The Continuing Saga of the Intrepid Curtain Embellisher

Allow me to continue to amuse and amaze you with my adventures embellishing the plain white curtain (see blog post dated January 6, 2009 ).

But, before I do this, I would like to go on record as having developed a new art craze.
I am sure you are quite familiar with the world of mixed-media and altered art. One month, everyone is altering cigar boxes and everywhere you turn, there are articles and posts showcasing these charming, altered boxes. Three months later, we're all decorating corsets. You can't turn around without being hit in the head with a corset (perish the thought). And so it goes, from altered books to embellished sneakers.

But, have you ever seen anyone alter a curtain? I'll bet not. I know I'm on the cutting edge of a new trend. Remember, you saw it first here. Before long, I'm sure there will be articles in Somerset and Cloth, Paper, Scissors on how to alter plain white curtains. Workshops will be held at various venues on how to embellish the plain white curtain. Before you know it, many people will claim to have created this art form. But I will have the satisfaction of knowing that it all started with me. LOL

I digress. Back to the saga of the now blue sun printed curtain. As I mentioned, I was still not particularly thrilled with the results of my day's labor of love (or maybe that should read my day's frustration).

I proceeded to spend the next day, working on the curtain. You may have heard the saying, "less is more." Well, my saying is "more is never enough." With this in mind, I set about to try to salvage my project.




The first thing I did was to try to add texture and depth to the curtain by using fabric inkpads and a brayer wrapped with rubber bands.

















I was totally unimpressed with this step. Next, I tried using rubber stamps. After using both bold stamps and alphabet stamps, I began to like my results.

Feeling encouraged, I decided to make some fabric birds and butterflies to add to the curtain.


I found some interesting fibers and attached them to the curtain hoping they looked like branches. Then I pinned the birds and butterflies to the curtain. Here's a close up of the top half of the curtain.













But, standing back, I think that the bottom half of the curtain still looks a little sparse. What do you think? I'm thinking maybe some flowers would be a nice addition.





One of these days, I'll get to it.













However, I'm still very pleased with the way this altered curtain has turned out so far. (Now don't forget that you first read about altered curtains here.)