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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Preliminary Attempts at Decorating

Here are quick snapshots at my preliminary attempts at house-decorating. I never was good at house decoration, mostly just the dorm style of cramming as many snapshots of my family and pictures of Jesus as a wall could hold, interspersed with my favorite Bible quotes written on pieces of computer paper taped up to the walls.

Now, for the first time, I feel like I really have an idea of what I want my house to look like, something between medieval, and Rivendell, and some Hebrew thrown in.

I'm in an apartment, and have to deal with the colors the walls were already, very dark maroon in our bedroom, and dark brown in the hallway/kitchen/living room area. I crave light. I get depressed when there isn't enough light, more accurately, I get frantic. At least I had the energy to repaint the very dark turquoise living room light yellow before the babies came. The moment of futility of painting a rental hit me when after much work, I found a paint chip of almost the exact same yellow under the dark turquoise and dark brown. So after we leave (which is also very uncertain) who knows if the next renters will paint it turquoise again...

SO, I decided a better way to break up the dark wall was with wall hangings that reflected at least some light. I've found the dark colors work well to frame medieval looking hangings. Here are my preliminary attempts.

The border to Psalm 27 is copied basically from the border around illuminations of a Medieval Bible (I think Late Antiquity era, the pictures looked kinda like the Utrecht psalter, but with color) that I saw on the internet. I used gold foil from ALDI's chocolate wrappers fro the gilding, and a razored sharpee marker for the writing. (also a bottle of gold acrylic paint that Walmart sells for around 2 bucks. Its good to live in an age when creative things are easy to come by)

This one is Psalm 121, and the picture below is from the artist/writer Michael D O'Brien at studiobrien.com. Its a picture of the original which was sold, and to the best of my knowledge he doesn't sell prints, so my twin printed this out in college and we had it on our wall. Its Joseph holding baby Jesus while the Holy Spirit hovers over. I love his books too.
Here are my first attempts at wall hanging on the hallway wall, which sticks into the Living Area. There's alot more dark wall to cover up, but I was trying to miss the mess. I need to clean the house.
And a close up.
Paints also from Walmart. I am looking forward to getting up the other wall hangings, and I have some scrap wood and black paint and old L brackets I hope to turn into candle holders on the walls....