Cheap and Easy Kid’s Room Art
I'm in the middle of redoing my boys' bedroom. I had a farm theme previously and am now (slowly) changing it out for a transportation theme.
My boys love Lightning McQueen (a race car) and Thomas and Friends (trains). I don't know how long this love will last, but I've heard it could last for several more years. Even though they rarely watch the show or any movies, anything with Thomas or Lightning gets squeals from both my eighteen-month old and three-and-a-half-year old, so I knew these characters would have to be displayed.
At first I thought I would create a custom art piece, one that my kids would be awed by, but then thought of how we don't really know how long this love will last. And, I wanted to do something they could help with.
So I did a swagsearch of images with Thomas, and another for images with Lightning. Finally, I revised the search for coloring pages with Thomas and Lightning. I blew up the coloring pages using a simple paint document. I made it large enough so that it printed in four page, but you could enlarge them to 6 or 8, or even larger for a mural.
I am mounting them on scrap wood, painted black, but you could also do it on cardboard, or just whatever is on hand.
My oldest helped to paint the black background on the wood and helped with some of the bigger patches of color. My younger son "helped" while the paint was drying, so now Thomas has some purple patches, a creative twist on the traditional blue and red Thomas.
I used this same idea for the old farm theme, except I painted all the animals black, so that they were all silhouettes.
related posts:
- 5 Ways To Furnish A Kid’s Room Cheap My son's room has been stripped to the bare boards....
- Unboxing the Kids Sitting at the dinner table Friday night, Stretch (our oldest who...
- Cheerful Frugality Makes The Old Feel New I can't believe how much better my worn brown furniture looks...
- Frugality Isn’t Deprivation. It’s Doing The Kids (and you) a Favor Recently in an interview with Essence Magazine: Of his own...
- Frugal is Not Necessarily Cheap When I was a little girl, frugal was not a...
6 Responses to “Cheap and Easy Kid’s Room Art”
March 3rd, 2010 at 9:50 am
We did our boys’ room McQueen for Christmas. We needed a toddler bed, and found a McQueen toddler bed with a mattress on Craigslist for $30, made checkerboard curtains and McQueen valance with fabric from WM, and made matching red comforters for toddler bed and crib out of an old comforter (cut it in half, sewed it up). They got a McQueen chair and nightlight too. For Christmas, friends gave us a car rug, a tire toybox (too cute!) and wall-stick border and pictures. The boys LOVE it! All together we spent $75, but we splurged a bit since it was their main Christmas present.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:39 am
Another great idea to add to the look would be to purchase some gallery glass(bottled paint that is for doing fake stained glass) at Hobby Lobby or Micheal’s. 1. Then you take… like a coloring book page of lightning McQueen, place a piece of wax paper over the coloring page. 2. trace with the black leading gallery glass paint. 3. Once dry, fill with colors of gallery glass paint according to your design. 4. Once dry peel design (gently as to not stretch the design) from the wax paper. Stick it to your child’s window!
Walla! A themed stain glass to match his room.
March 3rd, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Wouldn’t foregoing a theme altogether be more frugal though? A non-themed, well decorated room could carry them beyond when the fascination in a cartoon character passes. Also, I don’t like to hinder my child’s creativity with coloring book pages. Blank paper and some crayons, markers, or paint makes for much more interesting pictures. Then the room can be their own personal art gallery! It doesn’t matter that your boys are 18 months and 3.5. Children are never too young to have their creativity fostered!
March 4th, 2010 at 6:13 am
Amanda, I love the idea of a tire toybox. I bet that woudn’t be too hard to make, either.
Heather, that sounds so simple!
Melvin, I usually give them blank paper to draw on, and agree that is the best way to foster creativity, but if a cartoon character makes them happy on the wall for `the time being, we’re going with it. When we change it, we would have already put up new kids art, so the cost would be about the same.
March 4th, 2010 at 8:00 am
My comment is based on feeding the nesting artistic mommies soul. My girls rooms actually aren’t overly themed. Just hints here and there. But they like those accent and they do their own version of what I do… but amazingly totally different themes so I think them just witnessing the creative process by those they love feeds my little monkeys creative minds. But I hear you on the cheaper with out a theme. After all when I wanted a pumpkin like the ceramic one I saw at Hobby lobby… I got out aluminum foil… shaped it in a ball with pumpkin like features, cover the surface with a thin layer of air dry clay… let it dry… painted it and got the pumpkin I wanted … WITHOUT PAYING $35 – $40! I have a picture of that if anyone wants to see it.
March 4th, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Love all your ideas, I think having the kids involved in decorating their rooms is most important of all. Glad your here at FH and am looking forward to all of your posts.
Leave a Comment