Bonnie is a graphic designer who loves making paper snowflakes. Of course, what caught my eye are her Halloween paper cuts in her Etsy shop BibBon.
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| Haunted House and Spiders Paper Ornament |
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| Cats and the Fall Moon |
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| Spiders and Eyes |
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| Witch Hats and Cauldrons |
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| Pumpkins and Bats |
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| Ghosts and Spiderweb |
I happened upon some beautiful skull rings designed by Andrea Sciacca. Her shop, located in Genoa, Italy, is called Fingers Overkill. I like the medieval mood of these rings. They're not shiny and delicate- they mean business.
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| Skull Ring |
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| Memento Mori Ring |
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| Yattaman Skull Ring |
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| Era Ring |
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| Anatomical Heart Ring |
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| Fly Necklace |
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| Panoramic photo of the Halloween art gallery being emptied |
Last week I talked about my 2023 project to redesign our Halloween art gallery room in our house. Over the weekend, I started taking down shelves, rearranging furniture, and pondering the color of the walls. Once the room was fairly empty, I started thinking about how I could add some furniture to the room so that I, or others, could actually sit there and use it.
You see, the room gets little use unless someone is just standing there looking at my collection. That is fairly rare. I thought maybe a few chairs and a low table or maybe just a reading nook would work, but as I dragged chairs into the room, I realized it was too small for all the things I wanted.
Then I caught my husband just standing in the empty room looking around. I asked him how he thought we could use the room and the words I had been dreading came forth from his lips "I think we should make it the dining room again and move the gallery to the double parlor." I whined a little and tried to dismiss his opinion, but deep down I knew it was true. This is something I had been not wanting to admit because now my big project became huge!
And did I mention the cost? To make the former gallery-now dining room workable I really need a new dining room table. Perhaps something round on a pedestal. That means I have to find a space for our current heirloom dining room set that my grandfather made! You don't just sell that on Marketplace.
Breathe.
Here is what does make sense about this new plan. The current dining room is already painted purple which is what I was leaning towards for the gallery. Most of the art is orange and really fades against the current orange walls (Valspar Warm Cider), and did I really need two purple rooms? Also, we have a non-working fireplace in our current dining room that we talk about making useable someday, but would we really light a fire while we sat in the dining room? Doubtful. Light a fire and sit in the gallery? Highly likely! And, my sister jokingly added that if I ever wanted to give a tour of the Halloween art the new space has two doors that lead right to the front door without having to go through other rooms. 😂
So, here is the plan as it stands. Empty and temporarily store all the Halloween art while I patch and repaint the orange walls. I'm considering doing something very artsy. Next I'll start moving the current dining room art into the old gallery space and look for a dining table- if that takes awhile I'll use the one we currently have even though it's a bit cramped.
Once the dining room is moved, I'll start patching and repainting the new gallery space and moving the art back into the room. I'm hoping to move the dining room by the end of January. That leaves me February and March to work on the new gallery space.
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| Our current dining room soon to be Halloween art gallery |
What chance do you think there is that next week I'll be back here with an entirely new idea?
For many years, I posted almost daily on the blog highlighting different Halloween artists that caught my attention. I stopped doing that last year for several reasons: I was exhausted, I thought maybe Instagram had made the posts irrelevant, and there were changes in the artists that were using Etsy making it more difficult for me to find new (to me) artists that I found inspiring.
I've decided to restart these posts, but I'll post maybe one or two a week until I see if it feel right.
The Gnarled Branch on Etsy caught my eye this week. David Irvine is the Toronto artist behind the shop and he started painting over or adding to thrift store paintings he found. I find those fun, but Irvine's original art work is what has captured my attention.
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| The Goblin Mayor |
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| The Cemetery Wanderer |
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| Hallowe'en Painting |
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| Dead Ringer |
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| Morbid Clown |
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| Hallowe'en Clock |
This year one of my home projects is to redesign our Halloween art gallery. That's what I call the room that used to be our dining room. We live in a mid-to-late nineteenth-century house that was built by someone who meant well, but didn't have all the necessary skills. You know what I mean: no right angles, a tilted floor, cock-eyed windows, no closets, and odd sized rooms. I call them the prominent character defining features.
The small room off of our kitchen never seemed to serve us well. It started as a dining room, but my inherited dining room set from my grandparents was just a bit too large for the space and I always felt claustrophobic there. I moved the dining room to our double-parlor and it has remained there since.
My next idea was to make the small room into a drinking parlor with a bar and a trestle table, but who's kidding who? Our entire house is a drinking parlor! It wasn't until I started running out of room to display my Halloween art collection that I realized I could make the tiny space into an art gallery of sorts.
It has slowly evolved over the years with tables and displays cabinets coming and going and last fall I realized I again didn't have enough room for my collection! When I looked around, I realized that there is no more space in our house for displays (especially with two active kittens in the house) and that there was probably wasted space in the gallery. I also had come to dislike the orange color I had chosen for the walls- it's just too peachy, and quite frankly there is no place to sit in the gallery. We really just come into the room and stand there and look at things occasionally.
So, my 2023 project is to revamp the space. My needs are more space to display my collection so that it can stay up year round, a new wall treatment, and enough floor space to continue doing my morning yoga practice. My wants are for a cozy corner to read a book or have a cup of tea (kidding- cocktail.) That's a tall order for such a small space. It's going to be a challenge.
I'm planning on taking you with me through my design process. A practice that usually involves a lot of trial and error until it all falls into place. Every week, I'll pop into the blog and give you an update on my progress. I'm hoping the blog keeps me accountable to getting it done sooner rather than later, but I realize this project will most likely take months.
Here are the "before" pictures- taken this fall when I first realized that something had to be done.
