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January 7, 2009

Guest Room Painted Rug

I wanted to make our guest room a little bit girl-y to encourage two sweet girls to come and stay - Sarah and Eiligh. I wanted a faux rug that would allow me to change the decor whenever I was in the mood. I have a number of quilts with completely different looks. They all have a bit of yellow in them, so the rug would be yellow and white.

I taped the sections. The photo below is a closeup of a taping trick we discovered while taping the loft floor. Putting a putty knife right where you want to cut the tape, makes for a perfect cut. Nancy, my fabulous sister-in-law, soon discovered that the knife wasn't even necessary - the tape tears perfectly straight against the putty knife!


I mixed the yellow paint with glaze - about half and half and painted all the sections. Then I used a stencil to randomly add flowers to the squares.
The rug seemed a bit too bright, so I whitewashed the whole thing. I mixed white paint with glaze and used a rag to wipe the paint across the whole rug. It toned it down and looked so much better.

I added the binding edge to give it a more 3 dimensional edge. I probably should have added some shadowing as well.


Here's the room today. It's still not just right - we are STILL moving stuff from the old house. I didn't know I had that much clutter. I'm thinking I should sign myself up for an HGTV intervention.
On a side note... I got my hair cut two days ago and everyone seems to be going out of their way NOT to comment. That can only mean one thing - it must be really bad. The photo below was taken indoors, immediately after styling, before going outside into the impossibly humid and windy conditions that seem to have taken over in Georgia for the last month. Naturally, no one sees me looking like that. As soon as I step out of the car to open our gate, my hair takes on a life of its own. You know those fabulous curls that some people have when their hair gets damp? Well, I don't have them. Do you remember Rosanne Rosanna Danna's frizzy hairstyle on Saturday Night Live? That should give you an idea of how my hair responds to humidity. When I was younger, a bad hair style would absolutely send me into the depths of depression. Now? No big deal. I like that with this "style" I don't have to try so hard. It stays out of my eyes and out of my way. The long hair was taking way too much time. I like simple and natural. I don't dye my hair. I actually like the gray. Now don't take all this to mean that I don't care how I look. I do. But I don't want to go to great lengths to try to look like somebody I'm not.