Give your apartment a cheap face-lift

When the pizza-box coffee table and the reclining chair you got from the side of the road aren’t cutting it in your apartment anymore, maybe it’s time to re-think your pad’s decorating scheme.

Decorating cutely and cheaply isn’t hard, and with a little creative thinking, Martha Stewart will be demanding your decorating ideas in no time.

Blank walls can always be a problem, especially since posters are usually expensive and tear easily. One would think that large artwork is the answer to the blank wall problem, but a cheaper solution is this: Go to a craft store or a store that sells sheets (Urban Outfitters has a great selection) and pick a large sheet or piece of material that is thick and sturdy with bold, attractive and colorful designs on it.

Usually, there is a spot in the store for sheets that are on sale because they don’t have the comforters or pillow shams to go with them any longer.

After you buy one, hang it with a hammer and nails on the wall, preferably behind the couch and the entire wall is covered and decorated with an interesting scheme.

“I went to Urban Outfitters and found a king-size sheet with a really pretty design on it, for around $5 on sale,” Florida State University junior Kali Knowles said. “My roommates and I hung it on one wall in the living room, and it looks really cool and creative.”

Also, if you want actual pictures on the wall, why not paint them yourself? Craft stores sell canvases cheaply, and by painting an image yourself, it adds a certain familiarity and homeyness to your place.

If you are better at photography, take a few shots with your camera, and have them made into larger black and white pictures at drugstores for an inexpensive price.

You can even upload your pictures straight from home onto a drugstore’s Web site and pick them up in hours. Putting up pictures of you and your roommates together is also a fun idea.

For the fashionistas with too many bags, purses and hats that can’t all fit in the box-sized closet that usually accompanies college apartments, this tip decorates your walls and finds a home for your purses.

Get a hammer and box of small nails, or pretty little wall hooks, whatever your prerogative is. Then, spacing the nails about a foot to a foot-and-a-half away from each other, hammer them in. Then, hang your purses up for easy, cute wall art, and an uncomplicated way to store your bags. You can hang them in different color patterns, size patterns or occasion patterns.

We can’t all have a rotating closet like Cher’s in “Clueless,” but you can still feel chic-er with your purses displayed around the room.

In the kitchen, it’s easy to garnish cheaply. At dollar stores or other discount stores, pick up an assortment of different plates, cups, bowls, cutlery and place mats.

Mismatching has been in since Friends hit TV in the ‘90s, and it sets a quirky, unique look away from more cookie-cutter decorating.

Plastic or glass martini glasses are also sold at dollar stores, and by picking a few out and setting them on a bar or on a ledge in the kitchen, makes the room look a bit more sophisticated.

A few fun cookbooks or drink recipe books placed in the room also lend something to make the place look put-together.

“My roommates and I went to discount stores and bought different plates and placemats and kitchenware,” FSU sophomore Katrina Bilella said. “Even though the designs are all different, the colors are generally the same, and it makes the kitchen have a cool vibe.

“We hung out potholders on the wall, adding color. We also got cute tins marked ‘sugar,’ ‘tea’ and ‘coffee’ to keep things in.”

There are hundreds of other decorating tips that can be found in home and garden magazines.

Even though they might look expensive in the pages, there is always a way to put a spin on it and do the same thing for much, much less to fit a college student’s budget.