elcome to the weekly series WAYWO, What AreYou Working On, which is aimed toward crafters and creative people in our Daily Kos community. We welcome all sorts to come in and talk about what is currently on your project plate, be it home improvements, needlecrafts, kidcrafts, writing, blacksmithing, or anything else you can think of!
We also welcome anyone to guest host WAYWO - just post a comment and we'll get you on the schedule. Join our email notification Yahoo group and you'll know when WAYWO is posted. http://www.groups.yahoo.com/...
I’ve entitled this week’s WAYWO "Fantasy Bedrooms," because that’s what my husband and I decided last year we wanted to create. I must apologize for the pictures; what we could afford with two weeks notice for a digital camera is, to put it mildly, poor quality. I will do some better pictures later on this year in one of the home repair diaries or WAYWO. Hopefully I can give you a decent word picture to make up for it.
We own a two-bedroom bungalow, and decided to turn the front bedroom into an office, so we could get the books and the computer out of the dining room, have space for a second computer, and give Bear somewhere to put his drawing table. That meant we would move our bed to the back bedroom, and this had several advantages; it’s farther from the street, and not right next to the tv, which means anyone with insomnia or late-night visitors can be in the front room without waking up someone who needs their sleep. These are small rooms though; moving rooms meant moving a queensize bed from a 12’ x 12’ room into a 12’x 7’ room! And as we talked about colors, Bear said that he wanted a fantasy bedroom, sort of Medieval, sort of Gothic, huge bed, lots of pillows, rich color, et cetera. It’s our house, we can do that kind of thing, and why not now? ....and so we settled on a color scheme and a "feel" and went for it. I was tired of white walls anyway....
The wall color is Lucite "Gold Buff", 2 coats. It is a very warm gold, not as dark as it shows here. Iron wall decorations from Pier One. Below the iron wall art, though not visible in the picture, is a black wooden shelf holding clear glass votives. There are two windows in the room, and their Roman shades are homemade from fabric from the stash, with scrap wood used to mount them.
The bed was built of pine by Bear, painted in Lucite"Black Magic", and is built into the one half of the room. It is made with storage underneath and storage above, concealed by latticework panels. The latticework beneath the bed also keeps our elderly cat from committing indiscretions under the bed when offended and keeps it from quietly eating shoes or dirty clothes. The head and foot boards are freestanding, made to sit between the four main support posts and the wall, just in case we ever want to take it down. There are shelves in the headboard, and the back of the shelves is drilled to let power cords through for alarm clocks and Bear’s fan. The joists of the canopy and the posts are rubbed with gold stencil paint on the edges. There are white Christmas lights up along the back long edge of the bed with a strand of silk roses and greenery, providing mood lighting, and two copper lanterns hanging from brackets that will hold votive candles.
The footboard has a cd player and the cd case, a stack of hand towels, the bottles of various lotions, oils, and lubricants, and the small three-footed vibrating massager. (That thing is lovely on the back of my neck when I've been on the computer all day.)
The bedding is from Meijer, in a dark burgundy paisley print. The decorative pillows are homemade of various brocade scraps and prints in colors centered around black, dark gold, burgundy, and a few deep turquoise blue elements. The curtains cover the one open side, and are made of heavy upholstry-weight burgundy velveteen. We have golden rope tiebacks for them The curtains are actually very nice, though originally I had rather thought of them as pure decoration. But if I have a headache in the middle of the day, I can go in and draw the curtains and have my bed almost completely black as a pit....nice, when your head hurts. And it’s nice and warm at night.
Apart from the bed, there’s not much in there but an antique floor lamp, a small square plant stand, and the two trunks that hold bedding and other things. Bear did the planning and construction and consulted with me on color schemes and textile choices. I painted, made the windowshades, and made the bedcurtains and accent pillows.
It took us a while to make this happen, because we don’t have a lot of money and the fibromyalgia limits my ability to work on anything to short bursts, but we both feel it’s worth it. I think it’s wonderful to drift off to sleep in here— the little girl in me is delighted by the color and the lighting and the way the gold walls glow. Bear says that it’s wonderful to come in out of the winter’s grey and cold into the glowing warmth and light of the room after a long day of work. It’s very much our lovely little space away from the stresses of the world, and that’s what we want in a bedroom.
So where have you let your creativity run riot? And what are you working on this week?