$80 poncho turned into a rug

I made handwoven ponchos a few years ago, when they were all the rage, and still had some left. This tan one in particular was a nice, thick wool. I had been asking $80 for it as a poncho. But I decided to sew up the neck opening and turn it into a bathroom rug. Not exactly economical, but woo-hoo, is it ever soft. That's because I felted the daylights out of it. DH is putting a bit of non-slip tape under it to keep it secure. It looks better in real life.

Everything can be turned into something else.

dj runnels
Life's an Expedition

A houseful of faux painting

The background of this blog appealed to me strongly because of the wall paint. Much of my house is painted in faux finishes.

 

My office and its adjoining bathroom are a sort of French custard color over which I used a gold paint mixed with glaze, applied with newspaper.  I smeared the newspaper pages across the wall and let some of the newsprint ink seep into the paint/glaze.  When I removed the paper, I inspected each section to make sure I didn't have a Carson's yellow dot sale embedded in my wall.  A few times, the newsprint was legible and I had to do it over.  Twice, I saw my hand print from where I had pressed the newspaper into place, so I had to remove that, too.  The Chinese characters shown above are part of a commercially available wallpaper border.  I could not believe my good luck in finding that border, as it matched the wall so well.

 

My dining room (above) has an irregular wall surface to begin with, so painting it was no special feat. I merely used several colors of beige using a special sponge roller.

 

My yarn studio (above) is painted in layers of green, over which I applied beige and glaze, covered it with sheer plastic drop cloths, then removed.  It's a brighter, more varied color than you see in this photo.

My kitchen is painted a flat blue-gray-green, but I am using leaf rubber stamps around the back splash.  This isn't finished yet. This section shows mostly oak leaves and I need to overlap some other leaf shapes and tone down the blatant colors.

My living room has the same irregular surface that my dining room has.  It was painted a dayglo orange when we bought the house.  And when I say dayglo orange, I am not exaggerating.  It was the brightest orange wall color I have ever seen.  McDonald's pales by comparison.  I did not think I would be able to cover it completely, so I decided to work with it rather than against it. I layered four shades of pumpkin, rust, gold, etc. over it and you can still see tiny bits of orange peeking through, especially where the wall meets the ceiling.  The photograph doesn't do justice to the results.  It is the warmest, coziest, most autumnal room you could imagine.  Like a baked pumpkin pie.  And I use a lot of foliage in my decorating, so it feels especially cozy in there in September, October and November.

Okay, thanks for letting me share.

dj runnels

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