Tour This Eclectic, Quirky Handmade Home With Lots of Vintage Finds

I'm Ali and this is my handmade home in Queens, New York. I'm a freelance display artist. I do production and design. I've done set design. I do a lot of styling, propping, sourcing. And when I'm not freelancing, I own a small vintage business called Farewell Trading where I sell a curated collection of vintage and antiques, accessories, decor on Etsy. It's really hard to describe my style. I mean, I think I tend to have like a masculine aesthetic. I'm really big on color stories. My collection is from the late 1800s to present. Certain things just speak to me. Most of the time I have no idea what they are or the history about it. I just buy whatever I like and I figure it out later. That's the best part about vintage to me. It's fun. I don't take it too seriously. I think it should bring up emotions and memories. I just love funny little moments that you could just look at and smile. When I first saw the house, one of the things that made me fall in love with it was how open it is. I mean, you could see the whole length of the house from the front to the back. The view of the cemetery is one of my favorite things about the house. A lot of people don't think it's great, but I love it. We go biking through there. We run through there. It's just a gorgeous amenity across the street. And then in the back of the house we have a very large church. It's another beautiful thing to look at. The front sunroom has been about four different shades of pink. It took me a really long time to find the perfect shade that went with the wallpaper, the plants, and then the yellows and blacks in the living room. And I just finally found this dusty pink that I think works with everything. Finally, finally right. Welcome to my jungle. This is the highest concentration of plants in any room in the house. It's also the sunniest. There's some old cameras that I found in Prague. I love collecting New York World's Fair items. I just think they're so cool, such a cool part of New York history. My parents actually got married at Flushing Meadows Park, so it's just like, I just love it. This is a planter I made from an old doll head that I use to display air plants. It's kind of fun. I mean, the house is over 100 years old, so things not being too updated and modern works with it. I think the kitchen has a perfect vintage feel, but it's just modern enough. This kitchen backsplash came with the house. I am in love with it. Something about it really speaks to me. Just the colors, the imagery, just like the lightning and the sun faces. It's just like really cool and unique, and I've never seen anything like it, and I love it. So these are one of my most recent finds. They're vintage lusterware from Japan, ceramic. They're just so much fun and interactive, therapeutic. Love spinning them. Love, love them. I decided to paint my entire dining room blue because I wanted to do like a primary color thing in here. It's just my favorite color in the house. I feel like it goes with everything. I photograph all my products for farewell trading against it. I just, I love it. This is Zero. He's also a part of the art. So this is a vintage bullseye mirror. I love how gold and gaudy it is, and I feel like it just really tops off the bar cart, and they're very popular in my vintage shop. I sell a lot of them. So when we first moved in, the living room was this like hot red, and there was this giant TV wall unit that took up the whole wall. It just felt so small in there, so I knew I wanted to paint it white and do like a big gallery wall around the television. That's why I chose to balance the wall out with black because the TV is just like a black screen. Like the shiny panther kind of balances it out, and then a lot of the blacks in the artwork balance it out so your eye is drawn around the TV rather than at the TV. The collection ranges from like the late 1800s, nothing too present. This is a piece of art from my mother, this tiger silkscreen, as well as the zebra silkscreen, and then these ceramic cats are old pipe rests, but I hung them on the wall because I think they look so cool, and I don't smoke pipe. So I have a small cabinet of curiosities, just like a random collection of things that I love. My little eyes that I use as props when I do photography for feral trading. I have this fun postcard that kind of spins. This is my great-grandmother in her Czechoslovakian garb, just a very old hand-colored photo. I love it. It kind of like tells a story about me without having to say anything and kind of just like I hope people get the humor and things that I have displayed. So handsome. Yep. So this is kind of just like my entrance display of just a few photos of certain family members. My grandmother, my mother, my mom, mom, grandma, my grandfather. He's the only boy here. Little nudie one of my grandma. Yes, the wallpaper is original to the house. A lot of people would take that down before selling their house, but I'm just so happy that the old owners left it up because I feel like it was just destined to be my wallpaper. The wallpaper starts at the front of the living room and it goes all the way upstairs. It's throughout the whole hallway, and I love it. This is my peacock. He's from a pop-up display. When the store closed, I got to take him home. My husband made a beautiful little perch for him to sit on, and I think he just like goes really well with the wallpaper. So it made sense. So the portrait gallery wall of Bearded Men, I was originally hired by a client to source all of these. When the store closed, I ended up acquiring them for my collection, and it's one of my favorite collections just because it's one theme. It's just bearded men, you know? This guy. I write everything down. I have so many notebooks. These are all just filled with all sorts of things. I don't have a computer. I have an iPad, but I have to write everything down when I'm sourcing or meeting with my clients. I show up with a pencil and a notebook. So these are my books of secrets. Measurements, sketches, my brain in a book. This is my little stock closet where I keep things for my vintage shop. I just recently found these little ceramic Dalmatian bookends. I just think the silhouette is beautiful, the colors also. A good mix of things, some artwork, crates. Whatever I like, I buy. Sell it, keep it, whatever. I want people to feel like they're in a museum in a way. I want people to look at everything and wonder what something is, like the anatomy of the hot dog sell thing. It makes me just so happy. I don't know why. Like this video and subscribe to Handmade for more home tours just like this.