Study/Studio Re-Decoration Part 1: Feature Wall

In a much earlier post ::here::, my study had bright purple walls, vinyl decals, etc. I felt it was too kitschy for my current tastes, and started redecorating. It has been a slow process, as decorating is costly, and there are other parts of our house that have needed our attention more urgently. The room isn't finished yet, but it's pretty close. As it's quite a complicated, multi-purpose room. 

Featuring the Wall

My feature wall, also termed a 'display-wall' or 'gallery-wall' is probably the part of my study that most embodies the aesthetic that I am aiming for with my study. It was initially a black wall with silver Valspar glitter for some sparkle. I repainted it after the initial surface got scuffed up by me reposition the pictures, knocking it with furniture etc. For the repaint, I wanted to have a slightly green colour, partly to balance the purple walls, and partly because I just like green. I couldn't find the shade that I wanted in the range my local DIY shop carried, and I had tried some testers, so I bought another of a more neutral black tester I liked and mixed it with a black that was more like a very dark blue-green and blended the two at home with more glitter to get a colour that I liked. The glitter shimmers somewhat green, rather than silver, because of the green dye. Yes, I am that finnicky! 

The display wall 

My collection of frames are mostly from TK Maxx and Dunelm Mill, bought before I decided to drastically reduce my purchase of new items. The moon painting that I did was professionally framed by Riverside Gallery in Inverness, and the large mirror with the swirly frame was bought second-hand in in Inverness' PDSA branch. I like the silver gilt finish on these different frames because quite a few have some texture to them, more than just a metallic finish. Some of them also have some dark dry-brushing in the cervices, or a wash - things to make them have a little more life on them. I think things like texture, some variance in colour, etc. quite helpful for making the arrangement more dimensional and interesting. They're not all the same silver, not the same level of metallic finish, they're diverse, but also - hopefully - harmonious too. These ones were bought like that, but in our bedroom I've repainted and varnished frames to try and get the same concept.

Very terrible photograph of my wall with bad lighting (and wonky stars).

Terrible grainy photos are what happen when I take photos on my own phone.

I managed to align the dado rail along the bottom of the photograph, but because of perspective distortion, lens distortion, etc. there's more slope along the top of the pictures than real life, however the wonky stars are all my own fault; I haven't got the black paint all the way up to the ceiling partly because I can't reach up and partly because I know that along the top there will be cornice, however unfortunately I didn't leave that gap evenly, and I matched the stars to the wonky edge instead of the ceiling. I regret this. I will stencil in some more high up stars at the right edge, and more low stars at the left end and try and level this out. I will wait until I have the coving up, however, so I have a good visual straight edge to match things up to. It's really important to have a good visual marker, especially when you're dealing with something big and you're painting up close. Also, it will never be truly straight when working in a building like mine, and I need to give the visual illusion of straightness when the walls and ceilings aren't straight. 

Antique sword. Also a close-up of the wallpaper and the orb string-lights. 

I collect bladed weapons - what I really like are swords (there is another one in my study) but I have a couple of knives. I would like more fine daggers, especially antiques. Currently I don't have the income to collect antiques right now. I have considered selling off some of my collection because of financial situation, but there are complex laws about blade sales in Scotland so I'm keeping them, plus I remember how much work I put into saving up to buy them in the first place. There's something fascinating about the history behind objects: for example, the sword pictured is Italian, I think from the 1870s, perhaps later, and while it is displayed in its scabbard, there are beautiful engravings - somewhat scuffed - that tells a bit about the military background of the sword, and it also has dings along the spine of the blade that look like it may well have actually used in a sword-fight, or at least in defence of another bladed weapon (the context could be all sorts of things!). I also think it fascinating how much beauty and art that is often invested in embellishing what is primarily a weapon. I am interested in H.E.M.A, used to do modern sport fencing, as well having had a few kendo lessons, so I have an interest from a historical swordsmanship perspective, too. I think a lot of people think it's creepy, or that I have some murderous intent - I joke that I'd never use my collection to stab anyone because they're too precious to get blood on (true, honestly. Even skin oils are bad for them!) and 'creepy' is a subjective judgement. These are art objects to me, even if that is not what they were made as - but they were made with craft, care, and creative skill.

I repainted this moon. The camera angle is really awkward.

Good camera because I used Raven's phone instead of my own... 

