Stripey Handmade Nursery Stage 1

Hi!  Look what I've been doing...

One of the things we have had to do for our adoption license is provide a space for a child, and while it would be sufficient to just provide a crib and a dresser, who wouldn't go the whole nine yards?! (good movie, btw).

Here are the beginning stages.  I used these as inspiration, and derived the colors from there.  I looked at a lot of inspiration from Ohdeedoh and knew that since we wouldn't know the gender of our little-one-to-be, creating a gender-neutral nursery would have both its challenges and its delights.  I'll talk about that later, but for now I'll try to summarize the process.

BEFORE:
I painted samples on paper of the colors I wanted for stripes,
then played with the arrangement, taping them on the wall.

Using a dark grey primer, we covered the grey wall first.  Then I added a white to make a light grey to go under the colored stripes.

Next, I measured out where I wanted the stripes, and knew I wanted a white line between each color.  I painted 2 coats of white where they would be, then taped off the areas I wanted to keep white with 1" painter's tape.

The overhanging white (the white that peeked out from under the 1" tape) was then covered with grey primer again.  And here's the real kicker:

           BACKFILL- You know how paint seeps under the tape no matter what you do?  Well, this is how you stop that.  You backfill.  What is the color under your tape?  Mine was white.  So I painted the edges of the tape with white so that it would fill the little holes and seep under, instead of the stripe color.  Voila!  Straight lines every time; no color seeping under the tape.