A PASSION for PALETTES
UNTAMEABLE:
Sarah Fishburne shares her love of style and design [ W R IT T E N BY HE AT HE R KW BR OW N ]
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PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF THE HOME DEPOT
SERIES SPONSORED BY BACARDÍ
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have browsed magazines and scoured websites looking for advice. I have spent hours staring at the wall — sitting, waiting, wishing for inspiration to strike. Against my better judgement, I’ve even left the garage door open in hopes of someone seeing my currently blah mud room and, out of sheer sympathy, turning it into a creative masterpiece before I returned home. And yet, the chalkboard painted wall in my mud room doesn’t look any different today than it did when the paint dried months ago. And then there’s Sarah Fishburne, Director of Trend and Design for The Home Depot, who has so many ideas, it’s hard to keep up with them. “[Chalkboard paint] is a great thing that I don’t see going away,” she said. “I love the idea of taking chalkboard paint and making placemats. I love the idea of taking terra cotta pots and using chalkboard paint to write herbs on them. I love it in kids’ rooms, where you put a chair rail up and then, below the chair rail make it all chalkboard, so little kids can draw on their wall. When I was little, that was a big no no!” Fishburne might not have been able to draw on the walls when she was a little girl, but there was no doubt, even then, that she would be decorating them professionally one day.
Points North | April 2014 | pointsnorthatlanta.com
The Inspired Toddler Fishburne, who has an older brother and an older sister, is also one of 21 grandchildren. “I get notes from all of them. And it’s funny — they all trust me to the point of telling me to come in and do it,” Fishburne said, adding, “All my little nieces and nephews, they all have really great rooms because I will not only pick everything out, but I’ve somehow gotten into the habit that I’ll go in and paint them.” Her family is not new to Fishburne’s acumen for style and design — they’ve been watching her play with palettes for most of her life and expected nothing less from the little tot who knew her way around a paint stand like most pre-schoolers knew the playground. “My parents were building a new house in Rochester, N.Y., when I was 3, and I used to accompany my mom to the interior designer when they were picking out products for the house,” she said. “They would keep me entertained by playing with wallpaper books and paint colors. My mom said I probably didn’t know all my numbers, but I knew every imaginable color down to this is aqua and this is robin’s egg blue. That’s why everyone has always said this was going to be my passion.” Fishburne’s family moved frequently, and with each one, she was involved in what she wanted her