More decorating...

It's a slow process decorating in my house- the hall took over a year, this chimney breast has taken over a week. The problem is that I can only reach so high (as you can see) and then I have to wait for someone tall, who isn't scared of going up ladders, to come and finish it off. The colour was a mixture of two half empty tins of paint I found in the mysterious cupboard of paint (in my kitchen) which were mixed together and turned out pretty nice.

I decided to really re-arrange things and so I started off in the same way I used to when hanging a big show at the gallery- lay everything out in one place and begin a slow process of elimination. It was at this point I realised I had a huge art collection- somehow with things dotted around it never seemed this big before (and a few pieces are left out of this picture as I knew I wanted to keep my painting by Marci Washington, birthday illustration from Bjørn Lie, collage by Camilla Engman, photos from Adam Faraday and drawing from Gunilla Jähnichen in my bedroom where I see them when I wake up)

Biddy helped with the elimination process- I wanted to go for something a bit more structured than before and show some of my newer acquisitions (I'm lucky to have many talented friends and to have spent several years curating shows where I was able to buy some amazing work)

Almost there- the postcard in the bottom right corner is a place holder- since I took this photo i've re-framed a print by Anna Peaker which will go there- i've just been too lazy to re-photograph the arrangement.

In this finished set are pieces by:

Top Row L-R:
postcard from Cyprus, collage by Shannon Rankin, photo from an Etsy seller whose name i've lost (if you recognise it let me know!), Monotype from Amelia Santiago
Second Row L-R
photo from J. Adelaide Fuller, greetings card, print from Julianna Swaney, (above) drawing by Bjørn Lie, gold framed charity shop find, painting by Jeana Sohn
Third Row L-R
cross stitch mixtape by Betsy Greer, Penguin books exhibition poster, print from The Good Machinery, drawing by Kelly Lynn Jones
Bottom left drawing by Fawn Gehweiler, painting by David Galletly

Decorating time

On Sunday morning the chimney breast wall in my living room looked like this

With the help of a tall boy a few hours later it looked like this

By the end of the day there were a lot of holes needing filling

What started off as a simple plan to re-hang some of my art collection has turned into a full blown decorating project. Pieces of work that had been held on the wall for two or three years using industrial velcro pulled off the paper underneath when I started to take them down. The paper on the chimney breast doesn't match the rest of the room and seemed to have been painted multiple times which meant layers of it came off pretty easily once we started. Of course it wasn't that simple because once the big pieces were off there were millions of bits of 40 year old paper to try and remove, but by the end of a couple of hours we got it all off. Underneath the paper the wall was in ok condition- just a lot of holes to fill in from where pictures had been hung.

You can kind of make out the shape of the original Edwardian fireplace in this photo-it's a shame it got taken out sometime in the past (in the 40s perhaps). After discovering the ghost of the fireplace I started to look for images of Edwardian homes and got excited imagining what my house might've looked like when it was built.

Project Spectrum: Blue Room

blueroom
Originally uploaded by crunchcandy.

Thanks to being able to borrow a camera from my dad I was able to take this photo of my spare bedroom, which fits in perfectly with the blue/grey/white theme of this month.

I painted the walls (with the help of my Mum and a sister) in Dulux Willow Tree, which is actually a greeny grey colour. The chair is one that i've had for ages and I can't actually remember where it came from, probably a junk shop somewhere. The cushion on the chair comes from Dunelm and cost me just £2 (I was going to use it as a cushion filler, but it goes well in this room so it's safe for now)

One of the next steps for this room will be to take up the carpet (which I hate) and paint the floorboards- i'm not sure if i'm going to stick with white boards, or maybe go for a pale duck egg blue. I'm not looking forward to having to prepare the floor before I paint it, and will probably have to be restrained from just slapping a load of paint on and hoping for the best (it's shabby chic if it all peels off, surely?!)