Create A Space That’s Yours: Paint Your Own Custom Curtains

1. Create a Space That's Yours: Hi there, my name is Shayna Sell. Today I'm going to teach you how to create a space that's yours by making your own custom curtains. The inspiration for this class today actually came from a Diana Ross song. The song is called My House. Over and over again, she repeats the line, "It's my house and I live here It's all about how much she loves her home and has created this warm, loving space. That was the jumping off point for this class. When we all started spending more time at home in 2020 and talking on video calls, there's something that I started to notice and that was that a lot of our homes look the same. A lot of gray walls or white walls and a lack of personality except for a few occasions. It really stood out to me when someone actually had something different in the background. That's not necessarily a judgment, but it did make me realize that I want my home to reflect who I am and to be my own. It's my house and I live here. This class is for fellow creatives looking for a way to refresh their space beyond adding a new wall color or buying something else from the store. This is injecting your own style into your house. Or maybe you don't have the budget or the freedom in your current living situation to make drastic changes. I'll walk you through how to create custom curtains from paint drop clause that you can pick up from your local hardware store. We'll talk about the materials you need, how to size your curtains to your window, brainstorming and sketching out ideas, envisioning what those might look like in your space, and finally, painting your design. There is no sewing involved, but basic drawing and painting skills will be helpful. At one point, we are going to use some photo editing software to help you envision your design on the curtains. Whether you want your home to be a sixties mad showstopper or a madman, or you're just looking to create a cozy little cottage in the woods vibe, this class is for you and we're going to start with painting custom curtains. Join me in the next lesson and we're going to go ahead and get started. 2. What You'll Need: I'm just going to cover all the materials you'll need for this project from start to finish. I'm going to start out with what you need right now. At minimum, as long as you have a tape measure and some pencils and some paper. That's really all you need to get started. Because we're going to start off by measuring our window to figure out the size of the drop cloths and the curtain rod. Then the paper will just come in handy when we're sketching out some design ideas. That's really all you need to get started with your projects. Then after you've taken all your measurements and figured out what size cloths you need. You'll go ahead and pick up some basic canvas drop cloths from your hardware store. Then you're also going to need some of these clip rings. This is what's going to attach your curtains to the curtain rod. These are great because this means we don't have to do any sewing. We can just hang our drop cloths as they are. I'm going to show you what that looks like. You can see here, it has these little clips. I'm using two drop cloths, and we have two curtains, so I got two different parts. Then, you're also going to need a curtain rod. I've already hung that up on my wall, as you can see here. Now, in this class, I'm not going to go over how to hang a curtain rod. I am going to talk a little bit about the placement of it. But you will need a hammer or drill in order to hang your curtain rod. So that's just something to keep in mind. Then once you have everything for your curtains, now we can talk about the paint. I'm just going to be using some acrylic paint that I can have lying around. I had to buy some because there were some colors I didn't have on hand. But I really wanted this project to be something simple and that I wasn't going out and spending a ton of money on. I also have some paint brushes here. These are not super high-quality. They're just some basic craft paint brushes. I also bought some of these foam ones too. I'm not exactly sure which is going to work best on drop cloths, so I wanted to have some options. Then I also just have some jars here and you'll need a jar for water to clean your brushes. You're also going to need something to mix your paint in. Instead of using a flat palette, I actually want to use jars because I want to mix enough paint at the beginning, so I don't have to mix more later on and try to match colors. Now, if you're not super comfortable with mixing colors, you are not as experienced of a painter, then I would just recommend going out and buying acrylic paints in the exact colors you want. But I would hold off on that until you've gone through the process of figuring out what you want your final design to be and what you want those colors to be. Well, like I said at the beginning of this lesson, all you're going to need to get started is your measuring tape, a pencil, and a notepad. I'll see you in the next lesson where we're going to take our measurements. 3. Planning: Once you've picked a window that you want to make curtains for, it's time to take some measurements. You'll need to measure the width of the window, the height of the window, and then also start thinking about how long you want your curtains to be. You can have them floor length or you could opt for shorter curtains that just skim the window sill. For floor length windows, go ahead and measure from the top of the window to the floor. Then for window length, measure from the top of the window to just above the window sill. Make sure that you're taking these measurements from the outside of the moldings or whatever kind of frame the window has. So you're not measuring the glass, you're measuring the outside edges of the moldings. Once you have those measurements, we can go ahead and figure out what size curtain rod you'll need for your window. Then you can also determine how many curtain panels you'll need, and if you want them to reach the window sill or the floor if you didn't decide that earlier. For a traditional curtain look, you'll want an even number of curtains because they'll be pushed to the right and left sides of the windows when you have the curtains open. For my example, I'm going to have two curtain panels. To figure out the width that I need for those curtain panels, I'm going to take the width of the window and double it. For example, if my window is five feet wide and I needed 10 feet of material across two drop cloths. At first, that might sound like too much material, but you need to remember that when you have curtains hanging, you aren't going to have them lying flat. The reason you want to double the width of your window is because you want your curtains to have that drippy effect. When you close your curtains, they're not going to be perfectly flat. You want them to have a little bit of rippling and some folds. Doubling the measurement of the width of your window is just a nice, easy way to figure out how much material you'll need. Then for the length of your drop cloths, you're going to take the height of your window, or the measurement of the top of the window to the floor, if you're doing floor length, and add 2-4 inches, may be more depending on where you're going to hang your curtain rod. A general rule of thumb is to hang your curtain rod a few inches above the top of your window. When I say the top of the window, I mean a few inches from the top edge of the molding of your window if your window has molding. If not, the top of the frame. The main reason for hanging your curtain rod a little bit higher is to add some height to your room. If you hang the curtain rod exactly level with your window or just barely above it, it's going to look a little bit awkward and like you're chopping off your window. Hanging the curtain rod a little bit higher will just give the illusion of height to your room. Then finally, you can figure out how many curtain rings you'll need. I used one pack of curtain