Sheets Turned Curtains

Recently I shared my  sheet curtains, so now I am going to share how I did this.  First off I bought two of these sheets from Walmart. 

 

I wanted huge curtains for our living room, but we don't have the money to spend on big, new, beautiful curtains.  So, when I saw these at Walmart for just under five dollars a piece I threw two in my cart and started heading home!  The measurements are 66 inches wide by 96 inches long! Next I bought some acrylic paint from AC Moore (I used around two of the 200ml Reeves acrylic paint in terracotta and mixed it with a little bit of cream colored acrylic paint I had at home already).  With coupons I paid a little over three dollars, but I don't remember the exact price.  Since I have an eleven-month-old daughter running around all the time and putting her sticky hands on whatever they can reach, I wanted them to be washable.  So I also picked up some textile medium because I had heard that would help the paint to stay if they had to be washed.  I saw curtains I really liked over at the Nesting Place, so I decided to go with stripes at this point.

After I had all of my supplies from the store I grabbed a measuring tape, a straight edge, and painter's tape and got to work.  I laid an old sheet down beneath the one I would be painting, then added stripes with the painter's tape.  My stripes eight inches wide and there are twelve total stripes.  The top of the curtain started with the terracotta color and the bottom is the tan color that the sheets are. When I laid out the tape I made the areas that would be terracotta colored have the painter's tape on the outside of the markings I made and the parts that the color of the sheets would show through had tape on the inside of the markings.  Are you confused yet? It looked a bit like this once I started painting.  

Do you see how the tan stripes look smaller?  That is because the tape is laid on them as opposed to outside since they wont be painted on!

Anyway, once I finished I was a little nervous about how the stripes would come out.  Thankfully, they turned out awesome! 

As straight as I could have wanted!

Here are a few tips that I learned while painting.  

1. The acrylic paint I used was very thick, so the textile medium helped a lot to thin it out and allow the paint to cover more area.  

2. I originally tried to use a roller...that was a complete fail.  I used less paint and got the job done faster with a paint brush (the wider the better).  Then I did the edges of the stripes (where the tape was) with a small paint brush to help with keeping the lines straight.  I'm not really sure if that part mattered but it helped me to not completely cover the painter's tape.

3. Be patient.  These took me a bit longer than I expected because I planned out the lines and made sure they were straight across. Also, I hate taping when painting, so it made the process seem longer.  They could  probably be done painting in a couple of hours and dry completely by the next day (I could also only do one a day since I don't have enough space to lay out two in my kitchen or anywhere else).

They look like this now and I love them! I am also using sheets to make curtains for Naomi's room and our bedroom if that tells you how awesome they are...and inexpensive! 

On this picture you can see that some of the spots didn't get enough paint. This was partially because I couldn't tell when they were on the floor with no sun shining through them.  I didn't like it at first and I was going to fix it, but it has grown on me! It gives them a vintage look!