More stuff for my gothic bathroom

The bathroom is finished!

I finally bought the black towels (two hand towels and one bath towel).  Gorgeous and soft, I already washed them and they are ready to be used. 

I also rearranged the sink.  I took out the bottle holding the incense sticks, to make more space, and painted black the pot of the cactus.

I also bought a votive candle in a black mate glass; I placed the matchbox near it, for when it has to be used.  For the decoration, I used a quite old Martha Stewart Halloween Scrapbook paper.  And I painted the scent diffuser in black as well.  From now on, I will just pour the new recharge in it.

 And this is the final state of the coffin shelf.

The little bottles are just for decoration.  The center shelf holds a glass painted tupper that contains medical stuff; the bottle at the bottom shelf is empty for now.  

I also received a fantastic bathtub coffin tray:

I have to use it in my other bathroom, which is where we have the spa tub.  But the tray is great and I absolutely love it!  You can see that I added a black candle here as well...

And with this, my gothic bathroom is finished!  I am very happy how well it all turned out, and I had fun with the decorating and the DIY projects.

Going back to the basics: Paint it black!

If you have been with me for a while, you already know that I am a goth.  Well, lately this aspect of my personality is coming back, slowly but surely.

Some months ago I stumble across, totally by chance, Aurelio Voltaire's YouTube channel. The first time I heard about Voltaire (many years ago, when I still lived in the US) it was regarding some books that he had written: What is goth, and Paint it Black.  I absolutely loved them!  They were written with charm, wit, and they were so much fun!  I actually learnt some things that would help my house had a gothic flair.  Some of them I still use to this day.

In any case, he has a series of videos about how to enhance your house to have a more gothic appearance in his channel.  He teaches with tutorials, gives references and ideas for you to make your own projects.  Well, since I do not live alone, I cannot actually transform the whole house, but there is a room that I could change slightly because I am its main user.   It was one of our bathrooms.  He has several videos showcasing how he transformed and decorated the bathroom in his apartment, and I made good use of them.  Since I am renting, there is limited things that I can do, but for very little money I gave the bathroom a more gothic flair.

I started by changing the pictures on the wall.  Up until now, there had been many themes.  It started with some marine drawings (a whale, a lighthouse, a boat, and a quote about the beach); then I switched to ballet pictures, both color, and black and white.  And then, 2 pairs of pictures of Monstera leaves - to give the room a spa feeling.  

But obviously, these would not do.  So I started by buying some more adecuate posters to showcase.  I got them all from Artis Mortis Gallery, which has a fantastic selection of downloadable decor:

 

Love them!

But upon installing them, I realized that the frames were not good.  Very, very simple, we needed more of a black accent against the wall, which is off-white.  So I purchased locally 4 frames, and this was the result:

Much, much better!

Then, I rescued a floral arrangement that I made long ago, and placed it in a small vase on the sink:

 

Then, some more decorations.  I followed one of Voltaire's videos to make some nice ApotheScary bottles. If you want to have some of the labels that appear in the video you can get them here (just scroll down and you will see them).  Also, I purchased a black soap pump and a 3D printed coffin incense burner.  Voltaire also sells coffin incense burners in his store.

The label in the bottle you can get here.  I changed the letters though

But you cannot have a gothic bathroom without some coffin shaped shelf.  So I went ahead and bought one that measures 50 cm high, so it's quite big!  I installed it on the wall just this morning:

For the decorations, I made a bunch of bottles following Voltaire's tutorial.  You can watch a video on how to make cool matchboxes here.  I am working on a coffin-shaped box right now.

 

And of course, we could not forget some very special duckies!  These have been with me for years:

Say hello to Joe, Lord Ruthven and Agatha

I am still waiting on some more decorations for home; I will update as soon as they arrive.  I still have to buy a couple of black towels, but that will be next week.  But I am so happy with the results so far!

Sources of inspiration

Sometimes the Muse can strike from the most strange places...

It had been some time since I wanted to try and make a pharmacy/apothecary/laboratory supplies cabinet.

My husband is a scientist, and I can tell you, a messy table/bench is the last thing you need if you want your work to be successful; dirt can spoil many hours of work if you are dealing with cells, and a glass left in the wrong place can finish in the floor with all your precious DNA inside. So I am not very fond of cluttered furniture, not even when it is in miniature. That's why all my cabinets are so tidy - blame it on the hours that we had to spend in the lab when experiments don't come out OK. I figure that if tidiness is necessary in real scale, more so in the cabinet of a skilled witch or wizard. Think about the protocols that are described in magic books and that you have to follow to the last detail... Anyway, the idea of the mad scientist or Victorian chemist have been going around my head, but I was not sure about how to bring them to reality.

Yesterday I put on a CD that I had not listened to in a long time. It's from Attrition, and it's called "All mine enemys whispers". It is inspired by the story of Mary Ann Cotton, who was sentenced to death in 1873 for killing children with arsenic. Attrition's Martin Bowes is a descendant of the arresting officer, Police Sergeant Tom McCutcheon.

And then the vision stroke me! I saw a dark chemist in London, where this woman went to buy the poison; the unsuspected pharmacist who sold it to her; the neatness of the filled jars in the shelves...

Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary, Alexandria

Right now I am on the hunt for different kinds of glass jars to fill the cabinets, and I am already working on the labels, which will be, of course, reproduction of real vintage pharmacy labels.

I hope to have a new line of apothecary cabinets, parallel to the magic cabinets. Science is as much part of my world as it is fantasy. How contradictory the human race can be... Will you come with me on my journey?