Navy Linings

Way back when (ok, this past Christmas), my wonderful husband gifted me with the Young House Love book, which I had been wanting for awhile. Needless to say, I gobbled it up and had it read probably a week or so after I got it. Loved it! Oh, and are you as excited as I am for their next one… coming THIS SEPTEMBER!! It’s already on my Christmas list. 🙂

They have some great ideas in there and this is a project I’ve been wanting to try for awhile now, but could never figure out which frame(s) to try it on. Essentially, their idea is to paint the edges of a frame to give it a subtle punch of color. At first I thought of trying one or two frames from our family room gallery wall, but I like that they are a uniform white and didn’t want to do them all for fear that that would be too much color.

So I held out in the hopes that the opportunity would come about with a different frame… and then we hung the ocean art in our hall nook. And painted the back of the corner cabinet in our foyer navy. And. I. Knew. This could be it. This could be my time to shine. How cool would it look for the navy accents of our downstairs space to travel subtly upstairs in the form of a thin line around a frame? So I went for it.

And am thrilled with how it turned out! Here’s how it happened (of course, just buy the YHL book and read their step by step for the real goods):

Step 1: Tape off the front with painters’ tape to avoid getting paint on the front.

Step 2: Paint the sides with a small brush. I just used leftover paint from the corner cabinet project.

Step 3: Peel off the tape and let it dry.

After all was said and done, here’s how it turned out:

We LOVE it! It’s just the right amount of color, but not super in-your-face. It’s unexpected, but not out of place. Sleek and cool, but fun and spunky. Yay for success!

Excuse the blurry photo… you get the picture. 🙂 Hah, punny… oh boy, it’s going to be one of those days…