U Stripe It & Design Tool

Just before we bought the new house; I had somehow came across the U-Stripe-It & Design website and thought how neat that would be to paint stripes in my craft room (Which remains as a storage room for now…). I had got to talk a little bit to him; and he offered to let me review and host a giveaway of the awesome U-Stripe It tool! He sent me the tool along with some 3M Scotch-Blue Delicate Tape which he said is one of the most important things to have when striping – a good tape that doesn't leak or pull color off the walls.

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So when we moved; I had a friend over and we striped the wall in Ethan's room instead. Every room in our house is this cream color – and I wanted my nursery to be a little different anyway. I used paint that I already had – so it was a very inexpensive project!

U-Stripe It2 To get the stripes; you open the tool to a specific February 2011 198 width that you pick; and then use the edge of the tool as your guide for placing the tape. Now you can do some really basic chunky stripes – where you start with your base wall color as one stripe color; and then paint one color over the top as stripes – and then peel the tape off and you have stripes; or you can get fancy.. There's diagonals, triangles and even circles! You can paint walls, rugs, floors, furniture.. Anything really.

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We decided to be a little bit fancier – a little like the background stripes on my website! We started with the base wall being cream. We measured out I believe 8" for the light blue stripe; then 6" for the dark blue stripe; and 10" for the dark brown stripe. Then we kept the cream in there as some of the tape lines – because we didn't want to leave cream out, but didn't want an abundance of cream. February 2011 204 The tricky part here was that we decided after painting the dark blue stripes and letting it dry, that we would move the tape over so we could have the brown cover the entire middle between the two dark blue stripes without showing space. Which worked for us, but was a whole extra step.

All in all – with 4 children under 3 in the house; it took us about 3 hours to tape the wall and paint the dark blue; then my friend had to go; and it took me about 4 hours to finish painting and re-taping the dark blue on my own (with two kids in the house). So really not so bad!

February 2011 208 I have to say at first; I didn't LOVE it. I didn't hate it – but I'm a very visual person and I need to SEE something complete before I know what my thoughts are… Just ask my website designer… Winking smile So I wanted to get the decorations all complete before I showed you. The painting was done at the end of February, and it took until this week before I finally got my act together with making another curtain sham (I already had one, but it was too small) and I had to buy frames, and paint shelves, and buy and paint letters – and just get it done.

It's still not TOTALLY complete; but I'm much happier with how it is now vs. how it was two weeks ago.

I have these three pictures that my friend made me when she made the first curtain sham and the pillow for Andrews room a few years ago – and they're going to go on the wall behind the rocking chair.

This room also has a little 'nook' which is the opening above the front entry closet. It's such an ugly area; so I decided to make that our changing table for now. You can sort of see in this picture how Ethans closet has the cubby bookshelf that is his 'dresser'. This is what we did with Andrew when he was a baby – it works great because especially for these younger years I can have all of the clothes sorted by size, and then just move the sizes around as he outgrows the last size.You might notice that none of the picture frames have anything in them yet. I have printed some photos to go in them; but still have to install them. I have a matte for the picture on the wall above the crib; but the frame wont close with the matte; so I might need a new frame. I also have a cute train that will sit on the shelf above the crib (as soon as it comes out of whatever box it is in!).

So The U-Stripe It & Design tool works really great. Much better than all the measurements that you see on HGTV when they're trying to do stripes. This is much easier. If we would have done basic two tone stripes where one of the colors was crème; I would have been done in less than 3 hours for sure (with 4 toddlers/babies in the house).

P.S.: My friend was over the other day and wondered if this was REALLY Ethan's Room.. I mean – it only says Ethan or 'E' six places in the room… it just MIGHT not be his.. 😉

. I received free product review purposes. All opinions here are 100% my own.