BUTTERFLIES FOR THE WALL

I got a roll of a classic Finnish wallpaper I've always liked and wanted to put up somewhere: Perhonen (Butterfly)! It will come up on one wall in Dag's room, which is still in the making (quite a long in-the-making, I know. It's not as if he's in a hurry to move out of our bedroom any time soon you know, and I just haven't gotten around to empty and change the messy study yet...)


The butterfly wallpaper was designed by Ritva Kronlund for Pihlgren & Ritola. The cherry blossom wallpaper that's one of my favourites and the snowflake- one I  had a few flats ago are also designed by Kronlund. I scout wallpapers all across the internet but always end up getting all of them (well, almost) from Tapettitalo (that carry all the old P&R wallpapers) in the end!


Perhonen has been in production for decades. It is labelled as a 50's wallpaper but I am not sure weather it was designed so far back or in the 70's, as most of her famous ones are from then. There is also a rather intensive black version available of the butterflies.

THE BROWN ROOM

There is one room downstairs in the farm house, behind the door with the chipped paint, that you have not seen that much of. Well, anything of really. A room that at some point will become a proper study & guest room.

The past year it has been full of left ocrs from the renovation as well as old and nice and old and ugly furniture without a place for their own. Plus Eddi's windsurfing gear and geology stuff an my dead plants I tried to keep alive in there during winter.

We've aimed to fix it up to level one every free weekend this year we'e had but so far no luck...

It will however turn out great when it's  done, eventually. For now it has no electricity and an ugly plastic carpet on the floor which I to start with, before getting it properly done (that'd be level one), intend to cover with lots and lots of rag rugs.


It has the nicest light in the house with windows in two directions and old wallpaper that is both yucky and pretty at the same time.

WHO IS THE FAIREST OF THE LARKS? / THE BEDROOM WALLPAPER

Whenever I post something from our bedroom in the city flat I get the question where our wallpaper is from. So lets give it a post of it's own then shall we.

The wallpaper is called "Ken Kiuruista Kaunein",  translating "who is the fairest of the larks?"

It was designed by Finnish ceramic artist and designer Birger Kaipiainen (1915-1988) in the 1950's.

I had seen bits of it before, online and the test sheets they have of it, and always wondered what the hell was going on there; if you look at just a detail of it it's kind of weird and the birds sort of ugly. Well, yeah. But once I saw a picture of the wallpaper on a wall I was totally smitten by it. It builds up a beautiful pattern.

Well of course, this is really the way it is with all wallpapers, you have to see them at large to really get an idea. Some patterns that look great when seen as a detail in a catalogue may be a disappointment on the wall; personally I don't like it with decorative patterns that although they are made to appear asymmetrical turn "stripy" when put together, for example.

Ken Kiuruista Kaunein comes in four color variations. It was made for and is still made by PR-tapetit / Tapettitehdas and you can get it from Tapettitalo, where is where we have bought all our wallpapers from. (I'm also assuming that you by now figured out tapetti is Finnish for wallpaper.)

 

More known than the beautiful larks is the wallpaper "Kiurujen Yö" (The Night of the Larks), which is said to be the most famous wallpaper in Finland. It is, obviously, also by Birger Kaipiainen and comes in many colors; the picture above shows two. (Image from Kotivinkki magazine.)

(And btw by now you probably also notice you can fit whole sentences into just two words in Finnish. Or, in fact, one. End of mini-langauge lessons.)

Another little btw, there's an exhibition of Birger Kaipiainen's ceramics at Emma, the Espoo Museum of Modern Art, which is just around the corner from us.

BOTANICAL

Among those things you plan forever and one day actually get done, or almost:

Apart form the raspberry wallpaper that had been lurking in my head for years I also had the idea forever of framing old pages from a biology book and putting them up in the countryside kitchen. The past years I've seen such posters and pages more and more in magazines and interior blogs. I had checked out plenty on etsy and such, both old and newly printed, but the whole thing kind of lingered.

Now I don't even want such for the (new) kitchen anymore, I have new plans for what to put on those walls, but some time ago I stil grabbed the old idea and ordered a few random pages from an old botanical book via Lundagård. Will put these pictures elsewhere, somewhere.

At about the same time Ikea started selling similar pictures too, already framed... well of course they did. (pic from Ikea)

Sandberg also has a wallpaper with the theme, Botanica. Beautiful, but for a swooning 407e (!!? read it in a mag but must have been a typo?) per roll I think I'll just stick to old book pages in frames. From ikea. Or glue them directly to the wall like that. Why not, if the space allows it? (pic form Sandberg)

RASPBERRY

I love it when you have an idea you've been waiting to realize forever and then you finally get around doing it and it turns out just as you planned; right - we put up wallpaper in the small hall between the back porch, kitchen, laundry closet and bathroom-in-the-making.  As it is pretty much just a walk-trough space with four doors no one ever really stays in I wanted the walls to be bright, colorful and heavily patterned, kind of like a piece of candy you can spot from the other more calm rooms. En karamell.

And I wanted it to be this exact wallpaper, Vadelma (translated: raspberry). Kind of looking like something people would have put up during a previous renovation in the sixties that we would have discovered under the eighties wall paper we torn away.

Like most of our other wall paper also Vadelma is from Tapettitalo, a company that sells old and classic patterns from past decades and centuries as well as vintage dead stock of old their factory rolls. The doors are old, we've moved them around a bit from room to room, opening to opening.

I know this post totally makes it seem like I would have been putting these up but I so did not this time (phew), the handy men and Eddi did it.


Bonus pic: You can see the bathroom coming along in the background. But that is still for laters, as is the kitchen... but looking pretty good so far, right?

