[||!prliignore1||Today's C&D Guest Blogger is Ursula Bamnolker, the editor of ||!prliignore0||, a design blog that celebrates all things chic, fun, modern, colorful and green||!prliignore2||]

When you think of the Midwest, what comes to mind? Corn fields? Cows? Beer? How about Jonathan Adler? Chic, sexy design? Lacquered furniture and fun, fabulous colors?

I’m guessing you chose the former…unless you’ve come within 50 feet of St. Louis designer Amie Dupre Corley. Bringing a fresh viewpoint and a wonderfully creative approach to the table, Dupre Corley is a designer who knows how to mix high with low, transform a space that’s feckless into fabulous…all the while staying on a minimal budget.

I sat down recently with her to delve more deeply into her treasure trove of knowledge. Here’s what she had to say:

1) First of all, tell me a bit about your background. You didn’t start out in the design field. What did you study in school?

I am actually a big science nerd at heart.  I was pre med all the way through college and while I was getting my master’s degree in tropical medicine at Tulane, I decided that I needed a little creativity in my life and signed up for photography classes.  It was then that I realized I was probably more talented in the creative arts than the scientific ones!  When my husband and I purchased a one hundred year old home in the Central West End of St. Louis in 2004,  I was faced with the challenge of restoring and decorating a 6,000 square foot home on a very limited budget.  That was when the decorator in me was born and I have been obsessed ever since.