rings for each panel, and each pack included seven rings. If you're having trouble figuring out how many curtain rings to get, I would opt for getting a little bit more than you think you might need. They're just to account for the weight of the drop cloths. If you don't have enough curtain rings, you may have to worry about them falling off of the little clips that you'll clip your curtains onto. I would just make sure to have an even amount of rings for however many panels you end up using. Then I just have some common drop cloth sizes here four by five feet, six by nine, and nine by 12. Those are just the most common ones that I found. I'm in the United States, so these are all measured by feet and inches. But the nice thing here is that you don't have to get drop cloths that fit your window perfectly. If you're between sizes for the drop cloths, I would opt for a larger drop cloth. That way you'll have some extra material. If you really need to, you can always just cut it off. But I think having those drop cloths a little bit larger will be better because you can't really make up for extra material if it's simply not there. These are just some common curtain rod sizes. They usually come in a range: the smallest possible to the largest possible, so 28 inches wide to 48 inches wide. Now that you've taken those measurements, it's time to go ahead and purchase your drop cloths, curtain rods, and curtain rings. Once you have those items, make sure to go ahead and hang up your curtain rod before moving on to the next step. 4. Making a Guide: Once you have your drop cloth all correct and ready to go, now we can start mapping out a grid onto the drop cloth. You can see here that I've added painter's tape on one edge of the drop cloth. Every 10 inches, it's not precise, but I've just marked it off with some of this painter's tape here. These markings will be a visual guide for us when we're trying to picture our designs on the actual drop cloth. They'll make more sense later. I'm just going to go ahead and do the same thing on all four edges of one of the drop cloths. I'm just going to rearrange this. I don't really have a big enough space to lay this out and videotape it, so I'm just going to show you doing it a little bit at a time. I got my tape measure. I already know that I don't want my final design to be very rigid or a perfect pattern, so I'm not really trying to get exactly 10 inches. I just picked 10 inches to make these markings because 10 is a nice even number. So it just makes it a lot easier to figure out than trying to do any extra math. You'll just want to make sure that you're using different colored painter's tape. I probably wouldn't use the white tape color. Try to find blue or green or something that will stand out. What we're going to do is take a picture of the drop cloth's hem with the tape up there. You're going to want to be able to see it in our picture. At this point, I have the next side done, I'm just going to go around and do the exact same thing on the remaining two edges of my drop cloth. For this next step, first you'll need to go ahead and hang those curtain rings onto your curtain rod. Once you have the curtain rings on the curtain rod, we're going to go ahead and clip on one of our drop cloths. When you hang up your drop cloths, we're actually going to fold over part of the fabric. You'll see here that I'm just folding over probably about a foot. How much of the curtain you want to hang over is up to you. That's going to be your own personal preference, as well as how long you want the curtain to hang. If you're worried about the length of your curtain being too short, you may want to fold over less of it. Once I've folded over my curtain, I'm just clipping it onto those curtain rings. I'm just eyeballing it here. I haven't taken any measurements, I'm just looking to see if it looks even. That's just the way I do things. I'm not the most precise person sometimes. If you want to make sure that you have a perfectly straight and even line where you folded that over, you can definitely measure it out. Just go ahead and clip on all those rings, and then you can move on to any other curtain panels that you might be using. Now that I see my first drop cloth hung up in the space, I actually am rethinking what I want the length to be. Seeing it hung up like this, I think I actually want it to just skim the bottom of my window sill rather than being floor length. I'm just making some markings with pencil and then I'll use that to cut my drop cloth to the size I want. Now I'm just hanging up my second drop cloth, and I'm just doing the same thing I did last time, making sure that it's even with the one that I hung up before. Once you have all your drop cloths hung up, go ahead and fan out your drop cloths. I'm just moving them around to make sure that I can see as many of those green tape markings as possible. Once you have the curtains nicely arranged so that you can see those tape markings, go ahead and take a photo. Make sure that your photo is framed in a way that it includes the entire length of the curtains and the entire width. Then once you've done that, it's time to move on to our next lesson and talk about design inspiration. 5. Inspiration: It may seem like I put the cart before the horse by starting out with picking your window and taking all those measurements. If you'd rather start with inspiration, you're more than welcome to. But I think picking out your window and figuring out where to put those curtains is an important step because that will help with planning out your design. I started out this process by asking myself some simple questions and I really just wanted to narrow down what I like and what I wanted my space to feel like. I thought about movies that I've seen, TV shows that inspire me and even places I've been, you can also consider what your space needs. Is it lacking something? In my house, I have a kitchen that is white and gray, and I do really like it, but it's lacking color. That was one of my big motivators when I was trying to come up with a design. I knew I wanted something with color, something that was a little bit dynamic and had a lot of interesting elements. As far as how I wanted it to make me feel, I wanted something that felt a little bit cozy, maybe a little bit kitschy or quirky, and something that ultimately just reflected my design style and what I like to make. So thinking through all those things, I decided to go with an orange tree theme. I knew I wanted to use orange trees and orange blossoms as my design focus. But I didn't really have a clear image of what I wanted my curtains to look like. I just started by looking at some reference photos and looking at things like color, shape, texture, contrast, mood, and any other qualities that stuck out to me that also were motivators for wanting to use this as my theme. Really trying to pinpoint what I liked about this orange motif that I pictured in my head. Sometimes the best way to do that is just from observation. I have this stack image here from Unsplash and I just went through and thought about all of these items. What I noticed right away where the colors, they're bright, poppy colors. I really love the orange and the green, how they contrast each other, but they're both somewhat bright. I also really like the oval circle shape of the oranges and then the contrasting shape of the oval leaves. They're also a little bit spiky, and there's also bumps on oranges. So they're not perfect circles either. Overall, it's just very cheerful, sunny, happy, all of these positive things that I want in my kitchen, I want my cozy little house to have a happy, sunny little kitchen. Then finally, I really enjoy how random and scattered the oranges are. You can see there's different clumps of oranges together, but it's not consistent. It's not always pairs or groups of three. It's all over the place and I really like that. This is my base of inspiration. But I also have some other things that influence my art and my design style. Other things I like are vintage botanical illustrations, I