Videogame wall graphic

A long time ago Natalia mentioned I was preparing something for our apartment, and this was it - an image to paint on the wall of our living room, based on the evolution of video game consoles (or the controllers, in this case). I've always been a huge fan of video games, and for the past 5 years I've had my dream job - actually making them! So I wanted to make a sort of "tribute" to them, and here's how it went:

 I first gathered all the necessary reference photos from websites like Wikipedia, and then created a styled simple black and white version for each controller

 After printing them, came the hardest part...

 ... cutting them to create a stamp to paint on the wall! This was a lot of work.

 Using a projector to preview the image on the wall I placed the stamps on the right place, and I was ready to paint them with black paint, but...

 ... disaster! As soon as the brush touched the paper, it curled and bent, leaving a lot of stains and blurred shapes. I had to delete these failed tests with some leftover white paint and try again!

 Then Natalia had a brilliant idea - why not use a permanent marker? It's a bit more work, but the results are much better!

 So after a lot of tracing and careful painting, it was done!

And this is the result.

It was a lot more work than I was expecting, but I think that in the end it was worth it! I hope you like it, see you next time!

Project vs. Reality

It has been 10 months since we first started this blog to share with everyone our experience of arranging our apartment. And it was a lot of work, all the planning, construction, moving, packing, unpacking, assembling, cleaning, fixing, experimenting, and so on... but we think it was worth it! Recently we made a special photo session, and we thought this would be a great opportunity to look back at the initial 3D visualizations of our project and compare them with the final result. Well, when I say "final"... it's never final, it will be (hopefully) constantly evolving!

This post will contain a lot of images... we hope you enjoy!

We compare the old computer image...

 ... to the present photograph.

So... this is how it looks now! Of course, over time, surely many things will change... and we're looking forward to updating this blog with all of those things!

A House for Leeloo

About a year ago, when making the 3D images with the project of our apartment, we designed (just for fun) a little house for our dog which looked nice, and at the time we both thought "we should actually try to make it someday!" Well, we finally decided to do it!

 Here are all the necessary pieces...

 And after a lot of sawing, sanding, screwing and gluing...

 ... it was done!

 While making this authentic palace for her, Leeloo was obviously more interested in her ball :)

And this is the final result! And yes, she doesn't "trust" this house yet, but it's changing slowly!

All that's left according to the original plan is to paint it white... which will help hide the imperfections (and there are a lot of them)!

New Year's Eve

We celebrated the New Year with a group of friends, in a really nice house on the countryside. This was our friend Gusia's idea, as she spent a weekend there and loved it, and even wrote about it here

 There was lots of great food...

 ... and great dancing!

 And this is the house we were in! The next morning we went for a walk around the land.

 Our friend Kasia was definitely prepared for the cold weather... certainly better than me, I got a cold!

 Best wishes to Magiczny Domek from ZNplace! ;)

 The surrounding area was really beautiful.

We had a lot of fun!

Happy New Year, everybody!