DIY Painted Curtains

I am so excited about sharing this project! This one has taken a little longer than others, mostly because I am a perfectionist and I could only work on this at night when Little Miss was asleep. Why? Because everytime she saw me with a paintbrush, she wanted to "help"! Oh goodness I think I am raising her to be crafty like her momma....

Here is what I used:

1. A Navy blue Room Darkening Window Panel, 84" long. 
             - I found this at WalMart, on sale, for $5!
2. Acrylic Paint
             - I was trying to match my new bedding set, so I was 
                trying to make a greyish silvery color. I mixed a grey
                with a silver, and voila!
3. Fabric Painting Medium
            - This was to help the acrylic paint stick to the fabric so
               it won't wash out. I found it at AC Moore. 
4. Stencil
           - I found this printable stencil here at Jones Design
             Company. However, I suggest if you are planning
             on painting the ENTIRE curtain, that you buy a big
             stencil! You can find those on Etsy.
5. Paint Brush
6. Chalk
7. Something to put under the curtain to prevent the paint
    from bleeding onto your floor or table, I used newspaper. 


Okay now that you have all your supplies, you are ready to begin!

Layout your curtain and grab your stencil. I used my daughter's chalk to trace the outline of the stencil onto the curtain.

I only wanted to paint the top third of my curtain, so that is all I had to stencil. Again, if you want to paint the entire curtain I strongly suggest you purchase a large design stencil and forgo this step altogether!

Then came the fun part, painting! I moved my project to the dinner table so I wouldn't have to be sitting hunched over on the tile floor for hours. I laid down newspaper under the curtain.

For my paint mixture, I did a big blob of grey paint. Then used approximately half as much silver to add the shimmer. I mixed it all up. Then I added the fabric medium, it says on the directions to add it in a 2:1 ratio to the rest of the paint, then came more mixing.

I traced over my chalk markings with the paint and tried to be as careful as possible. But since we are using acrylic paint and it is water based, if you mess up you can just wipe it off with a damp cloth! Phew.

These curtains were thicker, so it took 3 coats of paint total. I allowed it to dry about an hour between each coating. The first layer was the hardest to do, the curtains really sucked up the paint quick! The next two coats went pretty quickly.

I painted from left to right, top to bottom. Notice how the designs to the right and bottom have fewer coats of paint.

After it was all said and done, the paint dried over night, then I ironed that all to seal the paint (it said to do so on the bottle of paint medium). I used wax paper between the hot iron and the curtain just in case the paint decided to do anything funny. I took down the old curtain, hung up the new one and here is how they look:

Curtain open!

Nice and dark with the curtain closed!

See how nicely the curtain matches the bedding set...please note that I finally have all the pillows:

This project was fairly simple. It mostly took time, patience, and a steady hand.

I was so excited to finally hang the painted curtain. But now I am left wondering, should I paint another one and have both curtains on that same window? Its a rather narrow window and I am afraid if I have two curtains you won't be able to see the design I spent so much time painting...what do you think?