Decking The Halls

Good news: We have finally been getting some things up on the walls at home! Lots of photographs, prints and artworks have been in various stages of framing and sorting for months. Then they have been leant against different walls while we umm and ahhh about where to finally bang the picture hooks in. Well, we have gone for it. Holes have been hammered and the place is looking much more homely so I'm very pleased. Here is a peek at some of our new wall adornments.



This is of my favourite pictures. My swan photograph which I found in a tatty old frame in a charity shop in Shoreham-by-Sea. My Mum's taste is usually pretty in line with mine when it comes to treasure hunting but she definitely didn't look convinced at my £2.95 purchase. Neither did my Dad. Neither did Dave when I brought it home to Northumberland. I love it though and reframed my beautiful find in a simple white Ikea frame. It now has pride of place in our lounge and even Dave has said that it "actually looks alright". Wonder if my parents will recognise it when they next come up to stay!



This is a screenprint which I did at university. It is all the green spaces in Croydon. It was for a project I did with the idea of showing people the amount of parks and public places in their area that they could go and play, exercise or walk in. The idea was to make posters of different towns and cities but I didn't get around to making prints of any other areas (maybe I will one day?). My finished posters had branding on too but I quite like the randomness of the versions with no explanation. The frame isn't the right size -the design should be cropped so that some of the red areas bleed off the edges of the poster- but it's only a temporary lounge addition until we find something we love.



More university work. These are my creations from our life drawing classes. I decided one day that I would use scissors and some old magazines instead of pencils or charcoal. I should have known I would end up slightly obsessed with cutting paper and card!






I love these. They are pages from Jonathan Livingston Seagull: A story by Richard Bach. My mother-in-law leant the book to me a while ago and it's brilliant. I really liked the photos so got myself a copy from eBay and framed some of my favourite photographs (they are taken by Russell Munson) from it. I felt bad tearing a book apart but, combined with some black M&S frames, I think it was worth it.



These are my prints by Yuuco who runs the Blue bonbon shop on Etsy (and who I featured on my blog before). My photo definitely doesn't do the illustrations justice but they are framed and up in the upstairs hallway and they always make me smile!

So we are getting there. There are still a few things we need to find wall space for, like our map of Florence which we brought home from our honeymoon last year and a gorgeous, grey Northumberland screenprint which my friend Grace made us for Christmas. We'll hopefully get them up at the weekend so I'll take some pics.

Taking these snaps and writing this blog post has made me realise all the Etsy and other amazing handmade items I have collected now, both around the house and in my jewellery box. I'll have to get some of them on here soon, too!