decorating

As posted earlier, I was going to try and create a stenciled effect in Lucy’s new room using DIY Wall Decals after browsing on Etsy and finding some very inspiring, but very expensive premade designs to buy.  The original idea was to actually stencil or free hand draw the design like I did in her original room and paint it in with white paint, but in an effort to make things simpler Jason found a great link suggesting the use of contact paper.  So off to target we went and picked up some regular white contact paper (also, make sure you call Target to make sure they have it before you go- only one Target (the giant one) had it around us).  They even had “stainless steel” contact paper which was intriguing, but we passed on the urge to contact paper all our appliances!  How much contact paper would that take??  That would probably look tacky though- anyone tried?  Anyone tried the chalk board contact paper??

Anyway, it took me about 2-2.5 hrs. from start to finish to complete the design on two walls of her room.  I will probably repeat the design under her second window later too.  The pictures are below if you’d like to look.  Here’s how I did it:

Read the rest of this entry »

Jason and I have never been fans of the packaged baby room decorations that the major chains sell, so we tried a more creative route with Lucy’s room and painted a life-size one color tree in a darker green than her walls on two of the walls from a free hand outline I drew.  The idea was to add leaves to the tree and some bird silhouettes to represent the 3 of us, but the day I was getting out the paint was the day she decided she couldn’t wait and was born!  Thus, the tree is still stuck in “winter mode”, but still gives the room a lot of unique character.

So, with the new room we created for the babies (which, now ended up being Lucy’s new room because we can’t fit two cribs in there!), we want to again do something different.  We chose Lilac for the wall colors and white for the trim and wanted to do some stenciling.  However, how does one make their own stencil quickly?  Again, it wasn’t our style to use the commercial roses, ivy, ,etc. stencils that are out there in most craft stores and by the time I searched around for plastic to cut a stencil so Jason could paint it… well you get the picture.  Plan B was for me to again free hand draw the design on the wall (by the way, chalk is an excellent way to mark on walls without erasing, etc.  It just rubs off and its nice and white so you can see it easily on any colored wall).

So, we chose a mod bigger than life kind of poppy pattern or something like that to go around the windows and walls of the room patterned after some incredible vinyl wall art decals we found on Etsy.  Etsy had so many to choose from, it literally took us a while to narrow down what we were looking for. Again, the plan was to freehand the design on the walls and paint it in later.  Then….

Jason found this link on how to make removeable, DIY vinyl wall art!  Duh!  All those college years of contact paper in apartment drawers will finally come in handy.  I am on the hunt today for white contact paper and I’ll let you know how it goes.  Best of all, if it works, it’ll be faster, less messy, no paint fumes and removable down the line.  I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.  Anyone done this before?