“It’s a Period Piece” — This Drugstore Item Could Be the Next DIY Trend
Usually, it takes more than just two instances for something to become a bona fide “trend” in interior design, but this particular accent wall idea is so out of the (small, cardboard) box that seeing it twice — in two different rooms — has certainly stuck with me. I’m talking about people using tampons as “paintbrushes” of sorts to create wall art.
Below, you’ll see how TikToker Jaime Lyn Beatty transformed her bathroom walls with black polka dots (albeit irregularly sized ones) by using black paint and a tampon. “I’ve never done anything like this before,” Beatty said on TikTok. “I often start a craft project not knowing what it’s going to look like, and then I just kind of figure it out.”
The internet kind of loved it.
Beatty ends her video by saying “Don’t buy wallpaper. Just use a tampon.” The biggest surprise, she explains in her video, was remembering that tampons expand as they absorb. “The whole design was abstract anyway, so I just kind of went with it,” she says.
The comment section is a mixture of pleasantly surprised reactions to the transformation, And, of course, more than a few funny puns can be seen, too (tampointillism, loving a property with period features, it’s fitting that tampon means “stamp” in French — you get it).
“I guess if an art historian asked me why I only used one tampon, I’d be like, ‘it represents the resilience of women,’ but honestly, it was just because I was lazy,” Beatty says. Commenter Alexa Frederick (@girly.pop.grunge) actually is an art historian (a music librarian), and she says in the comments: “As an art historian, I’d interpret the use of one tampon as a reflection of the cost of tampons and the fact that women have to not only pay for tampons, but also pay the ‘pink tax’ on menstrual products.” So, the project is budget-friendly in more ways than one.
Another DIYer tried her own take on tampon wall art.
After seeing Jaime’s video, another DIYer, Emily Schmalhofer, actually did the same project in red. Schmalhofer tells Apartment Therapy she was initially looking at options of peel-and-stick wallpaper and polka-dot decals. Then she saw the TikTok and decided to do her own version in her dining room. For her version, Emily used three tampons and red paint.
“I had many moments of fear with the tampon polka dots,” she recalls. “They were different shapes and inconsistent, some had noticeable paint drips. Then I realized that the imperfection was the whole point. [It] felt a bit like a metaphor moment, or maybe I had reached enlightenment, but the more I enjoyed the process and didn’t stress about the exactness, the more I loved it. And I really love it.”
Would you (or have you) used tampons in a DIY project? Let us know in the comments where and how!