The least legit curtain ever

Today on “Stephanie Makes Things” I made a curtain. More accurately, I hung a yard of fabric up and called it a curtain.

My bathroom window is half frosted, half normal glass, with ugly, cheap plastic apartment blinds. Easy solution: remove blinds and revel in 50% privacy afforded by the frosted lower half of the window. Because I can look out the top half straight out to someone’s front porch across the street, that idea weirds me out.

Here’s the window with the blinds:

Meh. Also, please note that I had to stand in the shower to take that photo. My bathroom is that small.

Better solution: a curtain. I wanted something semi-sheer to still allow light. After all, what good is having a window in your bathroom if you’re going to block all the light? Off I went to the fabric store with my coupons!

Since this is a rental and I don’t have a drill, I opted for the least legit curtain hanging method ever–3M hooks and some plastic shower curtain rings. This is also because I already owned these things and didn’t want to go buy a tension rod.

Serious bloggers, please shield your eyes. I didn’t even hem my fabric. #SorryNotSorry

The SassCat loves it. Below is her realizing that if she stands up, she can see out the non-frosted top pane. A whole new world of bird watching just opened up.

Support Sneakers in the Room for Color Contest!

“I really want to become internet famous,” says Sneakers. “Here’s how you can help me out right meow.”

I entered my bedroom into Apartment Therapy’s Room for Color contest, and after much suspense, they finally selected my entry to be posted! Now, it’s up to the readers to vote on their favorite rooms. Won’t you show your support for Sneakers and vote so my room (and thus, the photo of Sneakers) makes it to the next round?

Vote here: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/stephanies-dusty-lavender-and-teal-room-room-for-color-2014-210811

You do have to create an account to “favorite” a room, but it’s free!

DIY Lamp Part Two

I finally finished my bedroom overhead lamp project.

After determining that my clearance West Elm shade fit and looked good, I took the lamp shade down again and started making very faint pencil marks on the shade where I wanted to tape off some lines.

You can see the lampshade that inspired my design in the background of the second photo. I used artists tape, not painters tape, mostly because I already had it left over from a diy wall art project but also because it’s easier to find in smaller widths. However,  it doesn’t seal as well, so you do get some paint bleeding under the tape edges. I was okay with that because I wanted a less precise,  almost watercolor-esque design.

I did not measure the diagonal tape strips. If you want this even, you definitely should.

And then I painted. And painted. And muttered evil things about large lampshades.

Until I ended up with this!

Things to note: the silver paint is fairly opaque, so the shade doesn’t let as much light through as it did before I painted it.  Light still comes through at the top and bottom and through the parts that were taped off. I have two other lamps in this room, so it’s not an issue for me. Just don’t paint your entire lampshade black and then wonder why your room is suddenly so dim.

The Lamp Imposter

The new apartment has some ugly overhead light fixtures. Turns out, at one point Young House Love (one of my favorite blogs), had the same ugly light fixtures in their house. Inspired by how creatively they disguised their ugly light fixtures, I have embarked on Operation Pretty Ceiling Lights. Or PCL, if you want to sound like you’re doing something really weird.

The before:

So my floor lamp isn’t that pretty either. Whatever. I snagged a pendant drum shade from west elm on clearance and then let it sit in its box for a good week before getting around to testing whether or not it fit on the light fixture.

Spoiler alert: it fits.

This is not the end of the project though. I want to paint the lampshade so it goes better with the bedroom decor. Oh and then I’m going to tackle the living room ceiling light! Gosh my life is exciting.

Because everyone loves a good cat picture