Moon iconography is a prevalent in my study - mostly in my near my Book-Nook and meditation space because one of my ways of remaining in tune with nature is doing devotions according to the lunar cycle at the meditation altar in my Book-Nook. My next blog post will have more details about my Book-Nook. This particular ornament was bought as a yellow glossy moon with the slogan "Sleep tight, sweet dreams through the night" painted on it, so I repainted it to fit in better with my study décor. The original ornament was £1.50 on eBay. I tried to make it a slightly adorable sleepy moon. It's hung up just by the entrance to the Book-Nook. 

Sword, mirrors, picture frames, art. 

I have, since these pictures were taken, got more pictures, and pictures I like better, to fill the frames. I'm aiming for more fine-art prints, as well as my own artwork. It is an ongoing process, but having the frames first means I can arrange the wall and then find pictures to fit on the wall, which I find is easier than when I have had the pictures first and then tried to find a place for them (situation with our living room). A lot of the prints are repurposed greetings cards and I'm eyeing up some Caspar David Friedrich and Salvator Rosa postcards.

The moon-phase banner was a Winter Solstice gift from Raven. He bought it for me from someone on Etsy and I have been asked on Instagram where it is from, but unfortunately he can't remember where. The moon-phase garland along the top was from SpookyBox Club when I was subscribed, and I painted and assembled it myself. 

Moon phase banner. 

I think the picture above is pretty useful for illustrating how the curtains tie together the aesthetic for the main area of the study/studio. and screens off the Book-Nook. I am not always proud of my decorating decisions, and often it takes more than one go to create what I visualise in my head, or for me to realise that what I visualised doesn't work out so well in real life, but I really like how the damask voile curtains go with the wallpaper and monochrome wall. Also, this is possibly the only photograph I have with the stand-lamp in it.

Terrible, terrible photo; why I'm part-exchanging my phone for a better one.

If you can see anything at all, it's an old photo of the Book Nook before the altar

I will be doing a few more posts about this room specifically, and then more about specific projects, especially furniture repaints. I will also chart more of decorating the rest of the house, although not all of the house is in a particularly Gothic aesthetic, so I will be focusing on the more Gothic-looking rooms. As you can probably tell from the square photographs, most of these pictures are or were on Instagram, where my accounts are @domesticatedgoth for this sort of content and @architecturallygothic for ruins, cathedrals, churches, monuments, and other spooky or pretty buildings. 

Domesticated: Study Decor

Originally, when I set up Domesticated Goth, I intended it to be about crafts, homemaking, cooking and decorating - a blog to give people ideas on how to make Gothic things for their house, small art projects, etc. Unfortunately, I moved into a rental apartment that had strict rules on decorating, and that put a real dampener on that idea, and instead the blog evolved into a more general Gothic & Goth lifestyle bog, with Gothic tourism, art projects, accounts of my involvement with Gothic Lolita, photography, the odd musical post (I am terrible at writing about music intelligently) and discussion of the Goth subculture itself. 

Three years ago, however, Raven and I bought a house - we didn't buy it outright, we have a mortgage on it, and it's not a very big house, but it's where we call home. Over that time, we've been decorating. Not all of the house is Gothic (the living & dining rooms are open-plan with each other, and have a more earthy, slightly witchy sort of feel, with lots of greens, dark wood and natural and Pagan motifs) and some rooms are more Gothic than others. There's also still a lot of work to be done, so many rooms are still very incomplete; we don't have much money, so we can't hire people to decorate for us, and we barely have the time and the money to do it ourselves, so it has been dragging on. However, my study is the smallest room that isn't a bathroom, and therefore it's one of the more complete.

Spiderweb candelabra and skulls are still quite 'Hallowe'en'

My initial idea was to decorate it in a deliberately kitschy, Hallowe'en-esque sort of way - LOTS of skulls, cartoon bat decals on the windows and ceilings, and quite a vivid purple (Valspar's 'Purple Storm'). However, having had the room for 3 years, I feel that style both feels a bit overbearing and doesn't really reflect my personal aesthetic any more, as I've definitely got further and further into a Romantic, Gothic and very Victorian/anachronistic sort of aesthetic, and I want my study to feel more like it is inhabited by a vampire from an Anne Rice novel than one from a Tim Burton movie. I've still got the vinyl decals on my window because I simply can't get them off, and I think I'm going to have to use a heat-gun to remove them!

My window, with its bat stickers as well as SunSeal mandalas
There are a lot of pentagrams and stars hanging up in my window.

