Blue Stripes in the Big Boy Room {with stripe painting tutorial}

While it's been slow-going, I have ever so slowly been chipping away at decorating one of my big boys' rooms.  

The bedding was purchased and we set up a headboard that Jacob's dad made a long time ago when Jacob was a little lad...

I painted a nightstand and added a "popsicle lamp" (as my little guy calls it)...

The curtains were hung (Henny Cirkel panels from Ikea)...

And then I added some painted stripes to his walls...

If you've never painted stripes before, here's what I found works best for straight, crisp stripes...

Step 1:  Paint the entire room or wall the lighter base color. I made the mistake of starting with the darker color on the entire wall, which meant that when I painted the lighter stripes on, I had to use more coats.

Step 2: Measure out how wide you want your stripes to be (mine were 10 inches). If you want your stripes to cover the wall from floor to ceiling, you will have to measure the height of your wall and divide that by how many stripes you want. We plan to add beadboard to the bottom half of our space, so I only did the stripes on the top half of the walls.

Using a ruler and a level, draw your lines on with PENCIL (pen is a pain in the rear to get off the wall. Trust me, I speak from experience!) A laser line level would have made this step a lot easier than dragging the level and tape measure around the room, but I was trying to work with what we had.

 (the white lines in the above photo were added in Photoshop for illustrative purposes since the pencil marks were too faint to see in the picture)

Step 3: Using a painter's tape with edge-lock (see what I used below) to tape along your lines.

Figuring out where to place your tape can get a little tricky.

Mark which sections you plan to paint and place the tape on the outside of your pencil marks. See illustration below.

Step 4: To keep your paint from bleeding under the tape and making your lines all wonky, seal the tape by painting over it with the same color you used for your base. I used a small foam roller for this step.

Step 5: Once the paint is dry, use your second color to fill in the darker stripes (or lighter, in my case). I let my stripes dry for about 10 minutes and then I peeled all of the tape off. You don't want to keep the tape on too long or it can rip the dried paint off with it.

Step 6: Either wipe off or erase all of your pencil lines. I have yet to do this step!

P.S. If you are wondering what colors I used...the darker color is Benjamin Moore's Misty Blue, but it turned out a little too purple so I had the paint gal add a few more drops of blue and black to it. For the lighter stripes, I used the same formula as the darker color, but had the colorant reduced by 50%.

Linking up to:

Addicted to Decorating's Addicts (Not So) Anonymous Link Party

Funky Junk Interiors' Sat. Nite Special