How to furnish a black room

So this is how our livingroom lookes like after the Halloween craze. The black paperboards are removed from ceiling and floor and thousands of staples are pulled out, after that, I refurnished the room. 

Our living room is very small (because we turned the real one to our bedroom) and contains the fire place, a tv and the sofa, thats all.

 If you want to paint a room black, I think you should chose a small room, because black is a colour that creeps close to you. A large room would look quite small, while a small room feels a little more cosier, like a hideout. 

 If you want to have lots of black details and decorations, you might consider not to paint the walls black, because black decorations will not be visible as you can se on the photo below. 

My lovely black, victorian piedestal were changed to a white more modern dito. When I put the jar with the mossy twigs and black decorations, I noticed that the decorations disappeared in the wall.

The same thing is with black picture frames, they will disappear. I moved pictures with golden frames to this room and it looked great. To balance the golden frames, I changed the chandeliers in the room from mercury glass to brass. I only had three though so I need to buy more of them.

The white cover on the sofa, the white table and the white ceiling, makes the room a bit brighter and it is easier to orientate in.

 I can assure you that a completely black room is difficult to walk in, you will feel disoriented and the determination of distance is disturbed.

 When I had painted the room and then started to cover the walls with black paperboard, I got more and more disoriented. When I had covered the fireplace in paper, I had to look for my stapelgun all the time, it kind of disappeared.

A profit with the black walls is that my grandfathers Art deco lamp suddenly got visible. The lamp with the soft yellow glass plates disappeared in the light yellow room.

This is the short wall between the doors were the tv stands. I use an antique washing bench with marble top as a table and bench for the tv. The black speakers looks a little more discrete with the black walls as well.

I have chosen to use glow lites above the tv, because it felt risky everytime i was going to blow out the candles.

What I have to do next with this room, is a new sofa in old style or an antique sofa that is comfortable to sit/lay in and remove the carpet and hopefully find a wood floor underneath to paint grey.

I was very sceptic about painting the room black. But as paint is cheap and easy, I gave it a try. It went better than I thought, even my mother likes it. 

Halloween prop

Here's one of the Halloween props for this year. I ran smoothly thanks to my skilled boyfriend. Coffin and "stones" are made by me.

I so do hate november. It gets dark by 3pm. Right now icy cold rain is pouring down and the temperature is just 4 degrees above freezing point. Only crazy people and those who really must goes outside now. I'm sitting in the sofa mostly with lit candles in my black livingroom. I don't feel guilty at all because I have an inflammation in my knee and since the doctor have bent and pressed my knee and leg during examination, it feels. I curse all the stairs and ladders at work.

November 1 theme: Sweaters

Mrs Sophistique Noir is demanding a post about sweaters. And when she does, who am I, to refuse. I want to show you my absolutely favourite sweater, I use this one a lot. It is from Gudrun Sjödén one of her folklore winter collections. It is inspired by both Swedish kurbits and Ukranian embroderie. With this sweater I wear a fake fur shrug from La Redoute and a red skirt that once were a dress from Gudrun Sjödén. 

Here's a close up of the machine embroderies that goes along the arms.

And a close up of my mechanical pocket watch a bought several years ago.

I'm so looking forward to see what the other participants will post. Hopefully some inspiration for coming winteroutfits.

Halloween kids party 2013

First of all. The picture below, does not representing the snacks for the kids party. This is what I found at Lidl (thanks to Lesthi) and we snacked on during the weekend before (except dracula teeth). It's the first time I see Halloween themed food in a store here.

Every year I must do some kind of cupcakes. This years theme was based on bought cupcake set (wrapper, topper and bone sprinkles) bought at kakburken.se. I used butter, blueberry puree, and icing sugar to make the frosting.

The smaller kids claims chocolate balls.

 I also baked simple but decorated cakes. The cutters are also bought at kakburken.

I use to do a typical american treat every year and try a new one. The first year I tried velvet cakepops with jack skellington faces and very few ate those (looks like brain, was the comment), last year I tried to serve caramel popcorn (I had to eat them myself, and loved it too, was the only one). This year I tried to serve Rice Crispie treats, Whats that?? strange, it doesnt taste anything, was some of the comments. A lot of them were left after the party. Children are soo picky about new stuff. Any suggestions of another treat I can try next year?

Soo, over to decorations. I told you in last post that we went to a flea market. This is floor candle holder is one of a pair that I bought. The candle is made of a card roll that transported one way mirror film home to us for one of the tricks.

