Sprucing up the fireplace with wood appliques

We had some friends over Saturday night for dinner and to play cards and somewhere during the conversation I mentioned how I would LOVE to change our fireplace. Our home came with a WHITE cast stone fireplace and mantle. It's nice and all...it's just that it's the only thing that is white in the whole room and it's HUGE and pretty much the focal point. I would love to stain it or something to make it a little more warm {and less white} but my husband insists that it can't be done and would ruin it. {sigh} So, my friend Angela came up with a brilliant idea {at least, I think it's brilliant} of adding a medallion or applique to the fireplace to tie it all together. So, what do you think? (It's the small fleur de lis in the middle of the fireplace that I'm talking about)I was at Joann's buying some more fabric for a window mistreatment (from Nesting Place). I'll show you what I did with before and after pics soon. Anyways, while I was there, I decided to take a look at their wood appliques and I found both of these for $1.99 (and a 40% coupon).

I already had black and gold paints and a plethora of sponge brushes at home. So, in a matter of minutes, I had them looking like this:

All I did was paint them black {graphite if we're being technical here} with a sponge brush and then used my blow dryer to speed up the drying time because I'm that impatient. :) Then I applied gold metallic paint with my finger so that the raised surfaces would become gold and the recessed areas would remain black. It took about 3 minutes to paint and dry these gals. Then, I applied them to the fireplace with scotch tape to see what they looked like and which one I wanted in the center. Now, I may go back and buy one more of the serrated squares {the one on the right in the picture above} and apply both of those to the fireplace also...hmmm....too many choices to make. Three might be getting too busy!?! Oh well, I'll still buy another one to see how I like it and then I can always use those appliques to spruce up something else.

So what do you think? No appliques, just one {the fleur de lis or the square in the center} or the fleur de lis flanked by two square medallions (which I need to go buy another but you get the idea)? Leave a comment and let me know what you think! Oh, and ignore all the clutter on the built in bookcase...need to clear that out and reorganize it all!