thought maybe there's a way that I can incorporate the looks of these into my final design. Once again, I went through their initial list thinking about colors, textures, qualities, contrast, all of those things, and pinpointing what I specifically like about this illustration style. This is the list I came up with, I really like a hand-drawn, painted look. I like things that look like a human was involved in the process. I don't necessarily like perfect lines and perfectly straight or perfectly curved lines. I like things that have either a painterly quality or look a little bit sketchy, I also really like the romantic look of both of these and I can't really say what makes them romantic, but I think it's that there's this sense of flow, I like the arrangement of the one on the right in particular. So even though there's a lot going on, there's the main branch. Then you have the cut open citrus at the bottom and then you have all these other little elements. But somehow they all work together. Nothing looks out of place, nothing looks cramped either. I just really like the spacing of all those things. Then I also like how playful both of these are. I think some of that is just because nature's playful things don't grow in a perfectly straight up and down line. Branches branch off and they go in different directions. I really like that and that's something I think I want to keep when I make my design. Then finally, I have illustrated advertising. Something that I really love are vintage ads and specifically ads that use some illustration or painting. These are just a few. One actually does have oranges in it, and the other two just have a look that I really appreciate. A common thread with all of these is that they use layers of color. Some are more complex than others. The North Carolina one has a lot more colors going on, a lot more layers, but there's still big swaths of color, even if you look at the pine trees, there's a base, ever green color and then there's a much darker, almost black that's giving the illusion of pine needles and different levels of the pine tree. But really, it's just a lot of big, black smudges. Then in general, these also use shapes over lines. You can see that even when there are lines, they're very strategically used. One example of that would be the flowers in the North Carolina advertisement or the trees in the middle image. So shapes are used to create the actual flowers. But then you can see there's small little lines that are used to add some texture to the flower so you can see the individual petals without the artist having painted each and every single petal, and the same goes with the tree in the middle image. There's orange foliage, and then there's very specific lines used just in the middle of the tree to look like branches. But other than that, it's mostly shapes that are creating this look of a tree. Then I also noticed that all of these really played around with scale. The image on the left, there are two oranges that are really prominent right in front and then there's this little scene in the background that disappears into the distance. I thought that was fun, I like the variation in scale there. Then finally, I really just appreciated the colors. I love the more blue-ish greens and the burnt orange. Then finally, I turned to my own artwork for some inspiration this is from my pain sketchbook. I just did it really quickly one day, but I really love the look of this and this is the feeling that I think I want to go for. I went through that same process, even though it's my own artwork, I wanted to identify what I liked about it or what I wanted to repeat in this design. Part of what I like is the simplicity, I'm only using a few colors, so I think that would make it pretty easy to replicate in painting this really large drop cloth. I like the arrangement in general, I feel like it has a nice sense of flow and movement. There's something very balanced about it. I like the spacing of the, well, in this case, they're lemons, but on my final, they would be oranges, and the leaves, I like how it uses negative space. Maybe that's something when I start sketching out designs, I can keep in mind. Then once again, shapes over lines. There really aren't any lines here. The only thing close to lines are what look like some stems. Here, this is really shape-focused, even where there's some shading or different values, those are all created by shapes, it's not a lot of line work or shadowing. 6. Sketching & Motifs: We've already worked through some of our ideas and done some brainstorming, gathered some inspiration, now it's time to start sketching. I like to think of sketching as both practice as well as planning for our final design. I'm just going to use this black marker, and start drawing some oranges. First, I'm just going to mimic some of those botanical illustrations that I include in my inspiration. Maybe some line work, something that would be a little bit more detailed. Maybe some texture for the oranges, they have those little bumps. This is just a very quick little drawing, so it doesn't have to be perfect, I'm just testing some things out here. Another option could be some lines that mimics that printed look, it has like a little branch. That's one direction that I could go in. I could add a lot more detail than that. I could even add in some crosshatching, but one thing that I'm going to keep in mind is that I'm painting this on drop cloth. It's not going to be a proper canvas, it's probably going to absorb paint a little bit more, and it's also a larger area to cover than this sheet of paper here. Do I want to have to paint, each and every one of these lines? That's something else I'm going to keep in mind as I'm making these sketches. Figuring out how complex I want my final design to be or not, because I am going to have to replicate it. I might not be as interested in having something with all these lines that I'm going to have to paint, but there could always be a way to incorporate it without going into that much detail. Let's try something else, focus more on the shapes. This is based more off of that last example of that painting, not mine. To be a little bit more filled in. Maybe some shady. I know it doesn't look like much here, but this is just helping me to get a better picture of what it could look like. More so bring some layers here, maybe I'll just have half of this neat shaded. I think I'm leading a direction that I like, but I am also going to refine these sketches with paint as well. These are just very first drawings. Maybe something else I can try out would be more like those vintage adds. I don't really have an example quite like this, but something with more above perfect circle, and very geometric leaves, two-dimensional. Blossoms like there, not quite sure how many petals go on an orange blossom, but something like that. But right now I think I'm leaning more towards this flat look, I will be adding texture with layers of paint, but I like these shapes a little bit more than this. I do really like this style and this aesthetic, but I just don't know if it's quite right here for what I want in my kitchen. Then some other things to think about this time are also the scale. I talked before about how you're going to have to mimic your initial sketches on the curtains. Even though some of these drawings look a little bit large right now, they're showing a look much smaller when they're hanging in your room on curtains. It's a good idea to think about how close together do you want some of your objects? How big do you want them? This's something that I would just keep in mind as you're sketching and coming up with your ideas. These are close ups. Let's play around with some of that scale and spacing. One option is to keep it somewhat smaller scale. I'm just drawing like a loose branch, an orange here. Say there's another branch. I'm just trying to show how this might look. This design reflects a pattern. This has that meandering quality that I liked, and mimics the look of a pattern, but at the same time, this is a lot of