 Store bought pumpkin garland, a black curtain and a home made boo-banner decorated the door way between entrance and kitchen.

 The old hallway had to store our sofa. 

The kitchen is quite simple and I reused lots of decorations. I don't want to use that common spiderweb as I hate to clean it off later.

Another garland, with bats.

The clock on the wall is fairly new. We have lived in this house for 5 years and never had a clock in the kitchen before. Visitors and family have ask about the time and nagged about me refusing to buy a clock until I find one I like. So this clock was nice enough to get a place in my kitchen. 

View to the stairwell. Witch painting is moved to this room and the only new stuff is the garland with red roses.

Here I am in my creepy clown costume. It looks like mad hatter in combo with the joker, not an intention, o well. The slit mouth make up did creep the young ones out though :). One of Oskars friends was dressed as the joker so we called each other cousins.

The cutest little girl on earth, Johans daughter Moa in her new bat ears and a little blood running from her mouth after a good bite of a human. 

Here are my boys dressed as zombie (refusing makeup) and a military.

So this is why all furnitures were moved from the livingroom. Crazy me, painted the walls black and covered ceiling and floor with black paperboard. Masks were painted in fluorescent colour and hung on the walls. Idea snatched from 102 wicked things to do.  After the arrival of all the kids. I dressed myself in complete black and hide in a corner with one of the masks on. Johan sent them in in small groups. It was successful and very satisfying when they screamed.

Alfons in a white shirt and glowstick

 One of the kids trying the mask that I used.

 But what scared them most was the gost story Johan told while all of them sat around the kitchen table, he accompanied the story with thunder and lightning (flashing lights from a cupboard) and eerie music. Unfortunately a friend that was supposed to make an entrance during the story was supposed to show up but couldnt because of severe back pain. One of the old kids said that it was a relief, it was scary enough.

More to come but thats all for now.

Second hand shopping, more nature and some crafts

Those visits to flea markets and second hand shops has decreased. I don't need to shop that much anymore. But last week we went to one just to see if they had something for us to use at the halloween party. I bought a bible from 1877 with nice graphical illustrations, not something I need but I will use it for the graphics.

I have envied Dark Entries massive collection of beautiful jackets, specially her pinstriped ones. I found a very nice one that fitted me well. Laying flat on the floor it's not visible that it's is form fitting. 

 Last weekend I woke up early. When I went to the bathroom I looked out and saw a beautiful misty and frosty morning. I couldn't go to sleep again so I asked Johan if we could take our cameras and take a walk. The photo below is upstreams by the river.

frosen raspberry leaves

Further down the stream

Remnants from the copper mine. Piles with slag like these can be found on several places around our town.

The lake downstreams is actually only 100 meters from our house, but it's not very accessible, sadly, because it is beautiful.

 I'm thinking of go skating here in winter, this part is shallow and calm so it shouldn't be too risky.

After a couple of hours  the mist was almost gone and we got a lovely autumnday.

We went for a visit at a friend of ours who recently bought an old farm, she gave me a washing cabinet I found in one of the buildings that will be torn down. I love the pale grey blue colour of it but it was impossible to clean it. I have to repaint it. I will also paint it on the inside.

She had bought four so cute and cuddly goats. I think their rectangular pupil looks funny. Do you know any other animal with eyes like these?

Moa didn't have a clue about what to dress like for halloween so I suggested that she could use my bat wings. She chosed the smaller ones to avoid poking someone in the eyes.

I had to make a pair of bat ears, matching the wings. A simple headband with black cotton rags twined around. The ears are made of steel wire and nylon socks. Some silver glitter is glued on the edges and will get a nice grey oxide colour by time.

Next week will be crazy. We have some mad preparations for the party to fix. We are nuts!

I love this season

 Took a beautiful walk at lunch. I had to take photos of all the lovely autumncolours and want to show you some before I dig in my math books again.

Inspirational gift

 We visited my brother to celebrate their eldest daughter last weekend. As my sister in law who is very talented and creative had started to make mixed media and scrap booking I asked her about her work. I had seen a cool photo on her feed of a halloween themed journal and asked if I could take a look at it.

She handed me a wrapped gift and said. Well was supposed to be sent by mail to you but here it is. So she actually had made it thinking of me. 

I'm sorry I don't have enough words for how happy I am and how thankful I am.

That is so truly kind so sit and work for hours to create something like this to another person. Can you see that every page is thought out and worked on. And Between the pages are small folders with tags and ephemera.

That's all for now. Just wanted to show you some loveliness.