Monday, April 5, 2010

Paint your pillows? Sure!


This is one of my early posts when I started blogging in April. It's not an oldie, but it's a goodie! Family duties have sabotaged the blog post I'd planned for this week, so I'm sharing this post again. Thanks for visiting!

Look, new pillows for my bedroom! And they only took a bit of thinking and best of all they were almost (less than $1 each ) free! (I'm still pretty new to the whole blogging thing so I'm working on it with these pillow posts. Bear with me, I plan to make things better but as they say, practice practice practice. And maybe you'll get an idea for your own projects.)


Okay, I switched to a teal comforter on our master bed and wanted/needed pillows to give it some ooomph but as usual, I had no pillow budget. The REAL budget laughs at the concept of a pillow budget and would give it a wedgie if it came close. But I DID have this fabric in my craft room stash......


I love the brown and white print and bought all they had when I found a sale for $1 a yard. I am an absolutely sucker for a fabric bargain! The teal fabric is a standard Walmart flat sheet, and I bought it because for $4 you get several yards of usable fabric. (Here's a hint-at Halloween WM has single flat sheets in BLACK for $4. That's enough for lots of Halloween projects right there!) And the embroidered white on black fabric was a remnant, but a big one, almost a full yard. So here are two of the pillows.....



.....and yes, I dinked around with the fabric to make it match my bedroom. Yup, I painted them. I experimented a bit with remnants and found a look that I liked and so I went to town. First I chose a craft acrylic in teal and watered it down alot. Then I sprayed each fabric piece with water to dampen it and with a paintbrush just touched into the paint I then touched the brush to the fabric. The cohesion of the water in the brush to the damp fabric just drew the color into the threads and it was easy and fun to do. I actually laughed out loud as I was doing it cus it was coming out so cool! Since the paint is so thin, the fabric takes the color without getting stiff. I LOVE the watercolor look on the white pillow, much better than a solid teal dyed background. I sprayed it with water before it was dry to increase the splotchy quotient. On the embroidered pillow I only colored half the embroidery so the pillow is half teal and half white stitching. It looks very much like a custom job. Oh wait, it is a custom job.




And the pin tuck pillow? Talk about a big bang for notalotta effort and cheap. I like cheap. I found a tutorial online for making pin tucks and if I had been thinking then I'd have a link now. But it's very easy, and I will be posting a tutorial on that one one day. However, just for this post, I'll tell you that marking a grid on the pillow fabric then pinching it up and sewing around that pinched up fabric gives you an awesome effect on the other side. The more you pinch, the deeper the pleats and the more plush the effect. I will be making more pin tuck projects in the future you can bet!


So my total cost on this project was minimal but let's break it down...

brown and white fabric @ $1 a yard less than $1

white embroidered black remnant $1 less than $1
(I still have enough of each fabric to make a smaller pillow)

Craft paint on hand zero extra cost
old bed pillows stuffed into new bed pillows zero
WalMart flat single sheet for $4 less than $1.00
(I made 6 full size pillow cases with the rest of the sheet)

So total cost was less than $4 which brings each pillow to less than $1 each. Even the REAL budget condescended enough to give the pillow budget a nod of approval. And now since I have the bed pillows I wanted, I can get on with the fun part of redecorating our master bedroom with a new color scheme....shopping for accessories at thrift stores and yard sales!!

9 comments:

  1. Can't wait to see the tutorial on pin-tucking! WOW factor is high on this project :O)

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  2. nice mom! wish i could sew, or paint, or blog... hmm.
    :o)

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  3. Coming from your sister who can't do any of this stuff, you sure make it look like I could if I had a bit of your cleverness. which I don't. So I'll continue to be like 99.99% of the world and buy the clever stuff from you!

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  4. Welcome to blogging! I am new to blogging too! And I love your pillows - I greatly admire people who can sew. I can't even sew on a button. :)
    Good luck with your blog!
    Best regards,
    Gloria

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  5. Who would have thunk? Crazy but it looks great. My daughter is looking and having a hard time finding a certain color of pillow for her bedroom. I will definitely pass this on.
    Pamela

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  6. I never would have thought of doing this with paint. That's the great part of blogging...sharing all these great ideas! Welcome to blogging world and I look forward to reading more.

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  7. Hi..I'm Barb from santagiftshoppe..Welcome to the wonderful world of blogging...I have found unbelieveable great friends on the blogging network..so supportive & caring!! I am soo happy you hooked up with the blog hop & put it on your blog..It took me quite a while to know how to do that..Oh by the way I'm now your newest Follower..I hope you'll come back to santagiftshoppe.blogspot.com
    & follow me too. I love all the great ideas, recipes, tips, crafts that we inspire in each other by showing them on our blogs..You'll love it too I'm sure...Hope to see you back soon..
    I'm trying to get together an Etsy shoppe by the end of the week. Then I'm going to have a giveaway of one of the One-Stroke pillows I've been showing..Also I hope to have a "My Creative Space Mondays" Link Party Monday..Consider yourself invited...Barb

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  8. Fabulous -- I too have painted on fabric, but mine didn't turn out near as pretty as yours. I love your pillows!

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  9. I ADORE the pin-tuck pillow! Did I miss the tute? If not, I'll be eagerly watching for it!

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I love your comments and read every one. They let me know if I'm on a good track with my blog. Thanks for stopping by!

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