detail to put in. From further away you're not going to see all these details, it's just going to look like all one pattern. Another option would be to have something very large scale. Let's say I actually wanted to paint a whole orange tree, I'm just going to mark this out, and I could have something that maybe goes over both panels of the curtain. Here it'd be more like a little scene. I think you get the idea. Then finally you could have something that's very great like, so you could do a very geometric straightforward pattern. In my other sketches, I had this very flat, orange, two leaves. I don't always like making very symmetrical perfect things. This still isn't exact, but I think you get the idea. This is a lot more intentional and not quite as loose as these other two. But the nice thing about something like this is that you can finish it in a lot more time, so it's not going to take nearly as long, and the simplicity really will look nice up-close or further away. For something like this if you add a lot of detail, you're not really going to see it unless you're staring at your curtains up-close, which is totally fine. You can go whatever direction you want, but it just depends on how much work you want to put into this, and what you want the final to look like. I think I have some ideas and directions that I really like right now, but I want to push it a little bit further and test out some things with paint. 7. Sketching with Paint: After you're done with those initial sketches, with pencil and marker, you will need paint for the next steps. If you don't have paint yet, that's when I would go out and buy it. Now you should have a better idea of what colors you want. If you're less experienced with painting, I wouldn't worry about learning how to mix colors, I would just go out and buy the exact paint colors that you want. I'm just going to practice in this painting notebook I have here. This is just the same color of paint that I'm going to use for the final. Already I know that this is not how the paint is going to apply to the drop cloth. This is a really smooth paper, it's just gliding on. The drop cloth, since it's untreated, it's probably just going to absorb a lot more paint right into it. I won't get any of this watercolor look here. It's not going to look like that when we're painting on a drop cloth. We'll get to the actual painting. You're going to be working in layers. I'm going a little fast right now because this is just a sketch, but for the final, you're going to want to let those layers dry completely. Depending on your skills and how comfortable you are, you can always draw all these out first, with pencil, and then paint over it. The same goes for the drop cloth. Even though I'm free handing it right now, I am actually going to sketch all these out on the drop cloth, before I start painting. Like I said before, this is the direction that I want to go in. If you want a different style or look, go ahead and do whatever you want. I like this meandering, and organic pattern, but not really, because it's not going to be a perfectly seamless, pattern. I'm just making it up as I go. But if you're someone who has a plan and likes to make a plan and stick to it, then you can certainly do a style like that. You could tape out an entire grid on your curtains, and do something that's very geometric and perfectly aligned. The sky is the limit. Since we are going to be working on layers, I'm not really adding any shading or texture here. There is some texture, that's just from the acrylic itself, it's leaving these streaky lines. It won't do that on the drop cloth, though. This, I'm just going to let dry, and then I'll come back to it, and add more layers, and play around and see if there is any shading, or variations in color to mimic shading that I want to add. Okay, so this has had some time to dry. Now, I'm just going to ahead and play around with what my next layer might be. I have my example here, this old artwork that I had made, and I want to follow, some of this shading here, so that's why I'm playing around with this right now. I'm just trying to work out how I might try to replicate this painterly look, to probably make my shapes. But I probably won't get this exact look, because it is going to be a completely different texture when I'm painting on a drop cloth. I'm really just working out as much as I can right now, so that there's less guesswork when I'm painting in individual layers on the drop cloth. Now, I'm just going to play with some line work. I know I said earlier that I wasn't going to go the direction of those ink illustrations, or ink prints. But I do like the look of those lines, so maybe there's a way that I could incorporate it, but maybe it just won't be as detailed as those. Maybe I could have some lines on the leaves. It's not very saturated, so I don't if you can see that, but let's try that again. The look I would want wouldn't be so sheared. This you can see through. I don't think this paint is very pigmented. Let's try that on this one, we will see it a little better. I could do something like that, and still have that line quality. I could add lines around the edges, or if I wanted, I could go for a screen printed look. When things are screen printed, sometimes there's overprinting, and it doesn't line up correctly, so I could try to mimic that. I'll do that with this one. Maybe I'll just do one side of the leaf, like that. But I don't know if this is the direction I want to go and I'm not sure I'm really digging these lines, but I'm so glad I tested it out, because I did want to see what that would look like with this kind of composition. Then I'm just going to test out another thing. In my example, I don't really have a lot of variation with the leaves, they're almost the same color. The only variation that comes into play, is how opaque it is, or isn't. Opacity won't really be an issue with the drop cloth. I'm just going to play around with this and see what it looks like when I add some shading to my leaves. That's when I do like a full half of a leaf, or I can just do more accents. Some don't mind the look of these, but these definitely aren't the colors I want to use. I want it to be a little bit more maybe muted. I want the oranges to be lighter and brighter. So that's something I'll play around with when I go to mix my paints. But what I have figured out here for the most part is how many colors I'm going to need. I'll definitely need a base green for the leaves. I'm going to need a darker green if I'm going to do any of this shading here. I'll need my base bright, cheerful orange, and then a darker orange. Then there is one more thing that I haven't done here that I think I want to get to my final, but I want to see what it looks like first, and then I'd be adding any orange blossoms, those little white flowers. The way I work is a little bit more loose, not super rigid and planned out, so my final might not look exactly like this. This is really me trying to picture what it might look like. I'm also going to use this to envision what it will look like in this space and that's what we're going to cover in the next lesson. But you can feel free to make a very detailed, very specific sketch here and translate there directly to the patterns. That's totally up to you and how you work best. So I like that, I think I will probably incorporate that into my final design. But sometimes you just don't know until you see it. So I think at this point, I'm done with this main sketched out painting. I've made some decisions on what I like and what I don't like, what I'm going to include and what I'm going to get rid of for our final design. Then there's just one more thing I'm going to do before we move on and that is test out the paints on some scrap drop cloth that I have. Before I test out my paint, there is one very crucial step and that is to have some protective layer between the drag cloth and your work surface. Unless you're working on a surface that you don't mind if it gets acrylic paint on it, you're going to want to protect it with