Apartment Therapy Sample Post: 5 Fast Ways to Escherize Your Apartment!

This is a sample post for a job application for the Assistant Editor position at the Apartment Therapy blog.

Everybody loves the clean and classic, yet intricate and precise, look of an M.C. Escher print or drawing. If you're interested in decorating your space with the aesthetic look this Dutch artist made famous, but want to avoid that dorm-room-poster look, here are some elegant ways to Escherize!

Mirrored Spheres: Pile some mirrored spheres in a transparent bowl or vase. This subtle homage to Escher's "Hand with a Reflecting Sphere" and "Three Spheres II" won't break the bank, and adds a dramatic mirrored element to spaces--even those without a lot of wall space. Nova68 has them in a variety of sizes and finishes, from 6" to 20" inches.



Black and White Pillows: Most of Escher's lithography work was in dramatic black and white. To bring both the palette and the patterns of Escher's work into your home in a classy and timeless way, try some of these great black-and-white pillows from The Black and White Store's Plush Living Pillow Collection on your bed or your sofa. The "Daphne" pillow, with its subtle black-on-white or white-on-black tree branch pattern, is reminiscent of Escher's Three Worlds, and the "Crest" pillow, below, features the type of repeating tessellated pattern for which Escher's work became famous.



Interlocking Lizards Soft Puzzle Mat: This fantastic puzzle mat in shades of white and gray, from the New Britain Museum of American Art Museum Store in Connecticut, is a homage to the striking Escher lithograph Reptiles. You
can combine two or more mats for a table topper, bathmat, or rug--fun for a kid's room, and a classic look for an adult's!



Escher Wood Inlay Table: This colorful and beautiful inlaid-wood table from CMGArte in Barcelona, Spain is gorgeous but not ostentatious, with fantastic tapered legs. It's based on one of the many fish-themed tessellations that Escher drew throughout his career.



Update your staircase: Escher loved staircases as design elements. And while your local contractor, not to mention the laws of physics, won't allow you to put in a staircase Relativity-style, you can get that industrial-bannister look on your own stairs via the fantastic Karina space-saving stair kit from Arkè.

Apartment Therapy Sample Post: 5 Quick DIY Projects with Sisal

The second sample Apartment Therapy post.

Sisal rope is cheap, easy to find and work with, and gives a natural feel to any room. Here's a roundup of six different sisal DIY projects for your place that look great, don't break the bank, won't take long, and don't involve the words "cat scratcher."

Design*Sponge's DIY Sisal Rope Art project shows you how to make a wall hanging or table centerpiece mat with barely more than scissors, rope, and a glue gun.


This sisal basket tutorial from Under the Table and Dreaming is fantastic, since you can make the basket any size or shape you need; it'd look great holding soaps or washcloths in the bathroom, fruit in the kitchen, or anything practically anywhere!


Grandmother's Pattern Book has this tutorial for a Crocheted Sisal Rug. This might be more than a weekend project, depending on how large you want to make the rug, but a smaller one would be great for a doormat or bathmat, since Sisal will stand up to harsh treatment.


Sisal's toughness makes it ideal for work in the garden. At the UK-based site Gardener's World, sisal and branches combine to make a rustic trellis for the climbing plants in your garden. They also suggest hanging it vertically from a pergola to get shade and privacy, but for those of us without pergolas, I imagine hanging it from a balcony would do just as well. This project needs a drill and a saw is suggested to make the branch ends uniform, but otherwise all you really need is sisal and branches--it's practically free!


This sisal rope shelf project from the Nate Berkus Show could be dressed "down" to look weathered or "up" to look modern, depending on what boards you decide to use. It looks a little nautical and would be great in a bathroom.