Stenciled Curtains

There are a lot of stenciled curtains out there in blog world so I thought I would give it a try myself, so here's my story and it goes like this.. I turned my plain curtains to custom made ones, my curtains I purchased from Ikea, they were $20 for a set of 2, great deal. The nearest Ikea  is a whopping 5 hour drive, so to say the most my dear dear Ikea I can only see you every few months if I am lucky. Its probably a good thing because I would probably be there so much I would have to sleep in one of their demo beds..hehe I could totally live there they even have a restaurant that serves all three meals. Sorry hehe back to the curtains, I was in a rush when I purchased these curtains,(time is always on my back) so I just grabbed the first color I seen. I got them home and they were terribly beige (boring) for my taste, but nothing that a stencil cant fix.They needed some jazzing up, so I looked on Pinterest for some inspirations and came up with my stencil. I took a drive to the craft store and  purchased a stencil sheet traced my stencil on it and used a exacto knife to cut it out. I opted for an open design without any intricate lines to cut out.

 Now for the paint, I just used some regular  paint (the kind you paint walls and trim with). I poured the paint into a plastic cup and I added some textile medium, mix 2 parts paint to 1 part medium.That's the awsomeness of this textile medium (it turns regular ole paint into fabric paint), I found a chop stick and gave it a good stir and the paint was ready to go. I recommend washing your curtains first because after you paint these and set them the fabric wont shrink around your stencils in the washer then they wont have that puckered look. After washing the curtains and mixing my paint I put down trash bags on the floor and taped them  down so if the paint seeps through the curtains it wont ruin your floors, then lay your curtain on the floor. I eye balled my stencil and where I wanted to start it, put my stencil down and use some painters tape to tape down the sides of the stencil so that it wont shift around when you are painting. I used a foam brush  (you can pick up for 99 cents at the hardware store) dipped it in and held my stencil down with my free hand and started painting.

 I brush my paint from the corners to the middle of the stencil so that the paint has less of a chance of seeping under. Move your stencil over to the next spot and so on. I took only one coat of paint for mine. I let it dry for a few hours then I ironed the back side to set in the paint(so you can wash them and the paint wont come out).  From start to finish including drying time it took me about 5 hours. It's time consuming but no pain no gain I guess. I think the hardest part of this project wasn't making the stencil or painting, it was to keep my kids, my hubby, and the dog away from it while it dried, so maybe if you can do it when nobody is home that would be better hehe. Here they are hanging..do you dig??

Here is some up close photo's 

Here is a price break down:

Curtains $20.00

Fabric Textile (already Had)

Paint (freebee from ace)

Foam Brush .99 cents

Stencil Sheet $1.99

Total               $22.98


Not too shabby ehh for custom made curtains? Thanks for stopping by!!

BTW you see that light fixture hanging on the ceiling? I made that too I will be posting about that soon!!