Stupid cats...

Why "stupid cats" when this is a post about painting stripes on a wall, you ask??  Well, you may notice a silver bowl on the sill of the half wall that my cats eat from.  This effectively keeps both my dog and son from eating their food and getting sick.  In the process of jumping up to eat, however, they leave litter-stained paw prints and scratches all over my FLAT painted wall.  Never in my life will I use flat paint again (or try to use a Mr. Clean Eraser on it... bad results).  Retouching just the paw prints doesn't work either, because the paint is now a darker shade on the walls than it is fresh outta the can.  So I have been toying with stenciling or a chalkboard wall.  Stenciling seemed tedious and the chalkboard wall was deemed, too, messy by my husband.  I figured irregular stripes would be the way to go.  We have two leftover gallons of light and dark shades of grey, which works perfectly opposite our grey, stone fireplace.  Plus, the colors in the room are already grey, green, and brown.  One of the dark grey stripes is placed at "paw level" and can be repainted as needed.  A few mistakes I made along the way: a) taping on the wrong side of my pencil line when I was going to leave a section tan but paint underneath (ie, resulting in a pencil line straight through the tan), b) using a wet paper towel to wipe up drips a little, too, aggressively and having to repaint whole stripes tan afterwards.  Oh well, 3 hours of work to make it perfect!

 I also was a little unhappy with a GIANT tan stripe I left in the middle and wanted something to hang up to take away from the gap left at eye level.  This mirror was one I already have and it seems to match the light grey really well!  The small shelf was another thing sitting in my basement, but it was off white and needed a coat of silver spray paint (as well as some roughing up with sandpaper to make it not look super shiny). 

 The shelf is just the right size for a framed quote and a small bud vase!

 I used a grey, white, and chartreuse fabric as a mat and card stock printed with one of my favorite Beatles (and Alison Krauss) lyrics from "I Will".  It seemed fitting for an entry way near my front door as people come and go =)