Ballard Designs Made Me Do It!

Yesterday afternoon, I got the sudden urge to finally take care of the ugly powder blue striped walls in my daughter's room. They were dingy, didn't match anything and were really dated. I've hated them since we moved into our house... nearly six years ago! Well, before the urge left me, I hopped out of bed (I happened to be trying to take a nap at the time) and grabbed the keys, and called out to the kids, "Come on kids, we're going to Lowe's to get some paint!"

Since it was her room, I let her choose the color (within reason of course). I had heard about the Valspar paint with primer in it already and since we've had great luck with Valspar paint in the past, I made a beeline to their signature wall. She went straight to the inch worm green and I approved.

Hubby was out of town and I'm not sure if that helped me paint or made it harder. I'm gonna say it helped because if he were here he would have talked me out of painting in the first place. Although my aching body tells me that it hurt because he usually works the roller while I cut in around the edges with my Purdy paint brush. I swear you can paint a room with just a drop cloth, paint roller, tray, and a Purdy. No tape needed if you have a steady hand and a good paint brush to go around the edges. Trust me. Our first home was nothing but a huge painting project and I've tried everything! (gasp for air now! ... now onto my post.)

Have you ever flipped through a Ballard Designs catalog?! Beautiful stuff in there and it's full of lots of inspiration to get you motivated and decorating. Well, I came across something in the catty that inspired me. The Newspaper Dress Giclee Print. It is adorable, but at $299 plus added shipping charges due to its large size, there was no way I was going to have Master Card (said in my best British accent) handle this transaction! So... I improvised and made my own version for my Taylor!

Of course, it's not the same style dress, but since it was for my little girls room, I wanted to make it more of a child's dress. Taylor just wanted to add a purse to it.

First, I pulled out an old picture, removed it from the frame and painted right over it with left-over paint from Taylor's walls. I then moved on to piecing the dress together. As we were going through our newspapers, I found a misprint page that I thought looked neat. The page was mostly black and I used it for two pieces of the skirt.

I then looked through the pages making sure not to use pieces with words describing unsettling medical conditions, obituaries, or just plain weird stories. The Lifestyle section seemed to be best for these kinds of things.

For my own touch, I added buttons for a little color. Taylor helped me choose these.

And here's Taylor's favorite piece, the hand bag! She made a special request that it be clipped from the comics. I complied. :)