something. So I just have some scrap paper here, and that's because the paint will bleed through the drop cloth. It's not very thick. It's not coated. All of these, hopefully tell it all, but there are basically pores in fabric, so it will lead through. You can see here that there are a couple of tests spots that I made already on this drop cloth. This is one that I've actually used for painting and protecting my floors. So I just cut off a piece of this and wanted to test out for acrylic paint. I just want to show you what the texture is like after you paint on the draft cloth. You'll still have some flexibility, it's not super stiff. But it's not going to have as much flow as a fabric as it would without the paint. So that's also something to keep in mind. Right now, I'm just going to test out some very basic shapes for my design on the drop cloth to see how feasible it is. I'm going back to my orange paint color. I just wanted to do this to show you how it applies to the drop cloth. Not every drop cloth is exactly the same. This one I have here is actually a little bit stiffer than drop cloths I bought to be my curtain panels. They just vary by brand a little bit. But you can see that it's not really applying in one pass. It's going to take some firm strokes to really get into the cloth. Now, I'm going to use stiffer brush and let's see how that goes. I think that other brush is just a little bit too soft, so let's see. Yeah, this is nice because I can really press into the cloth and get a lot more coverage. You don't need special, fancy paintbrushes here. I would pick up a pack of some affordable brushes, but nice stiff ones like this. I'm going to get my hands dirty, but you can see that there's not a ton of bend to it. Then you also want to have a brush to help straighten out your lines. So if you don't want these fuzzy edges, you want more crisp edges like this, maybe we can still use this brush, we can drag it this way, and that gives you a much cleaner edge. So I'm just using the edge of the brush to make it a lot cleaner. But if you have one that's just as stiff as this or a little bit smaller, you can get even more precise edges. A lot there will be dictated by your design and the look that you want it to have. Then I just wanted to show you what it will look like with a little bit of layering. It's like I said, I'm going to paint my final in separate layers. Let's see what it looks like. This is already dry. Well, let's see what it looks like if I try to paint on it with this white-cream color. That's actually going on pretty nicely. I was worried that it might be a little bit shear or see-through, but the coverage is actually pretty good. It's probably going to disappear a little bit into the color of the cloth here, but you get the idea. This is actually probably too soft of a brush as well. I have a lot more brushes that I can go through. But I'll find one that's a little bit more stiff than this because it just bends way too much and makes it a lot harder to paint nicely on here because it's so thick. I also wanted to show you some other options beside brushes. I picked up these foam brushes from the craft store. I got a big set of them for under $10. But if you're less confident in your painting or have maybe a more geometric design, I thought these might be a nice option, so I just want to show you what that would look like. I'm just loading this up with some paints and that works really well, you get a nice, perfect circle. You can make a design entirely from basic shapes like this. You could actually probably make something that's pretty complex. You don't need to have amazing painting skills for this project, but you will need just a little bit of creativity. So let's test out one of these, foam brushes. You can make some very simple, straightforward lines. If you get enough paint on your brush. That doesn't work as well. Maybe if I added some water. You could do something with stripes or squares. But I just wanted to give you a few more options rather than a traditional painting style. I'm just playing around, and just really try to get a feel for this drop cloth, what it's going to feel like to paint on it. Definitely, if you ever need extra, I would practice before you dive into your final, especially, if you have extra because you had to cut your curtains or even if you just bought the smallest drop cloth they have in the same brand. If you don't have any spare drop cloth that's lying around, and just work out some of your design ideas. At this point, you can either take a photo or make a scan of your most final sketch. If you're between two designs, go ahead and take photos of both of them because we're going to test it out in the space, by laying it over the photo we took earlier of our curtains. So that photo we took of the curtains with those tape marks are going to help us visualize what it's going to look like. Let's go ahead and see what our design might look like. 8. Preview Your Design: For this lesson, we're going to visualize what our final curtains might look like with the sketches and designs that we made in the last lesson. You'll need your computer as well as the photo or scan of your design and the photo that we took earlier of your plain curtains hanging up. What I'm going to show you, you can do in Photoshop or you can go to this free website called Pixlr. I'm not sure if that's the correct pronunciation, but that's what I'm going with. It's just P-I-X-L-R.com. I just wanted to show you how to do this on this website because it is a free resource. If you don't have Photoshop, this will be a good option for you. Then I'm going to go down to Pixlr E, advanced photo editor. This other option is more for quick and dirty graphic designs. We're going to use this Pixlr E, and then we're going to go ahead and open up the image of our curtains. I'm going to Open Image down here, and then here it is in my Downloads. Then I'm just going to go with this Full HD option, that should work fine. Here we have our image. Then I'm just going to make sure that we're looking at it right side up. I'm going to Image up here in the left-hand corner, Image rotation and rotate it left. Here we have our plain curtains and we can see all those tape markings that we put on there earlier. Now that we have this image in here, I'm going to go ahead and upload our design. To do that, I'm just going over to this bottom right-hand corner and hovering over this little plus sign, and then I'm going to click on ''Image'' Here's my design that I just took a photo of with my cell phone. I just going to zoom out a little bit by hitting "Command +" or "Control -" on a PC. You'll notice that the shortcuts on here are all the same as Photoshop. So if you're using this scenarios to Photoshop, you should be able to use a lot of the same keyboard shortcuts. I'm just making this smaller, then now I'm going to zoom back in with Command +. This isn't really giving us a ton of information right now. You can tell what it may look like, but there is another way to visualize what it will look like when it's actually painted on the curtains. I'm going to go over to my Image Layer here and click on these three little dots. That's going to bring up this little window where we can change the blend mode. If you're familiar with Photoshop or other photo editing software, we can go ahead and choose Multiply. What that does and it makes it look like this is actually on the object behind it. It's more shear and we can see what it might look like. It's not perfect, it's a little bit darker. But this is a nice way to help us figure out the scale and how we're going to translate our design to the drop cloths. I'm just going to ask out of this. I'm going to resize it at different sizes. I already decided that I want it to resemble a pattern, but I don't want it to be a perfect, seamless pattern, which would be very difficult to do also. I'm just going to make a bunch of copies of this original image. I'm holding down Alt option and then I'm dragging, clicking and dragging to make a copy. Then I'm just going to keep doing