The Art of Decorating Personal Spaces on Home
by GlowingMickeyVan, HSM guest contributor
Hi, fellow Home fanatics! I wanted to create an article about Home personal space decorating. My goal is to give you some ideas on things you may not have considered, and to give you a fresh flow of thought.
I’m addicted to glitching and decorating spaces on Home. It’s the reason I stay on Home. I find it as a great way to keep the joys of Home alive. Here are a few ideas that I’ve done to get you started.
Free Items
There are a couple free spaces on Home, as well as free rewards scattered all over Home and the Mall. There are lists on the forums, some outdated, but they give you places to start. Alphazone4 also has a list of freebies in their database too.
That’s not my goal in writing this, so I wont go there. I’m a big fan of the package deals in the PlayStation Store. To see them you must sign off of Home, and go into the PlayStation Store. Select search by title, go to H, select the Home icon, and see the packages.
These package deals often throw in lots of free furniture. There are a lot of narrow-minded people who will look at a free piece of furniture and automatically label it as a waste of space on their console. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Any furniture item can be used “outside its intended use.”
Here’s an example. In two of my spaces I created very tall Rocket Ships from miscellaneous parts. One is a NASA testing ground in the end section of Darla’s Den. These rockets are really tall and made from weird pieces and parts. Kind of like that old show where the guys dig through scrap yards and create monster machines, only these are virtual.
For the rocket engines, I used the braziers we got for free at the Christmas space. I dropped them onto the edge of a chair onto a rug, and they land (with a couple attempts) upside down. Pushed three of them into a triangle using the free Ward of Despair sword cabinet (a very useful piece of furniture I may add, which can be used as walls, dividers, and stacking). I then float the rug about a foot off the grund and pile on the rocket pieces. The pieces were anything from Home – theater speakers lined around “warp coils” (the free clear numbered tubes you get at Xi) and added more and more till it towers about thirty feet tall. Add another free item – the white Christmas tree – is added as a pointed top. Then just float away or remove the rug. Voila! You have a rocket jet floating a little off the ground, with flames shooting out of the three engines to the ground below.
I also made “send a noob to Mars” and other land to sea missles and used the Lockwood Gift Machine and a few other free items as a control center.
Be Creative!
Just because the space is themed as one thing doesn’t mean it has to be decorated as such. And after you decorate it, there’s no law that you have to keep it like that. My example for this is SVER. It’s created and intended as a post-apocalyptic war zone. I had other plans for mine. I filled the rear grounds with disco lights. Some standing, some knocked over flat, some at angles. I then dropped lighted star flooring all over those and created a 3-D Dance space filled with lights. It was almost too much, and a couple of my guests had to leave due to headaches! I turned the radio on (best music on PSH is in SVER space), threw my birthday party there and got tremendous compliments on what I had done.
Last week, I purchased the Halloween bundle for thirteen dollars and stripped the whole space, and created a SVER grave yard complete with red and green fog engulfed tombstones, flickering candles, and ghostly paintings and haunted mirrors. With the purchase of a scan-disc USB drive, I can switch back and forth if I wanted.
My dolphy space is a giant spaceship.
My Darla’s Den is a NASA Space Center.
My Disney’s Tron Space is an outside Homeling Assimilation center with a twenty-foot-long futuristic table lined with futuristic chairs, capable of seating more Homelings than my space will actually allow.
I also have a couple spaces dedicated to mazes and obstacle courses. A friend of mine, and fellow Homeling I’ll just call Cade, has the single best obstacle course I have seen to date at the Mansion space. It’s like a miniature Little Big Planet! Anything can be done with an open mind and the willingness to experiment.
The list goes on and on, and the moral of this story is simple – get creative. Look at your furniture items. Think outside the box.
One thing I like to do is this – when I get a new space, I will line one wall with one of each chair and couch. My inventory at this point will pretty much max the space just in chairs and couches. I then walk back and forth, invite friends over, and we all examine the chairs and couches in relation to size, shape, and whether or not you can glitch up it. Since most of my friends are fellow glitchers, it’s a helpful tool to determine what to use in future creations.
You can do this same thing by buying a space that’s on sale, that you might not ordinarily buy, and fill it with your inventory. Greece is on sale at this moment, and for three dollars, you can see your items in relation to size and shape. This is important, because in the furniture section some items look HUGE, but when you place them in your space, they’re tiny, and vise versa.
Think Style!
I consider myself to be a master at personal space decorating in relation to glitching, but I have a friend who is much better at decorating. His spaces are glitched as well, but he uses lots of trees and grass, and the more expensive furniture items to create spaces that I just can’t touch in terms of looks. When you shop for furniture, look at your existing inventory first and buy things that compliment your existing items.
Do Not Get Frustrated!
If your creation sucks, delete it. Go to Central Plaza, chat, and hit it again the next day. Sometimes I get stuck in a wacky creation and just leave. I might be at work and a genius idea pops in my head, and the next night I’m all over it. I’ll quickly admit I’m a bit unusual, and this is one of my obsessions in life. I could always be hooked on worse. This is harmless and fun. And it’s legal. And at five bucks a space, it’s not much more than the gas it would cost to go to the real mall in the next town over. Get my drift?
To Glitch or Not to Glitch?
That’s an open debate. I have one friend who hates glitches. He says they take away from the space’s natural flow. I also have a friend who can create amazing glitches, but I’m not impressed with the style or look of his/her spaces. Glitches without artistic appeal are, well, unappealing. I’ll admit I’ve made my share of those as well, but I never left them like that. Recent Home changes have us all rethinking how we decorate. Of course within hours of the changes, a friend had overcome the new changes with new methods, but that’s not the point. What if Sony really takes it from us permanently? Will we still buy spaces? I won’t. But thats just me. We’re all different. The whole reason I buy a space is the fun of exploiting it’s full potential. It’s a game to me.
Save, Save, Save
After you do any glitches to your space of any real value, save it to a USB drive immediately! It’s an easy thing to do that takes but seconds. You don’t need a huge sixteen gigabyte one. Any old one you used to use for your computer years ago will work. And if you have multiple accounts, it’s easiest to label each USB drive with the ID of the particular account. Keeps things simple.
Conclusion
That’s my take on creative space decoration. I hope it inspires people to think outside the usual “add a couch and chairs” mentality.
In closing, I’d like to say my Friend List is full, but if you read this, and would like to see a space or two, I can do a one day add to show a couple off if you find me in Home, but only if you find me in Home. Also, I guard my glitches with secrecy because, well, most of us do. I’ll give away a little secret here and there, but don’t ask me how to float a rug outside. I’m sworn to secrecy by the master glitcher (and close friend) who showed me. She made me promise.
Have fun!
November 7th, 2011 by GlowingMickeyVan | 3 comments
MIIICCCKKKEEEEYYYYYY!!!!!
Great article, you should check out my clubhouse some time, I made it into an arcade with the disco floors turned sideways to act as walls. Actually on that note, it would be cool to see what you can do with one of the clubhouses since they seem to be one of the most bland spaces by default.
Well done Mickey my friend! I have seen many of your spaces and they are definitely outside the norm, yet very entertaining as well. Good job on your first foray into HSM and welcome to the fold.
Good story and fun read, Mickey. You have a completely different take on decorating than I’ve seen before. I enjoy your glitches whenever I have the chance to see them. Keep it up!