I haven’t written on this blog in over a week! Where has the time gone?! Geez! There are times that I have so much to say that its a challenge to find the time to write any of it! I bet you other bloggers face the same issue. Anyway, . . . Here, in THIS moment, I have time to write:

First, if youre a subscriber, you might have noticed that I haven’t shown our dining room on this site yet, despite the fact that I think it will be one of the more impressive rooms in our house. Two reasons: art wall and curtains. See, a couple months ago, we switched the rooms around. What was once a den attached to the kitchen became the dining room and vice versa. It kind of threw everything into disarray for a bit. We have 15-20 original works of art leaning against walls awaiting their new gallery style / salon style installation in the dining room, at least 3 of them are canvases 48″ in size. The glass tile fireplace installation was fun. I’m glad we switched the rooms around, because I LOVE having the fireplace in our dining room. But, there are still a couple projects awaiting supplies or my time. Work in progress.

Work in progress. Second, If you’ve been following me on Pinterest, you may have seen that I’ve pinned a few sets of curtains made of scarves recently. See the inspirational photos that helped me choose a direction, by clicking here, here,and here. See? Aha! Easy, breezy curtains for the dining room made of varying sheer or shiny scarves?! Well, with 10′ ceiling and a desire for floor-to-ceiling curtains, that would require A LOT of scarves; so, I decided to buy scarf style material! I decided I would some of the yards of silk that friends brought me as a present from one of their recent shopping excursions in the fabric district in China and 3 more fabrics that I purchased locally. Btw, yes, friends (also, former neighbors of ours) travelled all the way to China and along the way they visited a region known for their textile production. They shipped back YARDS of beautiful silks. I’m planning to hang the new curtains using by clipping the fabric onto rings. Easy. Breezy. Mix of prints. Mix of colors. Etc.
Here, in the next photo, you can see my new fabrics just tossed across the curtain rod awaiting sewing and proper installation. You can also see a bit of other items in the dining room:
(click on photo to enlarge it)

Today, among other errands, I shopped for the curtain rings with clips attached, in order to hang my scarves and fabric in the dining room that I told you about yesterday.

There were several options available. What to do? What to do? DIY, of course! I bought a bag of miniature wooden clothespins from the craft department at WalMart and bundles of costume jewelry from a jewelry store on Chenal Parkway, here in Little Rock. I made a total of 50 rings with clips by using a little spray paint, heavy duty upholstery thread, and a few unused napkin rings and bracelets that I had sitting around.

My rings with clips are an assortment of sizes, all in silver and gold tones! I LOVE the look much, much more than if they were all standard, uniform rings. See the DIY process: (click photo to enlarge)

1. Buy miniature clothespins and mass produced jewelry.
2. Snip hardware, just leaving the giant hoops of the earrings. (I used earrings that gave me a total of 8 usable hoops per pair.)
3. Clip clothespins onto cardboard and spray paint them black.
4. Use heavy thread or wire to tie clips onto the ring (the thread fit through the spring in the clothespins, so drilling wasn’t necessary! Yea!)
5. Slide them onto the curtain rod and use the clips to pinch the scarves and fabric! Enjoy!
(I was able to use this DIY method for creating curtain clips that saved us A LOT of money in exchange for minimal time invested by me to put it all together.)

I’m pretty pleased with myself about this little curtain project of mine!
Yards and yards of fabric, lots and lots of my silk scarves, and a little DIY = my OWN curtain wall. Nobody will walk in and say, “Oh, so and so bought those same curtains,” or any such thing. That’s enough to keep me happy. My scarves are all still usable if I change to something else next year, and all of the scarves have some sort of memory attached to them, since they were ALL accumulated and worn throughout the years. For example, the scarf that has “Paris” all over it, was purchased by my grandmother in Paris as a gift for me when she travelled a few years ago. Are my curtains Hippie curtains? Gypsy style? I don’t know. I don’t care that they’re not traditional window treatments. I’m enjoying them! I care most that I think they look good, are functional for diffusing light where needed, and they’re reusable/repurposable on a whim! Love. 🙂 I’m still playing around with the placement/draping of the scarves and fabric; I’ll have it finalized before I “reveal” this room in its entirety in a separate post!

(click on photo to enlarge)

Later!
Your Friend,
~Amber Hamilton Henson

PS
Enjoy my projects or links? Please, pin it, tweet it, like it, whatever… just be social and feel free to share as long it links back to here and my watermarks are visible on the photos! Also, if you do feature this curtain project in some way on your blog/site/’zine, please let me know!

This post will link to several Daily DIY parties, you can visit the links:
Unique Window Treatments Category @ FunkyJunkInteriors
Sunday’s Best #50 @ My1929Charmer
Masterpiece Monday #92 @ BoogieBoardCottage
Mod Mix Monday #70 @ Mod Vintage Style
Mop It Up Mondays #36 @ iShouldBeMoppingTheFloor
Be Inspired #39 @ ElizabethAndCo
Primp Your Stuff #65 @ PrimpJunktion
Wow Us Wednesday #86 @ SavvySouthernStyle
Wicked Awesome Wednesday #81 @ HandyManCraftyWoman

This post is featured in Hat Trick magazine! Click on the magazine cover to be re-directed to Hat Trick magazine: