own can probably pick up a few here.