this till I have a few copies on here. This is giving me a better picture of what it might look like. I can also flip or rotate this too. I can go up here, I can flip it horizontally like that, I could also flip it vertically. But I'm just playing around with this one design, this is just one little snippet of my design and I can get a picture of what it might look like. Let's say maybe I could have them almost be reflections of each other, the two different curtains, or I could rotate this I'm clicking and holding down the circle to rotate. That's another way to move things around. This is a nice way to try out a lot of things within just a few minutes, I can get a better idea of what I like. If you plan doing something at a larger scale, we can also blow it up really big. Go ahead and just play around with your design and see what looks good to you. What do you like? Is it the direction that you want to go in? Like I said before this is also a great way to test out a couple of different design options if you were between two or three. You can just go in here and play around. I'm just going to get rid of this one, and this one, and actually this one too. Now I'm going to shrink this down because I don't think I want my design to be that large. I'm just holding Alt, clicking and dragging to make more copies. Maybe this is more how I want my pattern to look. I don't think I'm going to keep it as rigid, but this is a little bit closer to the look I'm thinking of. I would also just keep in mind that the drop cloths are folded and bending here. This isn't what it would look like straight across, so this isn't the most accurate representation because there are folds in here. Your design will go with those folds. The only way you would see it like this is if you had your curtain pulled really taut and then you would be able to see the pattern just like this. I would keep that in mind as well. This gets a nice baseline down for me. At this point, now I'm just deciding if this is how big I want it to be, because I'm going to be cutting this part of the drop cloth off. My curtains aren't going to go all the way to the ground. This is where that ledge is, and this is where my curtains are going to end. I might scale these down a little bit more. I'm just going to delete these and start over. It still might be a little too big because this isn't a huge space, so I don't know if I want them to be this large. That's more what I'm thinking. I'm holding Shift and clicking on these copies, deleting and clicking "Alt" or ''Option'' as I click and drag to make more copies. You can zoom out and zoom in. That's more of the scale I'm going for. But another thing this has made me realize is that I really want my shapes to be much more random. This pattern is a little too 70s looking for me right now, I want something that's going to flow into each other a little bit more. I'm going to keep that in mind when I'm actually drawing out my pattern on the drop cloth. Now, you're probably still wondering what is the point of all those little tape markings that I added to the drop cloth. The main reason for those is just to help us figure out the scale in space. I'm going to zoom in by hitting "Command +" or "Control +". You can see that I have these two tape markings here. That's telling me that this little motif is basically fitting in between these 10 inches because we added the tape at every 10 inches. That's going to help me when I sketch out my design and pencil on the drop cloth. I would know that this is the approximate size that I want my sketch to be. I'm going to show you another example of how this will come in handy. Let's say you made your sketch as close to the final as you want it to be. You have an entire vision for your curtain, maybe you're doing some kind of scene or like a landscape. I'm just going to scale this to the size of the curtain. Since you would be blowing up your original design, this will help you figure out how large it's going to need to be to fill up the whole space. I'm just going to move it down until it meets one of my markings. We got 1, 2, 3, 4. It's just a little over 4 inches, I would say, because this first marking down here is the start of our 10 inches, so 10, 20, 30, 40. Now that's not an exact number, but it will help you if you're scaling up your design in that way. If you wanted to get really precise with it, you could actually draw out a grid or tape off an entire grid on the curtains, so you could have tape going across horizontally and vertically. I chose not to do that because it would take a lot more time. I honestly, I just don't enjoy working that tightly, I like to be a little bit more loose and have some flexibility with my design. I'm not super concerned with the scale or copying my sketch exactly. I want to give myself some parameters, so I don't just start drawing on my curtains and then step back and realize that I've only filled one corner of the curtain with tiny little oranges. I want to have some idea of what it will look in the space to keep me on track. I hope that you'll find this helpful in figuring out what you want to do with your design and how it will look, but also figure out what you don't want to do, what you don't want it to look like. Because it is hard to visualize until you see it in your space. Now, that we've taken a look at what our pattern may look like, we can move on and start sketching out our design on the curtains themselves. 9. Mapping your design: We're ready to get into sketching out our design onto the actual drop cloths. But before we do that, you will want to make sure that you've cleaned up the drop cloth. If you have any strings like this that are still attached to it, just look for anything like that or any weird little fuzzies. This is your last chance to clean up the drop cloths before we get into sketching and then later painting. If you had to cut your drop cloths to size, make sure you go ahead and do that before we lay out our design. Now I'm ready to start laying down my design. I did print out this photo for reference, just in black and white, but I just want to keep in mind that scale that I decided to go with when I was testing it out on the computer. This will just keep me on track. I can just reference back to this as I am sketching out the design. I keep saying sketching, but that's not totally accurate. When you're sketching, you're drawing a lot of shaky lines sometimes. That is something you're going to want to avoid when you're drawing on the drop cloth, and that's because it's going to be hard to remove your pencil markings. You won't be able to cleanly erase the pencil marks that you add. As I'm plotting out my design, I'm just going to be conscious of making very purposeful marks here that I plan on covering up with the paint. I don't want any pencil marks to still be there. Like I said, I already have this as a reference, and then if you have any other reference materials, I would have those in front of you now. I have a picture on my computer of an orange tree and I'm also going to be referring to that as well, because I want to have a reference that isn't just my own practice painting. Now I'm just going to get started and trying to get the same feel for my sketch that I landed on and figuring out the scale. One more thing I guess I should point out now is that you can add a design on this folded over part or not. This is the part of a curtain here, this top overhang, so you could leave that blank or you could do maybe a complimentary pattern, like some stripes or something, but I think I'm just going to carry on the same pattern up here that I am down in this part of the curtain. It's not really a smooth line I'm making because this isn't taut like a Canvas. There's a little bit of stretch to it. You have to go over your lines, but I'm making sure they're not very sketchy lines. If you're really confident in your design, you don't necessarily have to go through this. You could just get right into the paint. But for me, I want to have something that isn't totally permanent just yet. Even though it is