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)
