Fun with paint (part 1)

When it comes to decorating a kid’s room, I like to forget the rules and just have fun. This room has a ton of colors and if you’ve bought paint you might think it would cost a fortune to paint this way. Believe it or not, the paint for this room cost $4.00. OK, so most of the colors were left over from some other projects. There wasn’t enough of any one color to do the whole room but with some creativity, I came up with a design that would use up old paints and make a fun unique room. The yellow, blue and green colors were from other rooms and most were created out of a variety of left overs that I mixed into one can. The magenta was a miss-tint. If you go to the paint department in your local home improvement store, ask if they have any miss-tints. These are paints that were mixed incorrectly and never sold. They are usually drastically marked down so they can be sold and don’t become a total loss for the store. I was able to get a gallon of magenta for $4.00. I used it in each corner of the room to look like some curtains have been pulled back. I used a roll of wrapping paper to draw the shape I wanted and then I traced that shape around the room.

On two walls I painted stripes with the yellow and blue. To make things easy, the stripes are a roller’s width and they have rough edges. I think it adds to the character of the room and it was a time saver to not have to tape off each color.

The other two walls are green. Using acrylic craft paint I put some ladybugs and purple swirls on the walls for some added interest. I made my own stencils for each. The ladybugs are just ovals cut out of paper then traced onto the wall and filled in with red craft paint. I traced coins for their dots and colored them with a marker. To make the swirl, I cut the shape out on cardboard then traced it onto the walls in different areas. The swirls were all filled in with purple craft paint.

Finding green fabric for the curtains was just a fluke. I covered a paint stick with all the colors and took it with me to the fabric store. I just got lucky that there happened to be something in the same green color. I would have been happy with anything that matched any one of the colors. For an easy sew project I used the bias edge for each side. Then a simple hem at the top and bottom and my sewing was finished. I found curtain rings that just pinch the top of the fabric and slide onto the rod. I covered the rings with decorative patches. I bought a pack of butterflies and a pack of flowers while at the fabric store. The patches are taped onto the rings.

This was a fun room to decorate.
Wait until you see what the other room looks like….