hard to erase this if I'm really unhappy, this is not nearly as permanent as the paint will be. Hopefully you can see that. I know this pencil might not show up very dark on the video. I'm just looking back and forth between my printout and then my reference photo of the orange trees. As you can see, I'm pausing now and again to take a step back and just take in what this looks like from a little bit further away because I'm trying to visualize it in the space. We're not going to be staring up close at our curtains every single day, unless you want to. That's totally up to you. I'm not judging. Part of what I'm trying to accomplish is a sense of flow between my different elements and some negative space. I don't want it to be super cluttered. I don't want every single inch to be filled with paint. I do want there to be some spacing. This part is not going to be a quick process, so I just want to give you that heads up right now. I think the painting will actually go quicker because we're doing a lot more thinking here. I'm still working out the design. This might move a lot faster if you made a full-fledged design in a sketch design phase of the project in the previous lessons. But for me, I still like to work things out as I go along. I think this will probably take me longer than the painting for sure. Now I'm just going right to the edges of my drop cloth too. You'll notice that I'm bouncing around a little bit, and that's so that I don't get too focused on one area. Sometimes when you focus on one area for too long, then it might not match the other parts of your design. If I only stuck to this small corner here, maybe it becomes out of balance with the proportions over here, because I'm going to be playing around with the sizes of these oranges a little bit. I want to play around with the leaves and how many I use. But if I get hyper-focused in one area, I might start adding in details with the pencil, and that's not what we're doing here. This isn't a drawing projects. This is just the plan. The painting is the real focus later. This is just the plan for where I'm going to paint. One other thing I want to point out while I'm meeting this edge here, I'm not planning on the design perfectly transferring over. What I mean by that is I'm not going to have half of an orange on one side and half of an orange here. Because when this is hung up, it's not going to meet out in a way that you would see that is a whole orange. I'm just going to do my best to kind of camouflage. I'm having a leaf here right at the edge so it doesn't look totally empty. Maybe I'll do one more here like that. This looks like it's going into this next area, but it's not going to be super noticeable. Then when you're ready to move on to the lower part of the panel, I would actually draw a little bit up and behind, because when this is hanging, you don't know how the fabric is going to shift or move, so you don't want there to suddenly be this strange empty space. By now, you should be able to see what I have sketched so far. I'm just going to go ahead and finish sketching everything out on this curtain panel. 10. Painting: Now that I have my design all sketched out, I'm ready to start painting my curtains. Before I start painting, I just wanted to go over some steps I took to get ready to start painting. The first thing I want to point out is that I'm going to be using two different jars of water here. I'm going to keep one for warm colors and another for cold. The warm color will be my orange and the cold will be my green paint here. If you're using colors from different ends of the color spectrum, I would do the same thing. It'll just help prevent any muddying of your paint colors. Then whether or not you mixed your own paint, I would actually thin down your paint quite a bit. I'm just going to pull off this plastic rap here and show you the consistency . Acrylic paint is usually quite a bit thicker than this. I've thinned it out a significant amount, and that'll help my paint go a little bit farther and make the application a little bit easier because I'm not trying to get a very thick painterly texture on the curtains. I'm more concerned about just getting even applications, so thinning it out helps. I've just thinned this out with water. Then as you can see here, I've covered my paints with Saran wrap. That's just going to help keep them from drying out so that I don't have to worry about mixing new paint or wasting any paint. Then I'm also going to keep a spray bottle of water on hand, and this is going to help thin out the paint if I need to along the way, if I want to improve the consistency. I'm also going to spray it before I put any Saran wrap back over. I'm just trying to do as much as I can to prevent the paint from drying out. I would definitely keep paper towel on hand just to clean up any potential messes. Then I've got all my paint brushes here ready to go. I'm also going to have specific brushes that I'm using for the orange paint, and specific brushes I'm using for the green paint. Then the last thing I want to know before we get started is that I do have my protective layer here. This is just a role of craft paper from the hardware store. I have two layers and I taped it onto my table because I definitely don't want any paint getting on it. Before you get started, you'll also want to remove your tape. The only tape I've left on here is the tape that's marking the very top edge of my curtain where I have it folded over. I kept that on just to make it easier for me to tell where that line is. Even though I am going to have a design on this tap little panel here, I'm actually going to fold it up and I'm going to start with the bottom. That's because I don't want to have to wait for this little strip to dry before I can move on into this area, so I'd rather start with the bottom here. I'm just going to fold that up. I'm making sure not to fold this behind because the paint will bleed through to the second layer. I'm not going to fold it under. I'm just scrunching it up here. If you have a bigger work surface, this should be a lot easier for you, but I'm working with some limitations, so I'm just going to make it do with what I have. But as I mentioned earlier, I am going to work in layers, and I'm going to start with my orange first. That's because the green is going to be a darker color, so if it does overlap at all, I want it to cover up the orange. The order that you paint your layers in will depend on your design. With my design, I have the first layer that's going to be my lighter orange color and then my lighter leaf color. Then the next layer is going to have some kind of shading with the darker green and then a darker orange red. Then my third layer will be just some extra little details, so those little orange blossoms that I mentioned before when I was practicing earlier. The first base layer of the oranges and leaves I'm going to work on at the same time, except for areas where the oranges and the leaves meet up like this. I have my green paint here that I'm starting out with right now. I'm just going to wet my brush before I dip it into the paint. Then I'm just going to load it up, making sure it's at the consistency that I want. I will just be careful not to get too much paint on the handle of your brush. Because if you get paint on your hands, the higher the chances are of you getting paint somewhere on the curtain that you don't want it. I'm using the edge of my brush to create a line. If the line isn't perfect, that's okay, I can go back later with a smaller paintbrush and refine it. You can see here that it's dragging a little bit. It's not going on very smoothly, and I think the issue might be this brush, I don't think it's stiff enough. It worked okay on the drop cloth I was practicing on earlier, but that was a different brand. There may be some inconsistencies depending on the brand of drop cloth that you buy. This one was a store brand here. The other one I think was also a store brand, but it was from another home improvement store. This drop cloth is a lot thinner and not as stiff