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Decorating With Western Style Feng Shui

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One of the reasons that some people are reluctant to practice Feng Shui is because a lot of the “cures” and decorating tips in Feng Shui are a bit too Chinese looking for this culture. You don’t want your place to look like the lobby of a Chinese restaurant!

Thankfully there are equivalents in our culture that you can use that will bring you the same type of good fortune without looking too ethnic.

For instance it is a Feng Shui tradition to decorate with plastic or silk flowers in order to attract love and good energy into the home. To make this more contemporary looking use live flowers instead and choose modern looking vases instead of the red or green ceramic vases favored by Chinese Feng Shui enthusiasts. You can also use vases that have eight sides to attract good fortune as well.

The color red is lucky in Feng Shui but you can use different shades of it as accents all over your house. For instance to attract fame into your life you can just paint one South wall red and leave it at that. You can also use red light bulbs, which symbolize fire to light up the appropriate corners to attract love.

Pairs of ducks are used in Feng Shui to attract love. Traditionally a wooden pair would be placed somewhere in the home. You can find a more elegant answer in a work of art or you can be quite funky and use rubber ducks instead. Placing two happy looking yellow ducks in the southeast corner of your bathroom can help attract a love to you.

All things in pairs are said to strengthen the love and relationship vibe in your life. If you do not like the obvious look of some of the Feng Shui statues then consider hanging pictures of flowers that contain two buds in the Southeast corner of your home to attract love. Yet another idea is to hang pictures of birds. In your kitchen consider salt and pepper shakers that are figurines to you. Pairs of things symbolize love.

Copper vessels are used in Feng Shui to attract love. Hanging anything copper on your kitchen walls, including pots, pans and molds will help.

A remedy for bad luck in Feng Shui is to hang wooden flutes from the ceiling or from a beam that might be causing negative energy to prevail. However if you do not like the look of wooden flutes you can use any type of musical instrument that is hollow and makes noise instead.

You might find aquariums full of fish or fountains too fussy to deal with in your modern life. If that is the case then try putting lava lamps in place instead. Lava lamps symbolize the water element!

Remember that any time you want to use a lucky Asian symbol that there is probably a North American equivalent for it in art!

Decorating With Hand Blown Glass

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Hand blown glass is a popular commodity on the Eastern coast of the Southern United States. Perhaps the rustic look of the vases, jars and glasses made this way are reminiscent of the waves and wind of the beach. Hand blown glass also goes well with most cottage décor. Bowls, lampshades and other items give a cottage or summer home a touch of design that is both elegant and casual at the same time.

There are two types of hand blown glass: free blowing and mold blowing. The artisan craftsmanship is mostly found in examples of free blown glass which requires more handling, skill and design sense than glasses made in a mold. The best hand-blown glass is unique and one-of-a-kind.

Blown glass has been around since the last century BC. The technique involves dipping a metal tube into molten glass and then introducing air into the blob at the end of the tube to create a vessel. This is possible because molten glass gradually hardens as it cools.

Free blown glass is considered to be state-of-the art because it requires so much personal handling from the glass blower to look coherent. Short clay pipes are used for blowing glass and they still are. One pipe can be re-used several times to create several layers of glass in one piece.

The artisan creates the shape of the vessel by consistently blowing short puffs of air into the glass and rotating the pipe.

In this case the molten glass is placed at the end of a blowpipe which is then inflated into a wooden or carved mold. How the end product will turn out is more dependent on the mold than the actual skill of the glassworker.

There are two types of molds used to make this type of glass: the single piece mold and the multi-piece mold. The single piece mold is usually used to make basic tableware. The multi-paneled mold allows for more tooling with the surface to create patterns that are in relief.

Individuals who create sculptures and one of kind glass vases are sometimes called lamp workers. Lamp workers use alcohol lambs or bellows driven air to manipulate preformed glass rods and tubes.

Glass art using preformed rods first came into prominence in the sixties along with such famous artists as Hans Godo Frabel, Milon Townsend and Roberty Mickelson. The “studio” glass art movement from blown glass came out of Toledo, Ohio and was pioneered by Harvey Littleton (a ceramics professor) and Dominick Labino (a chemist.) Today thousands of artisans and hobbyists have followed in the footsteps of these masters and are creating incredibly detailed and aesthetically pleasing works of art.