Some of the vinyl decals, those of Gothic architecture and Gothic arches, I will keep. I feel like it's still in keeping with the reproduction 1820s Gothic Revival wallpaper of window tracery, especially the arcade of grey/silver arches - something I need to get a good photograph of! I'm in two minds about the vinyl decals of buildings. I'm not sure if they are too cartoonish to look good, or if their simplicity is a good thing, or whether they should go entirely, or whether I should carefully take a scalpel to them and give them a few more details to make them a bit classier (including making some of the Romanesque arches into Gothic ones!). I don't want to make my study too Victorian either; my 1960's house doesn't have high enough ceilings to really pull off the Victorian look without feeling claustrophobic; the spaces are too horizontal. 

The rounded arches and lack of details annoy me!

I have two favourite sections of my study so far, my 'book nook' reading corner, and my feature wall. My study has a weird L-shape, with a short stubby bit over the staircase, and an above-the-stairs cupboard that I store manga and art materials in. In the stubby area, I have a book-case, a corner unit, a wicker peacock-back chair (inspired by Morticia Addams) and a two-handed broadsword! The broadsword is a claymore, the distinctive variation from Scotland. 

My book nook. Chair pulled out to get a good photograph.

The bookcase is all non-fiction. The top shelf is architecture books, the middle shelf history, culture and anthropology, and the bottom shelf is for big A4+ size books, mostly art, but a few history ones too. It's not big enough for all of my art and architecture or history books, but it's got a few. More shelving is actually something my study desperately needs, and is something I've been working on. Some friends of mine are moving to Scandinavia, and have a lovely double-Gothic-arch bookcase that I would like to buy off them, and I've put two new above-door shelves up in my study, one above the main door for ornaments, and one above the cubby door for notebooks (you can see a bracket for it, sans shelf, in the photo above). I'm awaiting some more shelves in our bedroom, so that I can move all my fiction books out of their stacks under my study desk! I've also got a stack of art books under my study desk, and another stack of art books next to the book-case, all of art books too big to go on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. I've got a few shelves above my desk, but they're for art materials, not books. 

Cubby visible in mirror!

My cubby needs a lot of work; it already has shelves, but they're too broadly spaced out, but too close to simply put an additional shelf in between - I need to take the existing shelves out and put new ones in.  There's also a crack where the back board of the cupboard has come away from the wall, and I'm not sure what the best way to deal with that is, as the problem appears to be lack of an allowance for the expansion and contraction of the building. I think perhaps an L-shaped piece of wood, attached to the brick wall and not the board, will cover the gap while allowing the different materials to expand and contract sensibly. I'm not sure whether the back wall of the cubby should have wallpaper or be painted, and if so, what colours. I also want to save up to get an electrician in, both to move the main overhead light at the conjunction of the two parts of the study, but also to install an additional light in the ceiling of the cubby, so I can see what's in there better. 

The purple and gold book is actually a Harry Potter themed lamp! They're available ::here:: and at the time of writing, they're on sale below half price at £35 (hence why I could afford one!). I'm a bit of a Harry Potter fan, so this was perfect. If there had been a silver on purple version, I would have loved that even more. I had the cover text customised to 'Liber Lux' - book of light (probably slightly wonky Latin; it's been over 12 years since I studied Latin!). When you open it up, the pages light up, and create a lovely ambient glow. I put mine on a mini-lectern/book stand so I can use it while I'm letter-writing or whatnot.

My mini-bodhran and a Gods' Eye weave.

Another thing I use my study for is music practice. I have my bodhran and my doumbek, my fiddle and a whole lot of recorders (flûte à bec, not for recording music), whistles and flutes. Eventually I wish to move my harmonium (pedal organ) up into my study, but my staircase is steep and winding, and Raven and I alone are not strong enough to carry it upstairs; I think it's a four-person job, but not a four-person staircase! I'd like to get a piano for the living-room to sit where the harmonium currently is; I used to play, and my nice piano is at my father's house. 

Raven, in front of a resin crow figure from TKMaxx
The silver and black damask bag behind has love-letters he sent me.
The silver and black box below has letters from friends and family.

