I would describe my home as ‘hand knitted’. I have no time for the current trend of changing home décor according to current fashion. My home is my home, functional, comfortable but would never get an award for interior design. Everything, or almost everything has a story behind it. In fact it would be a nightmare for any Interior Designer, however no stranger will be allowed to advise me on how I should live with their choice of décor. It’s like my garden, ‘uniquely designed’. I am surrounded with things that mean something, the stories behind a gift rather than the object itself.
I don’t live in the past at all but we live in a ‘throw-away’ society. I see pages of house magazines with houses, perfectly suited to be a photo in an Interior Design magazine, they are beautiful houses if that’s what you want to live in but there is seldom any sign of living or life in them. How many people redecorate for each season. The colours promoted by the house magazines’ last season as the current trend, have now been decided to be old-fashioned and jaded this season. At the rate they expect people to redecorate their homes, they would have painters and decorators living permanently with them. To me that is a show house, not a home however everyone’s taste is different.
I like trying out different crafts although I don’t do much now, I did like to experiment with ideas. When younger, I needed a bedroom lamp, probably when I was going through a girlie notion of floral pinks and greens. I needed a nicely shaped bottle and luckily my father’s boss was the best person to supply that need. Being fond of a wee dram, it was a cho
ice gift from friends and family, so I was given a very nicely shaped whisky bottle (minus it’s contents of course). Dad drilled a hole near the base and I managed to get white paint to stick to the inside.
This time it was craft from my paternal side that came to the fore, when my father told me my grandmother made a paint with sealing wax and mentholated spirits which would stick to glass more or less forever.
At that time sealing wax was available in larger stationery supply shops in a variety of colours. It was then ground up as much as I could and put into small glass bottles (old aspirin bottles were ideal) with some menthol
ated spirits and left to melt. It took a long time. In the meantime, I bought a drum lampshade frame, covered the frame with bias binding and stitched white silky fabric round it, pleating it as I went along. Lined it and then added four pink satin sections, each drawn in at the centre and finished off with a flower I made from gold-coloured wire and dyed nylon stockings.
When the sealing wax was liquid enough, I painted a floral pattern on the front panel of the bottle. I had my bedroom lamp.
grannysatticweb 