Tour Mah Newly-Decorated Habitat

Over the last week, I’ve finally had it in me to do some decorating. All of my poor art has been languishing undisplayed, and my rocks have been living in boxes because the art was basically living on the surfaces they could occupy. I spent… lessee… eight hours today cleaning, re-framing, pounding nails, hanging, dusting, organizing, tracking down boxes, unpacking rocks from said boxes, and arranging said rocks in nice little displays. I don’t have nearly as many rocks out now as I did in Bothell, but at least most of my best ones are visible, my dragon is once again guarding its horde, and my walls are pretty fucking far from bare.

I was going to just post the photos to Facebook, but decided a blog post would actually be easier to do. If you’re interested in what my realm looks like, come on and see!

First thing I did was run a string of white lights around the headboard and hang my glittery purple butterflies which I got for Christmas.

Image shows a wrought iron bedpost with a purple glittery butterfly and several small white Xmas lights hanging from it.

Now my room is filled with a soft warm light at night, and I can look up and see butterflies shimmering at me, and I love it so much you don’t even know.

Next, I did up my Asian art wall.

Image shows the wall behind and beside my bed. Several prints are hanging, described in the text.

I wish I could remember what they all are… the long one to the left with the white landscape and the blue river flowing through the gorge is Japanese. The two Chinese landscapes above the headboard are by a local artist, and the Chinese characters hanging beside them spell my name, also done by a local artist in Pike Place Market. The long sepia landscape at the top is something about a Taoist immortal – he’s floating in the sky by the mountain. Under it is a Japanese painting of a bird on a bamboo. There’s a stone plaque with the character for Tranquility on it. And on the right wall, that’s Yoshitaka Amano’s Morpheus from The Dream Hunters. That wall isn’t actually finished – I have to acquire a few more pieces and shuffle some stuff around. But it’s going to be completely Dream Hunters art.

My dragon is guarding its horde on the bookshelf below.

Image shows a black box filled with various things. A pewter dragon on an amethyst base presides over all. There's a blue box with a ying-yang symbol attached to the wall behind it.

A lot of the stuff is hard to see – I’m going to get you some photos with the actual camera and better lighting someday, because you’ll love some of the tidbits. Down in front, I’ve got some of my neater rocks and minerals, including an uncut sapphire and ruby, a wee bit of epidote, a teeny ammonite and trilobite, a dinosaur leg bone cast made of agate, opalized clams, and some pretty pink muscovite. Then there’s the horde proper, which includes some religious pendants and medals, ancient roman coins, an Irish worry stone, little bits of amethyst and garnet and quartz crystals, rutilated quartz, some pesos, my opal ring, a silk cocoon, a phurba, and random tiny polished stones. My dragon is assisted in guarding its horde by Green Tara and Shiva Nataraja in the corners. And yes, the One Ring is there, too.

I’m a huge geek.

Next is my Chinese calligraphy kit and incense, my Chinese Three Wise Men, and a really coolio dragon container given to me by a former roomie.

Image shows two gold brocade boxes, three red statues in the form of Chinese old men, and a round gray box with a dragon for a lid. They're all standing atop two blonde wood bookcases with burgundy curtains behind them.

Right now, those shelves hold all the books I’m selling on Amazon. Hopefully they’ll be gone soon, and I can get my other books out of the attic. That would be loverly.

Now we’re getting into the science side of the room!

Image shows a poster of an image from the Hubble Space Telescope. Below it, rocks fill the top of a black bookshelf.

Sorry for the quality, the lighting on that side blows goats, and I couldn’t turn on the gooseneck lamp because when it did, it washed everything out. I’ll get you a better photo of that someday, because it’s really neat. I love the way my rock display turned out and how it looks with that Hubble image.

Image shows a display case with many different rocks and fossils inside.

This tablet camera doesn’t deal well with the lighting there, but you can see a bit of the awesomeness going on in my display box. I love my thunder egg that looks like the Bat Signal, and those little star-shaped fossils – I think they’re some type of coral, but I can’t remember. The front is basically rocks and fossils I’ve purchased, and the back are rocks I’ve collected. I’ll go over them in detail someday – there’s really great stuff there.

Now let’s head over beside my closet.

Image shows several photographs, described in the text.

You probably recognize the volcano at the top – that’s a print of the photograph Keith Ronholm took of the beginning of the lateral blast. Beside it is Kublai Khan from Kartchner Caverns. Below it, from left to right, is a photograph of the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona, taken at sunset on a cloudy day by my friend Michael Smith-Sardior. Then there’s a gorgeous Milky way shot from the rim of the Grand Canyon, and another over Sunset Crater, both by Wally Pacholka. Then we’ve got a lovely shot of Lomaki ruin by Cujo, and the Grand Canyon with a double rainbow by James Thompson. I plan on filling the gap beside St. Helens with some of my own work, once I’ve got color print cartridges.

Then there’s my huge long fantasy wall, which I’ll eventually fill floor-to-ceiling, I’m sure. I’ve gotten a start:

Image shows many small paintings and prints, described in the text.

The diamond-shaped mirror painted with a unicorn and landscape is from my mom – she got it at a fair in Indiana. There’s a tiny smudge because the dude painted it to order right there, and the paint wasn’t completely dry when she took off with it. I love that thing beyond all reason. It’s surrounded by two pretty purple flowers by Michael Smith-Sardior, a ginger fairy from some magazine, and a foil print dragon. The larger print with the cream border is a Two Towers print signed by the cast of Lord of the Rings, which my stepmother got me. I also love it beyond all reason. Faramir is from a calendar, and then beside him are four prints of Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s paintings. He’s my favorite Pre-Raphaelite.

And that’s just one small portion of that wall!

Image shows several large prints and a huge LOTR poster, described in the text.

From left to right: a print of the cover of Crown of Shadows. That’s Gerald Tarrant – best antihero ever. Below him is Arwen, who was snagged from the same calendar Faramir was. Beside her is my pass for when we went to see the entire trilogy in the theater, and then my ginormous poster of Argonath. The final print is another image of Morpheus by Yoshitaka Amano, signed by Neil Gaiman. It’ll eventually move into Faramir’s frame and be moved to the Amano wall, but not until I have something to replace it with, and a new frame for Faramir.

Yes, I am a tremendous Lord of the Rings geek. Whyever do you ask? (And this isn’t even the half of what I’ve got – my other three maclargehuge movie posters are out in the living room.)

So there we are. My realm is nearly complete. Now here’s hoping I end up staying here for many years, because that’s a fuck of a lot of work and I don’t want to have to repeat it anytime soon.

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Tour Mah Newly-Decorated Habitat
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2 thoughts on “Tour Mah Newly-Decorated Habitat

  1. rq
    1

    It’s like a museum! And an art gallery! All wrapped up into one cosy living space.
    I am completely in love with the diamond-shaped painting, and I am selfishly disappointed that it is the only one of its kind. On the other hand, how cool is that????
    Happy living!

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