From Blah to Ta-Da!

I can't take credit for the title- that's the fabulous Nikki Carroll working her magic there!  I was mentioning to her at an event recently how I was working on making my own pattern on black-out curtains I bought for the guest room (aka- the craft room!).  She said, "It's like from Blah to Ta-Da!"  Now I can't think of anything else when I see the curtains!

The Blah part: Plain white black-out curtains to help with the light from the streetlight outside as well as any draft.

The Inspiration: A pretty pillow my mom found for me that brings out the wall color and is very much my style.  :)

I really liked the leaf design on the pillow, which started me thinking about how I could take that same concept and use it with these white curtains.  Enter the Undefined stamp carving kit.

The Plan: Use the Undefined stamp carving kit from Stampin' Up! to create my very own leaf pattern for my curtains.  Undefined is a fun way to make something completely unique that fits your specific needs.  You can see how I took a simplified pattern of the leaf and drew it out before carving the design and mounting it on my wood block.  Details on how to make this comes with the kit.

 I also wanted to capture the pink band in the pillow and remembered that in the "Hello Lovely" stamp set from SU, there is a cute little stamp that would match the embroidery in the pillow.  So, that was added to my design.

The whole process went pretty fast!  Once I inked up my leaf stamp using a Gumball Green color (ink refill mixed with white fabric paint), I rolled it on with a foam craft roller and stamped it on my curtain. Inking again, I slightly rotated the stamp and repeated the process to start my pattern.  

About a quarter of the way down, I started to add a little more space between stamps so it looks like there are less and less leaves towards the bottom.  My trick to doing this?  I paid attention to dividing up the curtain.  For each quarter section, I gave more and more space between stamped images.  By laying curtain panels next to each other when I completed each one, I could ensure that the panels were consistent.  That meant adding a few stamped images here and there occasionally so everything lined up.

For the final detail, I added a few of the pink blossoms stamped in a cascading fashion down the curtain as well, but these were more sparse since I only wanted it as a touch of detail.  The pink is Melon Mambo ink refill combined with white fabric paint.

These dried overnight (throughout each hallway and walkway in my house, which was funny trying to get around!) and then hung back up in the room.  See?