I also have a desk, which is where my computer sits, and where I do a lot of my art-work. I haven't taken any proper photographs of the desk itself, because currently my desktop is just some MDF (medium-density fibreboard) and I'd like to get something like some black sparkle formica to make desk-top. I've been looking at the wonderful geode-inspired resin art-work of ::Mrs ColorBerry:: (which is totally incredible; I seriously recommend checking it out!) and I'd like to learn to do something similar to make a cool poured-resin worktop for my desk, although I wonder how heavy that would be! Raven built my desk, and to get ornate table-legs, he cut some banister spindles down to size! 

Hand-painted skulls, and easy DIY project. Just prime then paint!

I do like skull motifs, even if they are sometimes a bit kitschy. These three are small skull decorations from Hallowe'en - £2 for a pack of 9 - which I repainted using nail-polish, to immortalise some of my favourite nail-polish combinations. The iridescent green and purple one is my favourite. These skulls are tiny, about and inch and a half high each. 

I love the Art Nouveau packaging

I love burning incense in my study, although it tends to leave an ashy, dusty mess around the burner. I keep the incense for my study (which has cheesy names like 'Werewolf's Bite' or 'Gothic Prayer') in that purple vase. I used to have dried roses in the vase, but they just disintegrated entirely. I love the Art Nouveau packaging for the 'Yesteryears' incense, so I keep that particular incense out on display. The wall faces on the window aperture are painted a lighter purple (I think it's called either 'Lightning Bolt' or 'Haunting Melody'; I can't remember which of those two I eventually settled on. More Valspar paint.) 

My favourite part of my study is the wall behind where I sit at my desk. I painted it black, with silver glitter dusted into the paint, and it is the feature wall I use to display art work. The art work is on rotation. Currently I've got a lenticular image of a crow on a skull, which I think is from Alchemy Gothic, and a postcard of a cat as Moriarty (having stolen the crown jewels). Half of the picture frames are from TKMaxx and Dunelm Mill, and the other half are thrifted. I'm starting to swap out the artwork for fine art images. Not really visible in this picture, but the image in the concentric rectangles frame at the upper left is a postcard of a Edward Burne Jones sketch  (it is of a woman looking down to her left, with a crown of golden leaves, done in chalks or pastels on a purple background, you can see a version ::here::). I'm going to hopefully fill all the frames with classic art soon, just need to accumulate prints/postcards at the right size. The picture of my father (at work, he's an archaeologist) on the far right is going to be re-framed in a black frame and moved to our bedroom, where we have a wall of friends and family pictures.

Display wall from the other angle, with sword.
Also note the Gothic Revival wallpaper in grey.

You may have noticed I have another sword. I collect them, especially antiques. The sword on my display wall is an antique officer's dress sword from the 1870s-1880s, from Italy, with a beautifully engraved blade. I love the duality of beautifully made weaponry; both artistic and aesthetic, yet designed for a lethal function. There are dents along the spine of the dress sword that indicate it's been used in some form of combat, and I wonder if someone fought a duel with it. It's definitely not a battle weapon (unlike say, a cavalry sabre). 

Unfinished wall with broken sconce; the mirror got shattered.

As you can see, this is not a complete over view of my study, and there is much left to do. I'm going to put a Gothic arched cabinet over my radiator, and I've got facings to put on the shelves over my door. I need to take more pictures of things I have added to my study, like the two new shelves. I still don't have a final floor covering; I've got a rug over floor-boards as I can't afford enough laminate flooring to cover my study yet (however I do have a roll of underlay!). I'm going to try and 3D print a single tile of cornice, then make a mould, and then use that to make dozens of foam ones, in order to get a repeating Gothic arch design to go around where the ceiling connects to the walls. I've already painted skirting board gloss black, but I can't put that in until I've got the laminate floor down. I still don't have enough shelving, as detailed above, and I still have lots of stuff in boxes. 

If my readers are interested, I can update the blog with progress on my study, and with how other rooms are decorated. Please comment if you want to see more of the Gothic décor in my house. There's the witchy living & dining area mentioned before, a French belle-epoque inspired aesethetic, just with added skulls, for our main bedroom, a more modern take on Gothic decor for the spare bedroom/games room and the kitchen. The upstairs hallway is going to be quite opulent, with some really fabulous wall-paper, but I'm still currently stripping the original wallpaper! 

I also suggest checking out two Gothic DIY blogs:
::GIY: Goth It Yourself::, which is currently on hiatus, but which has an archive of PLENTY of projects worth reading and looking at, and

::Me And Annabel Lee:: which is also full of wonderful Gothic decorating and craft ideas and tutorials.