Living Room Curtains

We desperately needed curtains in our living room but I couldn’t for the life of me decide what look I was going for.  So for months our living room windows sat, looking rather drab.  I saw this picture the other day and loved the metallic gold and white, but couldn’t find any fabric like it to make drapes with.

 So I decided I would make my own by painting IKEA drapes with a metallic paint.  I love the way they turned out:

To paint my drapes I first ironed well, and hemmed the drapes.  I just bought 2 sets of plain white drapes from IKEA for $25 for each set.  It’s hard to beat IKEA’s price on drapes.  I then layed out a panel on my kitchen floor, on top of plastic in case the paint would bleed through (although I don’t think any of it actually went through.) I then used a piece of cardstock to draw a line from the bottom hem of the panel.  I did it all the way across the panel hopefully creating a straight line. I used green frog tape (it’s the best I promise.  I have used everything else under the sun and nothing compares) and lined it up with the line I just drew using the card stock and taped all the way across the curtain, making sure it was flat all the way and that the tape was bonded well to the fabric.
I used an envelope as my next unit of measurement.  I did the same thing with the envelope, lining it up with the line I just made with the tape and drawing a line all the way across.  Tape again, and do this until you have the desired amount of stripes.  I didn’t want my stripes to go all the way up, so I just did 4 stripes.  You really could use anything to do your measurements with.  I thought later that something that extended all the way across the panel, like a piece of wood, would have been an easier way to make the lines.  But that would have taken me a trip to the garage, and the paper and letter happened to be handy at the time.
This is what it looked like with all my stripes taped off.  I used some extra masking tape on where the white was going to be so I didn’t accidentally paint outside the lines.  I suppose wider tape would be a better idea.  It all comes to me once the project is over. I then used a foam roller to paint with, and Martha Stewart metallic paint in Gold pearl I think.I love them.  Our room now looks like people might want to actually be in it.   I don’t know why but I have really been liking gold lately.  My husband was skeptical about the gold but he says he likes them.  He probably wouldn’t tell me even if he didn’t.  I have a few other gold accent in the room which tie it together really well.  Like this mirror that Kristen picked out at a thrift store: I also have this antique sewing machine that someone gave me (can you say crazy?) and a vintage gold picture frame also from a thrift store that needs to be hung:  What do you think about the gold?  Am I as crazy as my husband thinks I am?