When cash is low, it's time for cheap decorating tricks.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

This is the dry season.

It's the time of year after the Christmas bills and before the income tax refund, the time when the bank balance has pretty well evaporated. It's the time when many of us get the itch to improve our surroundings, but the time we can least afford to do it.

That's why it's a good time to pull out the cheap tricks: decorating ideas that require more imagination than money. Here are a few I've collected over the years from interior designers, books, magazines and creative homeowners. Maybe they'll satisfy your itch, too.

_You can mimic the look of expensive trim with some simple illusions. For example, you can add presence to skimpy crown molding by adding a narrow strip of molding to the wall several inches below it. Caulk any gaps between molding and wall, then paint the moldings and the wall between them the same color.

Or duplicate the appearance of a paneled wainscot by installing a chair rail about 30 to 36 inches from the floor and then creating rectangles on the lower part of the wall using narrow molding. Caulk and paint everything from the chair rail down a single color.

Similarly, you can mimic the look of a paneled interior door by nailing or gluing molding in rectangles onto a plain door.

_Photos add personality to a room, but custom framing can get expensive. A cheap way to create a wall of photos or a unified tabletop display is to gather inexpensive frames from places such as thrift or discount stores, then spray-paint them all a single color or a couple of complementary hues. (Metallics are great for this.)