mélimélo molas

Now if you read my post about "where I'm from" you'll recall that I was born and raised in Panama. When we lived there my parents started a collection of molas which were always on display in our home. My parent's housewarming gift when I moved into my first apartment in Paris were 6 autographed black and white prints of paintings of the Canal Zone done by Al Sprague, our Canal Zone neighbor and a fantastic artist. So really the art of Panama has followed me since childhood.

So it won't come as a big surprise that I would have chosen to theme our bedroom with this and other Panamanian art...

Now, you may be wondering what exactly is a mola? I like to describe them like drawings I did as a kid where you covered a sheet of paper with lots of colors, and then covered the whole thing up in black (using crayons). Then with a needle you would etch your drawing into the black and the colors would come through from underneath. Now surfing the net I found a site that is dedicated to molas and the "molagirl's" explanation is most probably a bit better than mine. Her website also offers plenty of information on the Kuna Indians who make them and the San Blas Islands off the coast of Panama where they live.

Now I've had this project on my radar for a while, and I'm so happy I finally got to it. It all started with a Christmas gift: a new printer! Such a cool gift... did not see that one coming!!

This new baby is a little bit deeper than our previous printer, and so I embarked on a mission to rearrange our desk space. Purging, reorganizing, streamlining, rethinking the space to best suit our needs, and hopefully getting rid of some of the clutter. So by the end of the day, the desk looked like this:

 

I was pretty happy with the result, but it looked like a bare canvas crying out to be played with....and so I did! 

And thanks to our new printer I was able to print out some cool detail photographs of molas 

to embellish some of the elements on our desk.

I chose mola details rather than a full mola as I felt the graphic look would be visually stronger, and I think that was the right choice. I cut the rectangles to fit the front of the drawers - the tricky part being to cut out the U shape slot!

And then thanks to Mod Podge I varnished them onto the drawers for a nice glossy effect. 

I am really quite happy with the end result!

To tie in the two magazine holders in which I'm holding the "To Do" admin and other clutter I haven't yet sorted out,

I cut out two more designs and using the same technique dressed them up too!

And here you have the end result:

Just for fun, I decided to change our computer background to a mola visual, which really gives the whole desk and brand new look!

Quite amazing what a little color, a printer and some glue can do!

Here's one more side by side before & after shots:

If you're interested in seeing what Al Sprague does, you can check out his website here!

I'm curious to know, had you heard about molas before?

about me...mélimélo!

When I was about 5 years old I came home and asked my mom: "Mommy, where do I come from?" Now my mom new this question would pop up some day, but so soon?? So before jumping to conclusions she asked me back: "What do you mean?" and I said, "Well, so-and-so comes from Ohio, so-and-so comes from Florida....where do I come from?" My mom was quite relieved of course and happy to tell me that I was from 'here', 'here' at the time being Panama.

That same question has followed me through life - ever notice how often we ask that question when we meet someone?? It seems to kind of define who we are.... I have often answered "How much time do you have?"....

So here we go:

I was born and raised in the Canal Zone in Panama of a German mother and an American father, which already gave me an eclectic start in life. At the age of 7, I moved to Germany and a year later when my mother remarried we moved to Hong Kong where my French father was expatriated. I believe Hong Kong to truly be my home at heart - a place where East meets West, where nature mingles with technology and where the old flirts with the new - a mix of many worlds. From there I moved on to Paris for studying, and after spending a year in the States decided to definitely make Paris my new home.

Now you'd think that was already a pretty good mix, right?

Well, here I met my husband of Russian origin, who was born in New York, but raised in France....I guess we are both perfect examples of what they call a melting pot and destined to meet!!

So that totals up to 4 cultures under one roof (American, French, German & Russian) and 6 different languages spoken (I can still manage some Spanish and did I mention my hubby speaks Italian??...) , plus a lot of Asian and South American influence which we try to maintain as much as possible and share with our 3 kids: Misha (11), Lara (4) and Ilya (2)!

What else is there to know about me?

I hate waste - wasting time, wasting energy, wasting money, wasting food.... So I like to make things that can help me save any of the above. And I like these things to be pretty too! I love being creative, but it has to have a purpose too! I have a business degree in Marketing, studied art at Parson's School of Design and 16 years of experience in retail both in-store and behind the scenes in Store Operations for Disney which is a world me & my family love (as you may have gathered from the picture of the kids and the mouse...)!!

Inspired by some of the great blogs I've come to love, I thought there could be room for one more and that it could be fun to share some of my creations and maybe inspire others...

Creations in cooking, sewing, painting, crafting, organizing, theming, entertaining, decorating, etc.

Hope you enjoy what I do and I'd love to hear from you!