Painted DIY Roman Shades: On a Budget

SOOOO, this is what happens when you rent a house full of mini-blinds AND share that house with a curious cat: 

Obviously, it got a little uncomfortable to live fully exposed to the neighbors so I needed a quick fix.  Beautiful, sturdy, wooden blinds would be my preferred solution but too costly for a rental. Instead, I found 1 pack of THESE curtains at Ikea (discounted at $14.99 which equals about $2.30/yard), 5 yards of muslin ($0.90/yard) at Dallas's CHEAPEST fabric store, and THIS awesome tutorial on pinterest. With the cost of the fabric glue, my end product: 5 Roman shade window treatments for about $5 each.

I got a bit ambitious on the first shade and decided to paint THIS print on it. I like to call the finished look "free-hand weathered" basically because I didn't know what I was doing. So if any of y'all have tips on how to paint fabric, feel free to share! Here is what I did:

 1. Print off desired shape and trace with a pencil or chalk the same color of the paint. (I used a pen the color of the fabric but it shows through the paint... bad idea)

 2. Lay fabric flat on cardboard since the paint will bleed through.

 3. Dilute the fabric paint just slightly with water (the more water you add, the more it will bleed) and paint over stenciled outline.

4. Let dry for a couple hours and then follow steps in Roman shades tutorial linked above.

Now, even when I forget to raise the blinds, Horatio can weasel his was under the fabric without ruining the fixture.

(randomly foggy day in Dallas)