UP THE WALLS

This summer there were days when it literally would not stop pouring down. I am not the one to start climbing up the walls if I have to spend a lot of time inside, but sometimes it's nice with something else to do than spending the whole day by the world wide web (it's crazy but true) or reading a book. Those rainy days might just be what you need to get those things on your want-to-do-list done; so I made some pictures for the wall with cheap IKEA-frames and a piece of wallpaper I always wanted to use, but had no actual use for.

As wallpapers usually have a nice texture it's nicer not to hide them behind the (plexi-)glass, so I glued the paper on the plexi instead of the cardboard. I intended to put a layer of varnish on the "paintings" too to be able to stand the moist but then decided to skip that phaze and hang these in the hallway instead. Which was good as I found the old tin ad for the bahtroom instead.

IT TAKES A RAINY DAY (OR TWO)

It's been a real deluge over here lately, with water pouring down like never before. For days. But bad weather does bring a little good with it too;  we're getting some things at home off the 'to do'-list in the countryside house.

We changed the knobs on the ikea-drawer to porcelain ones. It's an easy way to update or personalize a piece of furniture.


I put bigger more decorative ones on the small drawers on top, and plain, smaller ones on the rest.
Halfway trough I noticed it would look pretty fun with different knobs on all levels, like here, but it wouldn't really suit the over-all style of the room so I changed them all the way trough. But perhaps somewhere else?

In the background you can see some traces of our other project...


... Which was putting wallpaper on the closet door. This wallpaper used to be on one of the walls in the room.  I like it, but it did not really suit the room (the floor and the wood of the window, which would have needed to be painted in order to go along with the wallpaper), so after we painted it over I thought it'd be nice to still use it as a detail. I will put it inside the linen cabinet too, once we get one up here.

I also changed the knobs on the bedside tables to the same ones as in the drawer, for a unison feel in the bedroom.

ABOUT SOME STUFF

(Yes, I know, I am among the more creative out there when it comes to headlines.)


We actually have two more rooms in our flat; the study and the kids' room, but they were not tidy enough to snap pics of.
(They are to the right in the pic, before our bedroom. The birdie-bathroom is to the left.)

Anyway, I intended to write about the armchairs and the wallpaper and other things quite many of you have asked about in the previous post about home already , but wasn't up to it then. So here goes now instead:

The wall paper is called Ken Kiuruista Kaunein ("Who is the Fairest of the Larks") and was designed by Birger Kaipiainen in the 1950's. It comes in a four colour variations and has a sister design in Kiurujen Yö ("Night of the Nightingales"). You can get it at Tapettitalo. They have an English translation of the site, and maybe, maybe, it could be possible to order abroad also.


My make up table cost me 20 euros from the finnish auction site Huuto.net, along with the stool. I also got our living room table trough that site. The stool was just a frame to which I build a seat of some left over wood from the renovation and a piece of foam, some fabric and ribbon. The lace is cut from a waxed cloth. The string shelves in the living room I spent a small fortune on, but the one here in the bedroom and the one in the study I got from my grandparents (they left one here in the flat for me) and from my mom and dad's garage.


I have the same waxed lace cloth on the shelves in the wardrobe too. I have received a lot of request to show pictures of my wardrobe during the years. Here's just a tiny sneak peek; I keep my clothes in here but also on a rack and then in the mini walk in closet in the study (among with lots of burlesque outfits and props, winter clothes and summer sandals, tools and other more undefined items…). The bedroom closets are original; I repainted them white on the outside and painted them soft pink on the inside and changed the old not-so-functional shelves into an Elfa drawer system.


(Bonus cat and cabinet radio-pic.)


A lot in our livingroom happens to be old and vintage, but the arm chairs are in fact not. They are a classic model from Finnish furniture comapy Asko that has been produced since way back. I am not sure if it has been in production constantly, but anyway, it is at least now. The chair is called Helena. It comes in a wide range of fabrics; I originally wanted a pair in a soft woven gray fabric, but one such would've cost more than the two deep red together so red it was. And better that way actually. There is also a similar chair called Richard in a classic fifties design with more patterned fabrics.

BIRDS IN THE BATHROOM

While I think it's ok to put a little kitsch or some extra cuteness in the kitchen, and a lot of flair in decorating the bedroom, I like to keep the rest rather simple. But when it comes to the bathroom I think you can go as kitsch or crazy as you like.

Without ever really choosing a theme it became birds for ours, they just started to gather. And why not - I like small birds (and feed them secretly from the window although our building has banned it).

So let's step in and check out the birdies!


The door is covered in this wallpaper, from Pip Studio. I love it.


I have a bird poster from Papaya! on the wall. And a little tweeter on the paper holder too.


And birdie hand towels, also from Pip Studio.


I've attached bird cage mirrors on the otherwise rather dull shower cabinet. The doors slide so sometimes the bird cages are in front of each other too. Which looks nice. The adhesive mirrors are from Modcloth.

CURTAINS

Slowly and certainly the flat is becoming closer to getting ready. Some things get done easily, but others take time and a few remain eternal projects that will never be finished...

I had a hard time choosing curtains for our living room as I had no idea what to search for nor could I really find any good enough inspiration online or in magazines. in such cases is only one thing left to do - wait, and let whatever it is you are looking for find you instead. And then one day indeed I stumbled upon a fabric was just right.



I sports the same kind of patterns as our living room wallpaper. Not indentical, and in stronger colours, but with the same kid of theme.


The wallpaper is called Bownet, designed by Jukka Pellinen in the 1950's and is now in production again. It comes in four colour variations and is sold at Tapettitalo. Our bedroom wallpaper, designed by Birger Kapiainen in the 50's, is also from there. I know you can call and order in Finland, so perhaps it is possible also from abroad...


I made cushion covers form what was left of the fabric.
'Now if I wuld just manage to tidy up it would look really really nice here at home...