I just love making something wonderful out of a piece of trash. It’s just glorious. It’s the thing that inspires me.

So when I saw this loverly little herb trough in a Pottery Barn catalog (for a small fortune), I decided to make my own one out of pallet wood (for free! wheee!). Then it got a stencil mini makeover for Christmas. Most recently, it went turquoise, and it’s been on our dining room table for a couple of months like that.

When we had friends over the other night, I put it up on top of the china cabinet to get it out of the way. And I like it up there, but the turquoise on muted turquoise wasn’t quite right… But it wasn’t totally wrong either…So what to do, what to do (twiddling my thumbs)…

Aha! Blue tape to the rescue! I eyeballed a few chevron stripes…

Then I squirted a bead of white acrylic craft paint straight onto the trough face. To help keep the paint from bleeding under the tape, I brushed away from the tape strips.

And that’s it! Done! [Um, and yes, I did peel the tape immediately after painting… Patience with kids? I’m your mama. Patience with crafts? Not so much.]

I know chevron stripes might be so done by now, and you might be so over them, but they add just the right something to this trough to make it a great fit for the top of the china cabinet.

And how often can you do a five minute craft that makes you smile each time you see the result? That’s just a bit of all right.

{Um, I also put the herb trough on top of an empty granola bar box at each end to make it sit higher, and I added some lovely new greeny-white hydrangeas from the garden}

So, anyone else out there take the leap into the wonderful world of chevron stripes–where have you added them in your home? Do tell!

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