This is the true story of how one girl became way too invested in a set of draperies. You’ve been warned.

One of the last things to finish up in the nursery was getting curtains. We’ve got lots of pattern and color already so I knew I wanted something pretty simple. But going totally plain just wasn’t an option…momma had to give those babies some pizzazz. So I looked through my craft supplies and came up with a super simple way to take my curtains from vanilla to rocky road!

I started with a pair of solid navy  curtain panels that I picked up at Target on sale for $28. While there, I also picked up a decorative star punch. Once I got home I grabbed my foil tape (also used for this project) and started punching. And punching. And punching a little bit more. ‘Punch’ is a weird word, huh?

I have no idea how many little stars I actually punched out, but I would guess somewhere between 400-500. Obviously, if you went with a larger star punch, you could do a lot less and this whole project would actually take a lot less time. But I really loved the tiny, wonky star punch and I didn’t want the star pattern on the curtains to be overwhelming.

Next, I laid out my first curtain panel on our guest bed (after going over it with an iron). I wanted to be able to lay it out flat, but didn’t want to put it on the floor for fear that I would end up with large puppy paw-prints all over it. {Oh em gee…could paw-print stamped curtains be totally adorable in a puppy-theme nursery like this one?!} But anyway, I laid it out so I could get to work. And I realize it looks incredibly wrinkled in this picture, but that’s mostly the quilt underneath.

Then I started the tedious task of peeling off the backing from each star and sticking it on the curtain. Again, because I chose to use relatively small stars, it made things a bit more difficult. Not difficult like it requires a lot of skill, just difficult like why-are-these-stars-so-stinkin-small-and-my-swollen-fingers-so-stinkin-huge.

As far as placing the stars goes, I didn’t try to follow any specific pattern. I spaced them out relatively far near the top of the panel and then started spacing them closer together as I worked my way down to give it a nice gradient effect.

Funny story: somewhere about the 150^th star, I got very emotional. I started thinking about the fact that I was doing all of this for my son and how grateful I am to have the opportunity to be a mother. That led me to think about my own mother and how amazing she is, and then I started thinking about my grandmothers and my sisters and all the other women I’m so thankful to have in my life…long story short, I quickly became a mess. Picture JP slowly backing out of the room, while I blow my nose into the curtains. Pregnancy hormones are no joke, people.

After I powered through my mini-meltdown, I continued to peel-and-stick until I was finished. All in all, I would say it took me about 3 hours to finish both panels. If you went with bigger cut-outs, you could probably cut that time in half. Then I hung them up and admired my work. It’s not something that hits you in the face when you walk in the room, but it’s just that extra somethin’-somethin’ I love. Call me crazy (please don’t…I’ll probably cry), but I now feel a serious bond with these curtains…like we went to battle together and survived. I feel like these curtains have my back, and if the throw pillows were to ever turn on us, my curtains would totally throw down.

So if you come to my house and decide that these curtains are the most hideous thing you’ve ever seen, just pretend like they’re not, mmk? Oh, and don’t mind the tear stains near the bottom

Linking up at Design, Dining + Diapers and Home Stories A to Z