Over the past few months, I’ve been feeling that the drapes in my dining room were just way too heavy. They were custom treatments that I rushed into like 2.5 seconds upon moving into our house, and they blocked too much light. I knew that they had to come down once I realized that I was going out of my way to keep them from being photographed.

Once the curtains came down, I loved how light and airy the room felt. I wanted to put new treatments on the windows, but I wanted to make sure they let enough light in. Oh, and I wanted a super cheap solution.

I ultimately decided to hang drop cloth drapes like you’ve seen all over Blogland. I will admit, I really hated the look the first few times I saw them online. However, I’ve grown to love them (beat it into my head enough and I might change my mind!) and thought they were a nice solution for my dilemma.

My windows needed a little more “oompf” than just plain drop cloths, though. They needed something with a natural texture. They needed something to highlight one of the window’s arches. They needed 99-cent Ikea bamboo placemats.

I’m pretty sure ‘Hojta’ means ‘really cheap placemats’ in Swedish. Thanks, Ikea!

The light color of the placemats wouldn’t work for my dining room, so I headed out to my garage and spray painted both sides of each placemat with dark brown spray paint (Espresso by American Accents). I didn’t want them to have an even color – because when do you ever seen an even color in nature? – so I randomly hit them with a little left over Krylon Hammered spray paint in Chocolate Brown.

In order to make sure that both sides dried without getting messy, so I strung some twine across the rails of my garage door and hung them with wire.

Then, I apologized to my neighbors for turning our street into the ghetto for a few hours. I swear, they must always wonder what in the heck I’m always doing in my garage.

After the placemats were dry, I took them inside and fired up my trusty glue gun. I overlapped the ends of the placemats and glued them together…right there on my living room carpet. Don’t worry, Tom! I didn’t get any glue on the floor later picked the bits of dried glue out of the carpet pile.

The valance was a little wider than I wanted for my window (and I didn’t want to cut it because it would mess up how the bamboo was strung), so I rolled it up on both sides and glued it together.

Next, I grabbed my drill and drilled little holes in the top of each section that I glued together. I then used a plastic needle and threaded some thin black ribbon through each hole.

I already had a double curtain rod hung in my dining room, so I just tied each black ribbon to the top of the 2nd rod. When I stepped back, I had a gorgeous scalloped valance.

I was originally planning on using invisible thread to pull up the middle of each placemat so the valance hung straight across, but I was so pleased with the scalloped look that I scrapped that idea. Don’t you love it when things work out like that?

So, just remember that you don’t have to spend big bucks to get a great custom look. I spent about $10 on my valances, and I think they are so much more exciting than anything I’ve seen in stores.

Love the look? Check back for tomorrow’s Teach Me Tuesday to see a very elegant way to update those plain drop cloth drapes. You’re gonna love ’em!

Added to Kimba’s DIY Day at A Soft Place to Land…

As soon as the Halloween-themed Pottery Barn Kids catalog hit our mailbox, Zack got busy pointing out all of the things that he “wished he could have.” Yeah, you and me both, Kid.

One of the things that he kept going back to was the Pirate Build-A-Pumpkin kit.

Pottery Barn Kids

After looking at the photo in the catalog and reading the description, I figured I could make my own version of the adorable pumpkin accessories. Pottery Barn wants $12 each for the Pirate, Cat, Skull, and Spider sets, but I knew I could make all four of them for half of that.

Wanna know how? Yeah, of course you do. 🙂

1. I began by drawing out each of the pieces I wanted to add to each pumpkin.

Don’t fancy yourself an artist? No worries. I did the hard work for you and drew out everything you need for the four pumpkins. Click here to download the .pdf file of the artwork. The artwork is scaled for a medium sized pumpkin, so you will need to enlarge or reduce if you are using a large or small pumpkin.

2. Print out the .pdf and cut out the shapes for the pumpkin(s) you want to put together. For this tutorial, I am showing the Skull accessory kit.

3. At your local craft store, pick up some sheets of sticky-backed felt (about $1 each). You will need white and black for each set. I put all four sets together and only ended up using one sheet of white and two sheets of black.

I advise against using the “soft” sticky-backed felt. It’s a pain to peel the backing off of it.

4. Trace and cut out the shapes on each piece of felt. On the artwork, I labeled each piece with the color and the number of each shape you will need to cut out. Some are labeled front and back, which means you need to trace the front side (the side with the writing on it) and the back side (without the writing), so you’ll have mirror images of each piece.

Note: On the Cat set, you actually need to cut out 4 front and 4 back of the white rectangles, not 2 of each as noted on the artwork.

5. On the pieces that stick out of the pumpkin, I inserted a toothpick in between the front and back shapes to make a little toothpick sandwich. I just left a small portion of the toothpick sticking out to stick into the pumpkin. I had to break a few of the toothpicks in half so that they wouldn’t be too long. Once your little sandwich is put together, you will probably need to trim the edges so that the pieces match up nicely.

The pieces you will need to set up with a toothpick are:

• Pirate – Hat (I put one toothpick in the center and one on each side)
• Cat – Ears, whiskers
• Skull – Bones
• Spider – Legs

6. After assembling the rest of the pieces that layer on top of each other, draw in the faux stitching. On the white pieces, I used a thin black marker. On the black pieces, I used a silver metallic marker I found at the craft store for a few dollars.

Sorry that picture is so oddly lit. I’m not sure what’s going on there.7. Now, all you have left to do is to peel the backing off of the pieces and stick them directly to your fresh pumpkin or craft pumpkin. The pieces on toothpicks can be easily stuck directly into the pumpkin.

8. Display your new friends proudly!

I can’t believe how much my knock-offs look like the “real” ones!

You can create your own Pottery Barn-inspired pumpkin kits for under $5 for all four of them. The only difference between these knock-offs and the real thing is some polyester stuffing in some of the pieces and actual stitching instead of faux stitching. Oh, and $43.

Zack really wanted his picture taken with his new pumpkins. Here he is posing with his favorite, “Fat Cat.”

Our pumpkins will eventually be carved into Jack-O-Lanterns a few days before Halloween, but until then, we’re going to enjoy Fat Cat and all of his fun little friends.Will you create a set of your own?

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I’m in the mood to party! You can find this post linked to Rhoda’s “It’s Fall, Y’all!” party at Southern Hospitality and to Jane’s Frugalicious Friday party at Finding Fabulous!