Decorating an office

I swear I'll be able to get (more) photos up eventually. For now, however, you'll have to envision the design aesthetic I'm attempting to force on this island house--or, at least, the room where the bills get paid, my internet procrastinating happens, and the work is supposed to get done. I was inspired by a place in Los Angeles where I used to get my haircut, and various tattoo shops I've visited over the years.

So far, the paint job is awesome. It's purple. It might be a good sign that the paint store guy took one look and said, "That's kind of the color we painted my kid's room." Then again, it could also mean that I have an office fit for a 7-year-old girl who likes unicorns (nothing wrong with that, just not exactly the look I was going for).



But it would take a very special 7-year-old indeed who wants Fred on her walls. Who's Fred?

This is Fred.



The Boyfriend thinks Fred is scary, so he (Fred, not The Boyfriend) is officially banned from the bedroom and his office. Also, this is the picture that I want front and center. It's a lithograph (maybe?) of Magellan getting killed by the natives.



And, yes, by the way, that is the super amazing vintage vinyl floor tile from the eighties that runs throughout the entire house. I've decided to call it faux neo-Spanish colonial.

In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out how to cover the gnarly air conditioner. There's an article here that describes some cover-up techniques. This should at least confirm that I do indeed have dumb yuppie concerns like figuring out how to incorporate the window box into a coherent design vision.

I have decided to go with a custom-painted big screen painted by yours truly, something like six feet tall and about four feet wide, with a giant freehand paint job of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe. Or the Santa Maria Kamalen, which in this case requires me to paint Santa Maria coming towards Guåhan accompanied by two giant crabs with votive candles on their backs. You can read about that legend here. I better start working on sketches of crustaceans. Life drawing class only covered naked chicks and dudes, inconveniently NOT posed on the backs of crabs. Useless!