as the other canvas. I think I might actually have to use a stiffer brush here. This one's kind of small that I'm going to try out now. Yes, that's way better. I would say the stiffer or firmer that your drop cloth is, I would go with a softer brush or you can get away with using a softer brush, and then the softer or more fluid that your drop clothes, I would stick with the harder brushes. I'm just going to move this a little bit closer to me. See here, you can see where it's bleeding through. These edges aren't perfect right now, but I can go back with a smaller brush just to clean them up. But especially with some of the points of these leaves, I want them to be distinct. I'll definitely go through and do that. You can always use your hand to pull the cloth a little bit tighter. That'll help with your application of the paint too. The more loose and bunched up it is, it's going to be much harder to paint. If you're having a lot of issues with that, you could put weights or books or something like that around the edge of the curtain so that where you're working is pulled tight, and then you can just move those as you're moving around the curtain. But that would be a way to just keep it a little bit totter and make your painting easier, if you're having some trouble with that. I'll just have one more leaf, I'm going to do really quick. Then I'm going to use my orange paint to do these two oranges right here. I don't want there to be a gap between where the orange is and the leaves. I'm going right up to the edge, and just slightly beyond because the orange, like I said before, is a lighter color. I think the green should be able to cover it up pretty well. I am going just slightly over the pencil markings too, and that's because I want to hide those. Since I'm already using a smaller brush for the orange, I am trying to get nice, neat edges right now. The only edges that aren't super clean are just the ones that are coming up to the edges of the leaves. I'm just going to continue doing this throughout the rest of my curtain before I move into adding our second layer. Some things to remember, keep your paint wet at all times and cover it up with plastic wrap when you're not using it. You can always spray it down with your spray bottle if you need to. Keep your paint brushes clean. Keep two different jars of water, one for warm colors and one for cool colors. To make things easier, you can start by filling in your shapes and then use a smaller paint brush to make those edges clean and crisp. If you do have any colors that are going to butt up against each other, then start with the lighter color first, wait for it to dry, and then go in with a darker paint color. 11. Painting Details: Once you have your curtain completely painted with that first layer, now I'm adding in the details that are going to make this even more unique to me and my painting. I'm just going to start adding in Spanish shadings. This is not super precise. I'm just going with what I like, what kind of look that I like. Going for this painterly look. These oranges, I'm just adding some shading details in here. I'm trying to keep it a little bit loose, so I'm not gripping this super tightly. I'm not going for realism here. I just have a specific look in mind, like that painting that I showed you earlier for my sketchbook with the lemons, and then I'm doing something similar with the leaves here. Just going in. I'm keeping my brush a little bit dry because I actually like the look of the dry brush marks. It's not really going to blend in too much. On this little area, I'm trying to differentiate the leaves from each other a little bit. This is just going to create more texture and interests to my design. Since I'm taking the time to paint it, I want it to have that extra hand painted look. It's going to add a stem here that I missed. For me this is where my design is coming to life, and these parts where I'm being a little bit more careful and intentional are where I'm trying to differentiate those layers. I want it to look like this leaf is in front and this one is behind. This is the technique that I'm going with. But depending on your design, you may be working just as carefully as you did on the first one. But for me, I want this to have a little sketchy, more random look. This is going to go a lot faster than my first layer. Let's see, I was getting a little bit to here [inaudible] with it and I end up with a paint that, but luckily ended up in a good spot. You'll notice if you're painting in layers like this, that you don't have to apply as much paint if you're painting on a surface that's already been painted and dried because it's not going to soak into the canvas the same way as that first layer. I'm happy with that. I'm going to switch back to my orange paint, and then after that I'm going to go ahead and start on my third layer, cleaning up some areas and adding those little orange blossoms. After that last layer has dried, I'm ready to start working on my third and final layer, which is just going to be some little detail work by adding some little orange blossoms. I'm just looking for areas that I think could use a little something extra or where I could use an orange blossom to cover up on the stake. I think a good spot might be right right. I'm trying to stick to what I've seen in some of my reference photos. They appear where there's a cluster of leaves. That's what I'm replicating. There's just a couple, and then I also have this little paint drop right here. Maybe I could do a few blossoms here to cover that up, and then if I see any other weird spots, I'll decide if I can either cover it up with a blossom, if it makes sense, or maybe another leaf, or if you get a paint spot on the painted area then you can obviously just paint over there with the same paint color. Now, I kept my paint a little bit thicker because I knew I was going to do some smaller details like this. It won't glean into the fabric quite as much. I'm just going to go ahead and add these little touches here and there, and also just look out for any little mistakes like I mentioned, and then once I'm done with that, I'll be all set with my painting. 12. Class Project: Now, it's your turn. For the class project, you're going to create a set of custom curtains of your own. But I wanted to make it a little bit easier for you to get started, so in the class projects here on Skillshare, start out by posting a photo of the window that you want to create custom curtains for, and then just add in a sentence or two about what kind of initial design ideas you may have. Then when you have a more refined idea or some sketches drawn out, go ahead and share those in the class projects as well. Then finally, once you've actually finished your curtains, please share a photo. I would love to see your new space and how you made it your own. 13. Thank You: Now that we've gone through all the steps to create custom curtains of your own, I really hope that this class inspires you to get creative in your own space. I also want to encourage you to take this one step at a time and have fun with this project. We are treating it seriously by going through some brainstorming and sketching out ideas, but my ultimate goal is for you to just have fun and create something that you like, that you can't buy at a store that's uniquely yours. Even if you can't get all your materials right away, think about the questions that we talked about in the beginning. How do you want your space to make you feel? Because at the end of the day, it's your house and you live there. See what I did there. Thank you again for joining me today. Please make sure to leave a review and follow me here on Skillshare to stay up-to-day on all my classes. You can also follow me on Instagram @Shaynasellart, and make sure to tag me if you post any photos of your process or your finished curtains. I'm so excited to see what you come up with. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or share any other tips and tricks you may come up with when you do this process on your own. See you next time.