Tiny Nursery: Potato Print Curtains!

The windows in the tiny nursery are tricky, since they are very tall and include both a window and a functioning door that leads onto the sleeping porches (and the new office-ette).  I determined that the best looking way to cover them would be to run a curtain along the whole wall.  But after weeks of Internet and in-person shopping, I hadn't found Exactly What I Was Looking For, and the time to hang them was nigh.  In a fit of pique (and energy!) I decided to make my own curtains from canvas drop cloths and paint.

I first bought two large canvas drop cloths, then washed and dried them in case they had any kind of sizing or other treatment on them.  I next carved some simple triangles into three potato halves, using regular kitchen knives and a couple of chisels.

Potato stamps!

I wanted a simple pattern that would be forgiving of mistakes and variations, and easy to cover a large surface with.  I decided to use the same paint for both curtains and wall to keep the scheme in the nursery streamlined and not too busy.

Potato stamps and Benjamin Moore Natura paint, to be used for both curtains and walls.

Before working on my drop cloths, I tested out some printing methods on scrap fabric.  I poured a small  amount of paint into a roller try, donned some rubber gloves, and experimented with brushing on the paint vs dipping directly into it.  I needed to figure out how much paint was sufficient to get a good print, and how much would just turn into a blob.

After figuring out a strategy, I stretched my first drop cloth onto one of the big painting walls in my studio.

And I started to print!

After several hours of work, I produced this thing of beauty:

One finished curtain

Each curtain took me about a day to fully print, including breaks to do other things and rest my hands.  I learned the hard way not to just leave my potatoes in the tray with my paint: rotting will occur, oozy grossness will ensue!  If you try this at home, and your project takes more than a day, wrap up your potatoes and stick them in the fridge!

Finished product, in place.  Those happy smiles are worth my couple hours of oozy grossness.

Porch Projects: Sleeping Porches are Complete, Now With Window Shades

We had a lot of guests over the Thanksgiving holiday, so I had to get the windows of the sleeping porches covered in an attractive manner. Previously, these windows had been unattractively covered with cheap, dirty plastic mini blinds.



I found a project tutorial on the Internet about turning such cheap, dirty plastic mini blinds into lovely fabric shades, so I set to work.







After a whole day's work, I finished up with this:



Making these shades was not super easy, but I was able use materials I already had for a cheap fix to my problem. I may remake the shades in the future with some better fabric (I just used an old white sheet here), but for a temporary solution these shades work well. Thanks, Little Green Notebook, for the great project instructions!