making stripey striped curtains.

Oh hey, y'all! My deepest of apologies for waiting all week to post, but let me just paint a little picture for you: I woke up Monday morning supremely energized and antsy to go up to school. I did a little skip-to-my-lou up the paved pathway and into the building, ecstatic about getting back to decorating, organizing, and creating. Y'all know the feeling, right? Oh, but wait, what's that waiting for me in my room? What could that be? Oh, seven pallets full of kids' supplies each topping 5 feet in height? That's right. Every little munchkins' little pencils, crayons, and scissors were waiting for me to unpack them, divide them up amongst each of their teachers, and deliver them to their respective room. Jealous? Ya, I thought you might be. I am hoping you can surmise where I've been all week then...

But I digress. Let's get on to some more pretty little things. You might remember that I dreamed and drooled over some striped curtains back in May and I could hardly wait to make my own for our own formal living and dining room, yes? Under previous ownership, our formal areas looked something like this:

The fabuloso windows were just BEGGING to be adorned in bold-striped-goodness, right? I grabbed up these curtains at Target because they were a thicker fabric with minimal texture which would make them more likely to hold the paint without too much seepage.

I then sprinted over to le Home Depot and grabbed flat wall paint a couple of shades darker than the paint on our walls, called Antique Tin:

Having all supplies in tow, I headed home to get painting! My first job was to iron out all of the creases in the curtains.

I then laid out the curtain so that I could begin measuring each stripe:

As I wanted a very bold stripe, I made small "tick" marks across the curtain every twelve inches:

I then connected my "tick" marks with a ruler to create level lines across the width of each curtain.

My next step was to tape off both the stripes and the grommets.

Remember, that you want to place your tape so that your stripes will each be twelve inches. That means that you will alternate placing the tape above and below your penciled line. Your taped off stripes will look uneven, but that will ensure you have even, twelve inch stripes after you paint!

I then placed a PLASTIC tarp underneath the curtain in preparation to paint. You will want to use a plastic tarp as the paint will seep through both the curtain and a fabric drop cloth onto your beautiful floors - no bueno. Using a small, foam roller, I began by applying a light coat of paint to the striped areas.

After the light first coat was applied, I painted a second, thicker coat:

And while the paint was still wet, you better believe I ripped off that tape to see the beauty beneath!

And after repeating that process for each stripe on the curtain, can we talk about fabulous results?!

Be still my heart. Having one curtain down, I had three left to tackle. Talk about lather, rinse, repeat.

Once the curtains were fairly dry, I finally got to hang them up to see the finished product! To say they "added something" to the dining room is quite the understatement, if I do say so myself...

...and they are JUST what the formal living room needed to start feeling like an actual room!

Maybe I stand here for minutes at a time each day just staring....maybe....

For such fabuloso results, this was such an easy process! You MUST try it! Go on...get going to Target...go now....for serious.