Sneak a peek of my home

And I really mean a teeny tiny sneak-peek of my homely objects. The decor is still horribly unfinished but here are some fragments in photos.

In this jar are laundry soap nuts. They are a natural and ecological washing product to be used instead of washing powder. They have no particular smell or fragrance and they do not tend to cause allergies. I like them a lot since my skin is rather sensitive to fabric softeners and washing powders.

Also, I do not like it if the laundry detergents have strong odors. It will intervene one's perfume. Think about it, shampoo and conditioner smell to fruity things, laundry powder smells some other freshness or fruits, your body butter something else. and then you might have l'eau de toilette or perfume on your skin. It is a cacophony of odors.

In this other photo you will see something I do not like to live without. A coffeemaker. I received as a gift this fancy model that has a small kettle to whip milk. Therefore I could make cappuccinos, lattes etc. I never drink my morning coffee with milk, so I have not yet used the milk part it in my new apartment. I have made pretty drinks with it before, though.

Here is a layered drink I made some time ago. There is cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on top. It was made into a Campari glass, because I either have an alcohol problem or it was the only glass that was the right size and had the right form for successful layering. I leave it to you to judge.

Even though I delight in photographing my everyday necessities, I also wish to share with you a triumph of mine.

About a year ago I bought an art print called Valon tuoma, which means "brought by light". It is made by a Finnish graphic artist from the city of Lahti which is situated about an hour's drive or an hour's train trip away from the capital, Helsinki. Unfortunately I have temporarily mislaid the little informational paper with facts about the artist who produced this work and I can not quite make out the name of the artist from the signature. Shame on me.

Regardless of that I am still going to show it because I am filled with motherly proud of this gorgeous work of art. Motherly because I finally got appropriate frames for it. They are made of some luscious dark red/brown wood and they have lovely old-looking metal decorations around them. I guess if I cleaned them they would be more like silver but I quite fancy that darker shade.

Little patina is so romantic goth, isn't it?

As you probably know, when printing graphics each print will be slightly different from the others and the last of the series can be of completely different shade of a color (if there are like 200 prints). My brought by light is 3/6. That means there were only six of them made and it is the third one of the series.

In the art shop there was also the first one of the series but its colors were slightly more warm, so I decided to have the third one. The colors felt more night-like. Maybe the ominous warmth could have been interpreted as some nuclear fallout and unhealthy radiation but I like cold shades more than warm ones. Wine or ruby red is the only exception. Of course I do not loathe warm colors but I would not wear them unless I had a good amount of black fabric shielding me from them. ;)

I wanted the frames to be somewhat old. I found these from a flea-market. They costed about 13 euros and they were a bargain. Inside the frames was a painting of some sort of a small palm tree in a pot. It was so hideous that if I had tried to photograph it my camera's lens would have shattered.

On the back side was a thick layer of tape around the edges to keep the disgusting palm tree inside. I tore them off only to find out that there were 25 nails keeping the back lid still. Overdoing it, much?

After some powerful curse words I finally got it open.

The artwork was slightly smaller than the frames so I decided to buy a regular black paperboard as a background. It was a tad too long so I cut it. Work in progress to be seen here:

The end result is here. I really like it. The paper on which the picture is printed is slightly curly, so you can see sort of small waves on the paper. Please click the photo for larger view!

I adore this work. The skeleton figure in the middle of snowy forest. Macabre, intimidating and sublime.

By the way, it was really hard to try to take photos from an angle the reflections would not spoil the photo! 7/10 performance, I'd say.

Next up: Some highlights from my trip to Dublin and then Creepy Reads Review about some disturbing fairy tales by Brothers Grimm!