Insides More 575 Wandsworth Road

More photos from 575 Wandsworth, mostly floor shots though because that was one of my favorite parts. The national trust site said he used polychrome paint to do the floor in imitation of kilim rug patterns. He painted designs around the existing kilim rug on the floor, and then did a continuation of some of the designs in the other rooms.

 The house's wood work was insanely beautiful but not something I could attempt to DIY on a Tuesday night, or er, how about ever. The floors though I could handle and would handle if I didn't rent them from someone else.

Also, not floor related but still really cool, two shots of his couches. The description said that they were  pine sofas (made by or adapted by Khadambi Asalache), held together with screws and glue. The cushioned seats were originally upholstered in brown fabric with yellow flowers but our man Khadambi re-upholstered them with two kilim rug fragments. I wish I was that good.

Photos via the National Trust.

Make This: Papel Picado

An Extremely Informal Historical Background on Papel Picado:

Papel picado or perforated paper in inglés is a traditional folk art found throughout Mexico and a zillion "my future wedding" boards on pintrest. Aside from being pretty I think it's very cool because the art actually dates the whole way back to the Aztec Empire. 

The Aztecs use to make a very primitive brown paper from tree bark that they cut into flags and banners like the one in the picture to the side While I'd give it 0 points for aesthetics, it gets 10 points for being historically awesome. 

Anyways, when Spain took over in the1500s they started importing tons of stuff from China, all of which came wrapped in colorful tissue paper. The Aztecs thought it was pretty cool and definitely more attractive than their tree bark paper so they made the switch to what they called papel de China. (Which fun fact, it is still called in Mexico to this day). Over the years the art and banner designs have become more advanced and evolved into what you see today.

Awesome Interiors with Papel Picado Banners

To Each His Home,  Bilyana Dimitrova

The Gingbread House

Aunt Peaches

Danielle Rubi

The Transcontinental Affair

Papel Picado DIY

1. Gather: a pattern, x-acto knife, stapler, tissue paper, string. glue and scissors

2. Stack six or more sheets of tissue and then fold them half so they form a book.

3. Staple the edges of your pattern to the tissue paper to keep it in place.

4. Cut. I used an x-acto knife for the center and scissors for the border details.

 5. Remove the staples and carefully separate the banners.

6.  Line the finished banners up and trim them if necessarily so that they are equal in size.

7. Fold flag at the top and center a piece of string into its crease.

8. Apply a thin line of glue at the top edge of each flag and then press the fold down.

9.  Hang up your banner while the glue dries then carefully slide flags into place.

10.  Pat yourself on the back and find a place to hang your cool new papel picado banner.

Here's how my turned out. My brother moved out a few days ago so I hung them on a empty wall in his room last night while the glue set and snapped a (very bad) photo.

Also, I almost forgot if you guys want to use my templates feel free. I couldn't find any printable patterns I liked so I ended up drawing out two patterns I found after a google search by hand. They are far from perfect but still worked.

 

Make This: Heart In Hand

I grew up in Pennsylvania and use to make these all the time as a kid. I have a ton of origami paper laying around so I decided to make one for my bulletin board. Its been a while though so I goggled hand in heart tutorials to get a refresher and was shocked to find there wasn't a single one. I fooled around with some paper last night and managed to recall most of the basics, so I decided to post this DIY.

What You Need:

• Two pieces a paper
• X-acto knife or razor blade
• Scissors
• Pencil and Ruler

Step 1: Cut out your hand shape

 I traced mine and then altered it to make it more attractive and added a bottom detail.

Step 2: Cut out a heart

 You can make your heart any size you want. I wanted mine to fit inside the hand and drew one accordingly. I did a zig-zag design along the edges. I didn't have a pair of those handy craft scissors so I cut it by hand.

Step 3: Decide on the detailing

You can get pretty creative with this though I didn't.  I just tried to replicated the orange one below, since I was a little uncertain if I would remember how to do it. 

A little side note: In boarding school, I finished most of my classes two years prior to my permitted graduation so I filled up my schedule gap with 4 hour painting classes every day. I had the most amazing teacher. When I first entered the class however I was a bit put off because we were not allowed to paint anything original. My teacher made us replicate paintings from famous artists: Van Gogh, Monet, Rembrandt, etc. It took me awhile but about twenty Van Gogh replicas later, I got the point. When you're new at something the best way to learn is often by replicating the things you love. You can't translate your ideas until you get down the technique and the best way to do that is learning through the artists that inspire you. Although papercutting is arguably less difficult than painting, I love this concept and wanted to share I think this Jim Jarmush quote sums it up perfectly. Major tangent, so back to the tutorial.

If you want to do the same detailing keep reading, if you want to skip this mess and keep the fingers simple skip to step 7

Step 4:  Draw some guidelines

I boxed out the areas I wanted the paper woven details to go. I used a ruler but I didn't measure the boxes out, you can just eye it. You want to keep your pencil marks pretty light so they are easier to erase later.

Step 4: Draw in block arrows

Again I used a ruler for some lines but I eyed this, you want to make them as even as possible but it doesn't need to be perfect. The more arrows you add the more intricate that finger details will look. I did: 

Pinky: 6 arrows
Ring, Middle and Pointer finger: 8 arrows
Thumb: 4 arrows
Bottom Detailing: 3 arrows each

Fill the top arrows, because we are going to cut them out completely in the next step.

Step 5: Cutting

This is probably the most tedious step. You are going use a razor or x-acto knife to cut your arrows.

The arrows at the very top arrow on the fingers and the bottom arrow on the bottom detailing are cut out completely. 

For the rest of the arrows you will need to make two v-cuts, a small v-cut up top and bigger v-cut beneath (If this is confusing check out step 6, it might help you visualize the cuts).

After you are done cutting very carefully erase your pencil lines. 

Step 6: Folding

Carefully fold all of the partially cut arrows back.

Once that's done gently push the raised tip of the point beneath the point of the the paper above.

Step 7: Adding the heart

Decide if you want your heart up or down, then flip it (it will be upside down on the hand). Gently crease both pieces of paper down the center

Now take a pair of scissors and make 5 diagonal cuts.

Uncrease your paper and flip the heart right side up. Starting at the bottom carefully slide the point of the cut on the hand through the cut in the heart

Slip the remaining hand cuts through the heart, when you're done it should look like this:

The heart is now attached so you are  free to do a little paper weaving. I did a very simple weave by pulling the purple points over the points of the hand tips, and then repeating that process by raising the white points beneath. 

Once your done with the weaving, you are finished. Mine turned out being way too big for my bulletin board but now that I remember how to make them it hopefully will be easier to make another smaller version. You can get pretty creative with these by weaving in paper bracelets, using colorful paper and possibly adding some paint. Have fun. I hope anyone looking for a heart and hand tutorial finds this helpful :)

Some of my favorite heart in hands for inspiration :

Inspired: Nailed it

Well kind of nailed it, I knew I would fail at this:

so I decided to do this:

and it turned out like this

Got that? It only took all night.