Striped drapes have been trending all over the blogiverse (or at least my little nugget of it,) and I do believe that I am quite smitten. So what's a gal to do? Why, find somewhere, anywhere in the house where the window treatments haven't been made from scratch, lengthened, shortened, embellished or modified in any way in the past 3 months. Hmm.. tough one. Don't judge me. And then, it hit me, literally. As I was cleaning out my "project closet" (the unused shower stall in the downstairs bathroom) the rod came crashing down on my head. Eureka! Make a striped drape for my project closet. And it couldn't have been more convenient because everything I needed was staring right at me and thus, also FREE! There's no way it could be that easy, right? YES IT COULD, YES IT COULD, YES IT COULD! Can you tell I'm just a little excited about this project? Honestly, this is one of my all-time favorites and yes, it is the flavor of the week but no, it does not make it any less delicious. So here's the scoop: This is what it looked like before:
Not bad, but with very minimal time and effort (scouts honor*) this is what it looks like now:
This took roughly one hour from start to finish with most of the ticks sucked up from the measuring.
I started off by ironing the curtain very well. I then laid my curtain out on my dining room table to measure it. I knew that I wanted 7 stripes so I measured the length and divided by 7 so that I would know how long I needed each stripe to be. I then made a mark at each interval with a pencil on either side. I knew I wasn't going to paint in on the table, I just wanted a hard surface for the math stuff so I transferred the curtain onto some plastic sheeting on the floor and laid it out flat. I then took a piece of wood that I had and "connected the dots" with my pencil so that I had straight lines across. This is what I used as my edge.
Then, I used Scotch Blue painters tape and taped off all of my lines. One important thing to note: MAKE SURE THAT YOU APPLY TAPE TO THE OUTSIDE OF THE LINES ON THE STRIPES THAT YOU WILL BE PAINTING ! Otherwise, you will end up with janky stripes, and no I don't care that janky isn't a real word, you know EXACTLY what I am talking about. And since at one point in my life I actually was a natural blonde, I put a piece of tape on the spots where no paint should go in case I had one of my moments.
I then took my mini paint tray, my mini rollers, my flat finish black latex paint and went to town.
It was that easy! A couple of caveats: make sure that your curtain is very flat and that the tape is also taut with no bubbles. Run your fingernail down each seam that you will be painting over to make sure you don't get any bleed. When you are done with a stripe, do not leave the tape on, peel it right off. And finally, this does bleed through the back. I wasn't putting this curtain over a window where I would actually be "drawing the drapes" so I did not have to worry about what it looked like in the back. If that had been a concern, I would have let it dry, turned it over and made the "backside" more presentable by painting those stripes.
So there you have it; my newest, most favorite project with minimal effort and maximum impact. Who doesn't love that? And now you also know what is hiding behind curtain #1.
* disclaimer: I never participated in any activity or was an actual member of any branch of the Girl Scouts, so take it for what it's worth :)
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