Organized Chaos

Saturday, March 8, 2014

DIY Art for Davis's Big Boy Room

Davis's toddler room is getting pretty close to being done (thanks to my husband & parents while I was in Denver!!), but the walls were still looking pretty bare! So I repurposed some old canvases we'd gotten as a wedding gift & painted them to make them appropriate for a little boy's room. This wasn't the easiest project I've ever done, but not bad at all. And the price was definitely right! :)

This is the final product - a sailboat & tractor to go in his green & blue room!

This is the outdated art I decided to repurpose.

So first I painted the whole thing white... It took 2-3 coats of just trim paint we had in the attic.

Then I used painter's tape to make my stripes.
Each side of my canvases were 23.5" and I wanted 7 stripes... so I measured & marked my lines on the sides.

Then I painted 4 of the stripes navy blue.
This is what it looked like after I took the painter's tape off.

I found pictures online of a tractor & sailboat that I liked.
Then I drew them onto contact paper the sizes I wanted.

Then I used an exacto knife to cut them out.

At this point, they looked like this.
Yes. The Juice Shop is the official sponsor of this pregnancy. Specifically, Guava Gulps.

Then I put the contact paper onto the canvases & painted the green over it.
I used the leftover green from his bookshelf, but I lightened it a little with white to create more contrast with the blue.

This is what they looked like overnight. I was a little scared I'd just end up with green blobs.

The next morning they weren't blobs... but they certainly weren't perfect!
The contact paper worked fairy well, but didn't stick to the painted canvas as well as I'd hoped.

See... needed some touch ups.

Especially around the tire.

So I used a small brush to go around the edges.

It didn't end up taking very long at all.

Voila! A sailboat...

...and a tractor!

Aaron (with a little hammering help from Davis) hung them on the wall for me!

There we go! Getting close to being done...!

I think this project cost about $10?? I already had the canvases, the contact paper, the green paint (from his bookshelf) and the white paint (leftover trim paint). So all I really had to buy was the blue paint and I only needed a quart. And it probably took 2 hours, not counting time waiting for paint to dry. Just to clarify, I realize he's going to be moving into a big boy room soon, but Davis will always be my little nugget. It kind of makes me sad to think about how fast he's growing up!