Put your passion on display to make your home yours

You want your home to feel like yours, to showcase your things and your passions.

You're not alone.

"People are getting into more themed spaces," says designer Sally Williams of Colorful Concepts Interior Design in Raleigh. "As they watch TV, they get more ideas."

You want to avoid going too far. Williams and Raleigh designer Susan Tollefsen of Furnishing Solutions Inc., say there are ways to make a statement without turning kitschy.

"I'm all about using personal mementos," says Tollefsen, winner of the 2009 Nation's Next Top Model Home contest. "You can always come up with some interesting way to display things without them being in everyone else's face."

Ketubah and chuppah

Tal Lewin-Wittle and her husband, Eric Wittle, spent time planning and designing their wedding contract and wedding awning before their 1998 marriage.

They'd commissioned local artist Galia Goodman to create the ketubah (contract) and constructed the chuppah (awning) on a piece of blue material with quilt blocks crafted by all the female members of the families.

When they moved to a new house in Durham in 2002, they wanted both pieces from their traditional Jewish wedding ceremony to have honored places in their home.

"The ketubah is central to our concept of home and marriage," Lewin-Wittle says. "We wanted it to be displayed for people to see, to remind us of the bond of our marriage."

They hung the pieces in their foyer for several years but, wanting a more harmonious design, they called Williams.

The Wittles wanted the colors in the ketubah and other bold art pieces they own to be reflected in the colors on the walls.

Lewin-Wittle tells other homeowners to not be shy when talking to designers about what you want.

"We didn't worry that anyone else would think our idea was strange," Lewin-Wittle says. "We wanted our mementos up to remind us of important things like family and love. That's what makes a house a home."

Williams had to figure out how to use the bold colors the couple wanted in the house when the focal points in the house's entry were the ketubah and chuppah, which were done in softer colors and pastels.

How to: Williams started by painting the foyer in a strong neutral color to anchor the walls for the ketubah and chuppah. Then she increased the intensity of the first neutral in the next room and added other colors as she got further into the house.

Peruvian roots

Williams infused her own Raleigh home with Peruvian flair from her mother's homeland.

She started with a set of leather furniture her mother purchased 40 years ago in Peru and had shipped to the U.S.

She continued the theme in the hand-carved gourds placed on tables, each holding Nativity figurines, and painted the walls a bright blue.

But she didn't want the leather furniture to be the only thing people saw. She scattered big furniture and elements, a couch and a big clay pot, throughout so the weighty leather pieces would not overwhelm the rest of the decor.

Warning: Don't let your statement piece dominate a room. Carry the color of the piece around the room in a few different ways. Or match its size with a piece of furniture or decor in a contrasting style

"Never worry about mixing furniture styles," Williams says. "As long as they are complementing each other in some way, the result will be pleasing to the eye.

Photos galore

Photo collections can be a great focal point on a big wall. And photos are a cheaper way to bring personal mementos into a room.

"That's one thing I run into all the time," Tollefsen says. "People have hundreds of family photos, which is super sweet, but not if that's all you have [on the walls]. It's overwhelming."

Tip: Pare down the collection and pick one spot.

"I always tell the families, 'You don't need all of the photos,'" Tollefsen said. "In one great place, a ton of them can be really neat."