You’re making toilet paper?

NO, toilet paper is not the craft of the month (there’s almost a very bad pun in that sentence).

This project, however, was fraught with peril.

The first issue is that I’ve built it up for a loooong time; the poorly named “memory lane project.”

I’ll tell you up front, the in-person reviews are a little mixed. For some, it could be another coffee table storage ottoman tale of “just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”

But I had this crazy idea…..

Mr and I have been reinventing our house for a while, and one project has led to another, and another, etc. Whether good or bad, our house is acquiring a different vibe these days since we changed up our dark floor for a light one.

One of the rooms we decided to revisit was the back hall powder room. We realized that only trick or treaters and FedEx drivers use our front door, so we thought we’d spiff up the back hall for a better first impression. I mean, visitors are usually met with an impressive pile of shoes, but we’re revisiting that too.

As always, I poured over Google and Pinterest for inspiration and thought I’d like to try decorating the room in “toile.”

(So as not to confuse our mots francais, the word “Toile” is significantly different than “toilette” even though I intend to use the former in the same room that contains the latter.)

Toile is actually short for “Toile de Jouy,” a type of traditional fabric imprinted with monochromatic renderings of scenes along a particular theme. This image is a Chinoiserie toile from the 18th century, featuring fanciful interpretations of Far Eastern culture.

This one is by the same artist, John-Baptiste Huet. It’s actually a fabric about fabric (who said those 18th century dudes didn’t have a sense of humor) and includes 16 different images depicting how textiles were created:

“Midi de la France” is interesting because the engraved images were overlaid on a more modern looking background print:

Traditional toile involves pastoral images, outdoor scenery, people working, playing, dancing. (I’ve also seen less happy prints where the workers don’t look as though they elected to be working.) There are toile depictions of tropical scenes, architecture, and all kinds of things.

Toile prints are often rendered large in scale, and can dominate a space. Decorators frequently repeat the print on walls, windows, bedding and furniture…all in the same room! No longer confined to fabrics, these kinds of prints adorn everything from dishware, bedding, dog collars, totebags, clothing and even bathroom sinks.

So, yes! A toile print would be a fun thing to put on the walls in my back hall powder room.

THEN I started to look at toile wallpaper for sale on line, and discovered that VERY fun things were happening with this traditional print:

Like alien abductions…

Or recreational activities for adorable amphibians…

Artist Karen Matchette of artisan wallpaper company Red Disk Studio created toile prints of Buffalo, NY, architectural landmarks, and also Buffalo homes.

And I also encountered plenty o’chatter regarding Flavor Paper’s popular Brooklyn Toile, inspired by Beastie Boy Mike Diamond’s love of Brooklyn…

OKAY, so by NOW you might have figured out where this is heading.

I decided I wanted a Crystal Beach toile….and since it didn’t exist, I had to make it myself!

And that would be great IF i was a talented illustrator.

Or if I had ever SUCCESSFULLY used Photoshop.

Or knew the first thing about how to create repeating patterns.

And so began my year-long journey…..

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Lest this post becomes YOUR year-long journey…I decided to split it up….and hence, this story is…

To Be Continued.

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(Gotta love a good cliffhanger that doesn’t have a cockadoodie car.)

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