I’ve written quite a few posts on the topic of collaboration, and a few day ago my wife and I unveiled our greatest collaboration—we call her Shiloh. God blessed us with a beautiful baby girl that we are simply loving up. Shiloh means “God’s gift” and “peace.” The first meaning has been plainly evident over the past nine months. The peace part may take months—or years—to reveal itself.
Over these nine months, we’ve enjoyed the process of preparing a baby room. The focal point has been a full-wall mural which actually started a few years ago. We thought it would be fun to dedicate one wall in what was then my wife’s craft room to creating an ever-changing collage/mural. And to that end, whenever we had creative-type friends over, we’d invite them to work on the wall with us. It was fun! It was a bit kooky. And yeah, it didn’t look that great.
So we decided it was time to give this project focus. Despite the craziness of it, we did see a basic landscape develop and we decided to refine it as the space converted into a baby room. The theme for the room was the circus, of course! I say “of course” because I’m a juggler and my wife is a clown (check out cissyandtheman.com). So a circus-themed baby room seemed the most natural way to go. Plus it is gender neutral, which allowed us to work on the room before knowing our child’s gender.
Many of the clouds and much of the skies were created by stripping off previous layers of paint. Large patches of paper were glued onto the wall to finish off the landscape. And the animals were created with more detailed collage methods. Though my wife handled the bulk of the tasks, I enjoyed working side by side with her at various points throughout the process.
Enjoy the circus-themed baby room photos below. While it’s nice to have this room complete, our collaboration on Shiloh has just begun.
