Decorating on a Dime: Clever Ideas for Decorating Childrens’ Spaces

The recent trend towards creating perfectly coordinated, themed rooms for kids can leave parents exhausted and penniless. Decorating for children should be fun, not a stressful all-out search for the perfect switchplate cover! To that end, I have a couple of fun ideas I’ll share for brightening up children’s spaces and pulling them together without a lot of hassle or expense.

A HANDPRINT GARDEN

This was a mural project I designed for the Brentwood Elementary School in Raleigh, North Carolina to cover their long entry foyer. It was such a blast for the students and meant a lot to staff and parents when it was finished. Each student’s handprint is worked into the design- and believe me, you don’t have to be Monet to get this going - it’s a really simple and personal way to add color to the room.

Here’s how to incorporate it into your own childrens’ rooms, playrooms, or bathrooms:

Pick a section of the wall to use for the “garden” and either paint it a light blue or leave it in the existing wall color. Using acrylic paints, have the children use handprints (heavy supervision here please so you don’t end up with handprinted carpet, quilts and clothing!!) to create grass, flowers, butterflies, bugs and anything else you can think of. Keep them simple, and you can do the stems and finshing touches with a brush- just simple lines for stems and antennae, etc. Do not be intimidated by this, especially if you use a little corner of their space- this should look childish, free and fun.

Hints: For butterflies, have “wings” done in an X shape with 4 handprints, all facing out from the body- for tulips, have two handprints facing up from the stem in a V (see the picture at the top of the article for help/ideas)

This will be such a cute and bright corner of their room, and will be a fun growth record too as they see the change in their hand size over time. You could even do a tall flower like a sunflower and use it as growth chart.

NEW TWISTS ON FRAMED PRINTS:

As a children’s artist working with hand-painted canvases and prints, I know how much parents look to wall art to pull a room together. To make prints really creative and unique in the room, here are some clever ways to frame and display them:

• Purchase inexpensive white frames and embellish the edges with polka dots, stripes, initials, or any other cute little decor with paint markers.
• For matting, create your own with matching fabric swatches from your bedding, or from other fabric or unique things (a bandana for farmyard room, cute scrapbooking paper in matching tones or themes, furry animal fabric in leopard or zebra stripes for a safari room….)
• To add interest to the frames, you could use a glue gun to attach cool items to the front- buttons, seashells from a favorite vacation, the collection of rotted Cheerios from under your car seats- okay those can stay under the car seats!
• For hanging, you could use a staple gun and attach neat hangers- cute ribbons and bows, nautical-looking rope for boat prints, bandana loops for western rooms, or loops made from leftover fabric or extra sheets in their bedding pattern.

For older kids, you could make it a project- and in no time the room or bathroom will be fantastic!

QUICK AND EASY QUOTES:

A nice quote or saying can add a lot to a room, but many people are too intimidated to letter or even stencil themselves. Here are two ways to make it easier:

The Mad Stencilist www.themadstencilist.com has a fantastic service of creating your own stencil for you that is easy to use and reasonably priced. You simply type in your saying and the font you’d like, after measuring the size you’d like it to be, and they send it to you in a pasted-back stencil that sticks up to the wall while you fill it in and peels easily off when you’re done- Foolproof, and adds a lot to a room-

Borrow an overhead projector from a school or business and create a transparency with your saying on it- then project it on the wall for an easy way to get perfect words- This is also a great way to add kids favorite characters, etc. for do-it-yourself muralist parents!!

I hope you try some of these ideas, or think of your own ways to brighten up the childrens’ spaces without losing your sanity or your savings account!!

Karen Evans