A few times a week, we get asked to give the 411 on some of our favorite on line design tools. Being one of the most FAQs around these parts, we thought it deserved it’s very own post. So without further ado, here are some of our favorite, easy-to-use, oh-so-awesome online design tools:

First on the list is Pottery Barn’s Room Planner. To get started, you can chose from an example design from their room gallery or create your own design from scratch with your room dimensions. What makes this online program so much fun (and so useful) is all the tools are super easy. If you’re just looking to lay out a room, this is a great tool. But if you’re are a PB fan like I am, you’ll love the fact that you get to use furniture from the Pottery Barn catalog to design your room. Even if you aren’t planning to redecorate anytime soon or make any furniture purchases, it’s a lot of fun to daydream and decorate your ideal Pottery Barn-styled living quarters.

Art.com is the bomb diggity. They have everything: black and white photography, abstract, scenic, still life, botanical, modern and classic movie posters… you name it, they’ve got it. One of the best parts of Art.com is the My Galleries feature. I use it all the time! It has been around for a while, but it seems to keep getting better and better. As you’re browsing through the thousands of artwork pieces, when you see one that catches you eye, all you have to do is click the “Save to Gallery” button and it will add it to your collection. In your Art.com gallery, you can organize your findings in folders (I like to organize by room), visualize how the different pieces you’ve collected look together (if you’re planning on a wall gallery of some sort), and share your collections with your friends/family on Facebook. My favorite feature is the ability to preview the art in your home by uploading a photo of the room you’re decorating. Yep, bomb diggity.

It’s no secret that we love to make mood boards here at 7th House on the Left. They’ve been a staple here since the very beginning, and they’re not going anywhere anytime soon. I’ve always used a mixture of Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator to make my mood boards – both are which open on my computer pretty much constantly. Right now, actually. Recently on my journeys around the internet, I came across Olioboard. As it turns out, it allows you to create great-looking mood boards for free. (There’s also a Pro version that lets you add color swatches, text, and a budget to your mood board for $8/mo. That’s still several hundred dollars shy of Illustrator’s price tag!) They’ve even got a huge gallery of products to choose from so you don’t have to upload pictures from another site.

MyDeco.com is a site that I’ve seen mentioned a lot around the world wide web recently. I’m  not too very familiar with the ins and outs yet, but from what I’ve learned so far, it seems to be pretty awesome – hence making it to our list. MyDeco is actually a suite of three tools in one: It’s a 3D room designer, a utility that can take images from around the web and save them to your account, and a mood board designer. (Yay for mood boards!) I feel like Olioboard is just a simpler tool to use if you just want to create mood boards. If you want to store your whole design in a single place, though, and “whip up” some 3D rooms, MyDeco seems like the place to go. I can’t wait to start playing with this more!

Last but positively not least is none other than the one and only Pinterest. It seems like everyone and their mother is on Pinterest. Simply put… I. Love. Pinterest. Even though it’s the place to collect photos houses we want to live in, things we want to buy, places we want to go, and cute animals we want to own, it’s also a great place to collect inspiration for “that room you have no idea what to do with” or DIY projects you want to try. Pinterest is what you make of it. You can have a board totally dedicated to black and yellow bedrooms or all white kitchens. Therefore, it’s the end all and be all of online design tools.

So about you? Do you have a favorite, must-try online design tool? Are you addicted to Pinterest too? Share it with the class in the comment section…

Inspiration boards are all the rage! In my book, anyway. They’ve been a “hobby” of mine for about five years or so. Whether it be for a room in our house, a space for a friend, or an event / party idea, inspiration boards (also called “mood boards”) are the cat’s meow. They help me think though every last detail and help me decide on major choices before I spend a single penny. They can also take away some of the headache in defining the style of a room. Basically, inspiration boards rock my world… well, our world. Greg has grown to appreciate them as well because he loves it when things are planned out before we start on a project (reason # 43,943 we make a good team). If you aren’t sure what an inspiration / mood board is, you can see some of the ones we’ve made for our house on posts here, here, and here.

As you may know, we are currently in the midst of shopping around for kitchen cabinetry options and designs. Our most recent experience was with KraftMaid (read more about that here). I was on their website yesterday scouring the pages for… actually, I can’t remember what I was looking for because I got totally side tracked with what I’m about to show you guys. I clicked on “Ideas and Inspiration” tab and found their Inspiration Board Design Tool:

Once you click the “Get Started!” button, you are asked to select a template. These temples are simple, stylish, and in my opinion – perfect! This takes most of the placement guessing game away and practically does it for you.  As Greg always says, “Work smarter, not harder!”

Now is where the real fun begins… The KraftMaid Inspiration Board Design Tool gives you a plethora (I like using that word) of inspiration photos, including shelving options, door styles, cabinet features, textures, and even “buzz words” that describe your dream space. However, the feature that’s the icing on the cake is the “Your Images” button where you can add images you’ve collected to the inspiration board. Cue the oooh’s and ahhh’s! With this feature, the possible designs are virtually endless. It also means if you want to make a totally non-kitchen related inspiration board, you can still use this tool!

Once you’re finished playing, you can save your inspiration board as a JPG on your computer. Better yet, if you have a smartphone, you can email the image to yourself so you will have your inspiration board when you are out shopping!

