A Sweet and Simple Style Tile Tutorial

An extremely frequent question I receive is how to create room Style Tiles, similar to this one:

Style Tiles are a great way to get a visual idea for a room before you begin to give your space a facelift, or even if you are starting from scratch.  And because I highly recommend going into those types of updates with some sort of a plan, I knew I wanted to address the question and answer it on the blog.  However, thinking of how long it takes me to create one Style Tile, made me realize that trying to explain it may be a twelve hour post.  Ish.

Then, I recently discovered Olioboard, and I can say with confidence that it was a huge Style Tile time and sanity saver!

I know there are probably 101 blog posts out there on the subject of Olioboard, so add another to the list, but when find something that I love, I feel that it is my duty to share.

What is Olioboard?

Very simply put, it's an online moodboard creator.  I call them Style Tiles, but same difference.  And it's FREE! 

So here is my Olioboard story and "How To"...

I have a bestest friend who has a little boy, Nash, and he is one of my most favorite people.  Nash is turning three and is getting a "big boy" bedroom, so I was asked if I would offer up some ideas to pull it all together.  She already has the bed, dresser and bedding, so that is what I had to work with as a starting off point.  And the kid LOOOOOOOOOOOVES "diggers"!  And trucks, tractors, firetrucks... you name it, if it has wheels and is loud, he is a major fan.

Everything else is pretty much a blank slate of a room. 

I typically use Photoshop to create my Style Tiles, and because I am completely self taught and not super swift with it, it takes me a really looong time to put one together.  Saving all of the images from the web, opening them, cutting and cropping them, pasting them into a board, sizing, layering, etc.... 

So, with this new project, I thought I would give the Olioboard site a try.  I had heard so much about it in blogland that I figured it must be pretty awesome.  But for some reason I was putting it off, probably because I have a fear of learning curves and the time it takes to get used to something new.  Now that I have played with it, I wish I would have tried it months ago! 

When you sign up on the site, it's as simple as clicking a button to create a new moodboard.

Once you get started, you have a blank board to work with.  On the right side of the screen there is an online catalog filled with endless amounts of items to browse and include within the board itself!

Since I already knew a few of the items being used in the room, I did a quick search for those products, but came up short.  Since I knew they were from Target, I went to the Target site and found them, and then using the Olioboard button on my Firefox toolbar {just like a Pinterest "Pin It" button}, I was able to basically pin the item to my Olioboard account.

It creates a link back to the original site too, which is great for future reference.

If you still can't find what you are looking for, you can also upload your own images to the site:

So, I started adding a few items to my board.  It was as simple as finding it in the catalog and dragging it onto the board.

Once on the board, a circle appears over the object selected.  Using your mouse, you can hold the orange lever and rotate, enlarge or shrink.  You can also click the object itself to move it around on the board, or use the menu above to flip, move from front to back, crop, etc...

I started adding the items I had already come up with in my brain {am I the only one putting rooms together while laying in bed trying to fall asleep?}

Once of my favorite features can be seen within the green lamp above.  See how it is hovering the other images, all nicely cropped around the entire lamp?  Yeah, Olioboard did that automatically.  It cuts the objects out for you so you can nicely layer them and really get a good idea of how things play with one another. 

I just kept plucking away until I had this {only minutes later!}:

So far things were going swimmingly.  As I added new items, I could easily move and size ones I already had placed.  Piece of cake!  Now, the room still was far from feeling complete, but my brain dump was done and I needed some more inspiration.  Off to shop the Olioboard gallery!

I knew I needed to find a nightstand of some sort, so I started there.  A simple search by category gave me a boatload of fabulous results and ideas! 

And because there were so many results, you can narrow things down even further if you would like, you can even search by color scheme:

Once I had my nightstand selected, Olioboard provided me with a link to the product's website, along with the cost of the item as well:

So using Olioboard's catalog, I found the remaining items, which included a pendant light fixture, fabric for DIY roman shades and some additional storage and accessories!

I also like that along the way, Olioboard was reminding me to save my project so I wouldn't lose any of my work.  And once I was done, it was simple to save, publish, share and even create an image file of the project!

So when all was said and done, I was able to take this:

To this:

{product sources can be found here}

Pretty sweet eh?  And now I can pop over an image to my pal Erin and see what she thinks!  Easy peasy!

If she doesn't love something, it's super simple to access the project, make a switch and re-save it.  But lets just hope that she adores it...

So there you have it, my super exciting, fun, free, easy, time saving find.  I know I have already mentioned about 2,467 reasons why I love it, but one of the best features is that you don't need any special or expensive program to do this {cough cough, Photoshop}.  Just the internet since it's all web based.  And I am quite positive there are all sorts of other cool features that I haven't found yet, but I can't wait to dig in more and keep learning. 

Writing this got me wondering, what one thing have you or did you put off, just because you thought it would take too long to learn?  Who else has fallen hard for Olioboard?  Feel free to leave a comment linking to your favorite Olioboard projects, I would love to see what you all are coming up with!

Pssst!  I wasn't paid or swayed to write up this post.  In fact, Olioboard has zero clue who I am.  I just wanted to share something awesome with you fine friends!