Painting the Stripes: The Finale

Last night I finally "dressed" the hallway and took some photos. It's not done by any means - the wall needs a lot more, but I dressed it with my starter pieces. At long last, here she is!

These photos aren't the best - it's hard to shoot in such an awkward space when light is pouring in the window and you don't know quite how to control your camera. But I tried.

Since the hallway is basically a path to the master suite, I hope to add more picture of us as I get them. If I can ever scrape up the cash to buy our high-res wedding images, I'll have a bunch to add! It's a sensible space to pay tribute to ourselves (ha) rather than putting photos downstairs. Also, the Westie pictures.

Here are some detail shots. I love this piece. It came from IKEA all framed for just $39. I am such a font freak, it just called my name when I saw it from across the store.As mentioned in yesterday's post, these are the $9 prints also from IKEA framed in the RIBBA frames (which are only $15 each). IKEA is the best place to go to get modern, clean frames for cheap!This is a close-up of one of the postcards in the long, skinny piece by our bedroom door. I collected a series of postcards on the San Francisco leg of our honeymoon and these three made the cut to be framed. I love the colors and the black - similar to the feel of the IKEA duo. That's the kind of art I gravitate toward - anything with a balance of black and lots of color.

Here's the view as you come up the steps. FUN!
Lastly, if you notice in the first photo there's a nice clean window treatment on the window now. I'll spare you the details of the trial and error I went through to get to the final product. This was a NO SEW project. The red ticking stripe was a Pottery Barn bed skirt in its former life. I simply ripped off one side (literally ripped) and attached the brown grosgrain ribbon and red ric-rac with stitch-witchery and fabric glue.

The process looked something like this...I ironed my fabric up real good (this is a picture of me ironing the first attempt, but just pretend I'm ironing the red ticking stripe, k?).Then I grabbed my stitch-witchery and hemmed the side of the curtain and attached the brown grosgrain ribbon. I also added the curtain rod pocket using this stuff, too. Then I used fabric glue to attach the red ric-rac. It was pretty thick stuff and there was no easy way to use the stitch-witchery for that step. Fabric glue was the way to go and it holds wonderfully.I applied it on all the "humps" so none of them would curl up once they were dried and hanging. You know how gravity can be.And voila! Here's a couple of close-ups. It's just enough to give the window some personality without blocking the fabulous natural light we get through that window.

Let me also add, that after pulling the tape off the final product, I wasn't sure I was loving the colors I chose. I sort of got used to the contrast of the white with the original wall color. It was strange to see it to LIGHT and BRIGHT. I'm going to try this on for size for a while, but it's possible I may decide to go a little darker with the darker of the 2 colors. I just want to give it a good resting time. Also in the future is painting the wall around the windows in our master bedroom. You'll see that when walking down the hall and pop of color there might really change the feel of the hallway. So I won't decide until AFTER the MB gets some color.