If you are in a creative mood or looking for some inspiration for your home, be sure to check out the KraftMaid Inspiration Board Design Tool. It’s a fun and super easy way to put together inspiration and could help you define your style. Happy creating!

Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Words With Friends, and Fruit Ninja… Greg and I enjoy playing games on our iPhones, and these are some of our favorites, but there are also a lot of great apps for home renovators, designers, and DIYers alike. We thought we’d share some of our favorite home-oriented productivity apps with you.

YOUR PERSONAL ART GALLERY. Art.com is the go-to place online for art prints, posters, frames, and specialty art. They feature art of all different media, styles, subjects, and sizes; everything from modern movie posters to Picasso.  Basically, if you want something put on your wall, they’ve got it.

Thanks to the free Art.com app (we love free!), you can browse their endless collection right on your iPhone. You’re probably thinking, “What makes this so special?  I can browse through different categories, look at the artwork, and buy it right on their website via Safari.” That’s true, but this app allows you to link to your Art.com account, which allows you to save favorites to your gallery from your phone.  The other thing that makes the Art.com app unique is the “Wall Gallery” feature. This is where it gets good…

The “Wall Gallery” is insanely useful. Here’s how it works: take a picture of your empty wall, then, while you’re browsing, if you see an art piece that tickles your fancy, you can superimpose it onto the picture of your wall to see what it will look like. No Photoshop required!

FINGER PAINTING. Sometimes picking out paint colors can be an overwhelming and not-so-fun experience. But guess what, there’s an app for that.

Meet the Benjamin Moore Color Capture app. This app is hands down one of my favorite apps, both for fun and productivity. To use it, you just tap the “Capture” button, take a photo of something you want to base your paint colors on, then slide your finger across the photo and tap the “match” button. The app will then match your selection to one of the 3,300+ paint colors in the Benjamin Moore library. If that isn’t cool enough (and this part is my favorite!), shake the iPhone and it will give you four coordinating colors.

By double-tapping the color swatch or the handy star icon, you can save your favorites in a folder and sort them by room. If gathering coloring inspiration via color wheel is more your style, there’s a full-spectrum color wheel available as well. Just like the photo inspiration feature, your selection on the color wheel can be translated into a Benjamin Moore paint color and saved as a favorite. As a graphic artist by trade, I love mixing up different colors.  It’s great to know that if I come up something, I’ll be able to match my mixture up to real paint colors that I can buy in the store.

HIGH TECH MEASURING TAPE. So you’re out shopping for who-knows-what, and you stumble upon a great piece of furniture or art.  You weren’t expecting to find anything for the room it would go in, though, so you don’t have any measurements. This has happened to me on more than one occasion. I thought, “There’s gotta be an app for that.” I was right!

MyMeasures is a great app for that type of situation. It’s also great for those of us who consistently lose the measurement notes that we were planning on taking to the store with us. (Yep. I’m looking at you, Greg Brown!) Just take a picture of the room or object that you’re measuring, draw a line on the screen, type in the measurement, and you’ve got it on your phone forever. You can also add notes and color-code measurements. I absolutely love having this on my phone so I never have to guess about whether something will fit or not!

VIRTUAL YARD SALE. Over the past few years, Craigslist has become THE alternate for newspaper ads and even eBay. With CraigsApp, you can now post, browse and contact sellers easily. Actually, I find the app is a lot more “user friendly” (as Greg would say) than the online version.

When you search for an item, the price, a partial description and the first photo show up in list form. You don’t have to click on each individual item in order to browse, which is a major step up from the browser-based version. All the functionality of the website is there, too. So you can reply to the seller, attach the listing to an email and view the item’s location on the map without even leaving the app.

The major reason I like using the app over the website is the browse by photo option. Genius! If you know what the item you’re looking for looks like (say you want a yellow bike, not a red one), it makes the browsing experience really easy.

FINANCIAL ORGANIZATION. Since we first purchased his and her iPhones in early 2008, we’ve been through our fair share of bill management apps. BillTracker rocks our world. The best feature about BillTracker is the Upcoming button, which allows you to view bills that are due within the next 30 days at a touch of a button. Of course, there are lots of other nice features like the color-coded calendar and list modes, which are available at just a tap or two.

Since I pay most of our bills online, I used to spend a lot of time writing down the payment confirmation numbers. With BillTracker, I can record the confirmation numbers on my phone so I won’t lose them. BillTracker also reminds you when a bill is due soon (or even past due). It also lets you do some simple accounting by showing you a complete history for each account. Simply put, this makes keeping up with bills a lot more hassle-free.

Enough with the home productivity apps. If you are looking for some fun and random apps for your iPhone, here are a few of our favorites:

HIS Bank of America, WordPress, Bible, Around Me, Facebook, Tweet Deck, Beejive Mobile, Shazam, Pandora, Words With Friends, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Cut the Rope, Tetris, Minigore, Team Viewer. HERS Yard Sale Hidden Treasures: Sunnyville, Words With Friends, Angry Birds Lite, Cut the Rope, Livestrong, Heartguard, Hulu Plus, Fandango, Instagram, iBooks, One Kings Lane, Twitter, Evernote, PayPal, WordPress.

Do you have any favorite apps that you’d like to share? We’d love to hear about them!

App screen shot images found here.