Making Art for your Child's Room

It's been almost a year since we moved to Pretoria, but I wanted to share this post with you, as old as it is. Before moving out of our home last year, I did many things to fix up the house. One of those chores was to finalise a nice wall of art in Little One's room. His room was definitely one of my favourites in the house. The light in this room was beautiful and of course, who can resist children's decor?

So using the art work from free printable packs, provided by the wonderful blogs Homeschool Creations and 1+1+1=1, as well as some other ideas, I made all the art for the wall myself.

  

One very easy idea is to cut out the first letter of your child's name from black craft paper and then using Tipp-Ex or white paint, turn it into a road. Stick on some toy cars, preferably plastic ones if you can find them, with a nice strong glue. I used light plastic cars from a popular old game. I took the glass out of the frame, so that I could stick the cars directly onto the cardboard. The poster next to the "S", as well as the two yellow framed pictures, were made from the art work in the printable packs, as mentioned above.

In this picture below you can see how I created the Bus and Taxi. Adding photo faces of our family members made it fun and personal. 

I love how it turned out and Little One and I spent some great creative time sitting at that little white table.

I also love that it didn't cost lots of money to make a great wall of art. 

Do you have some personal walls of art in your home?


PS. Here's a link to all the other posts I've written about homemade wall art - Wall Art Ideas. Just in case you like the topic. :)

Baby Room Art

 

Hehe - No, there's no baby on the way - just in case you were wondering. These are long ago pics that I was going to share - then never did. They were the art I made for Little One's Nursery - now almost five years ago. Can it be true? - he's almost five! (sigh)

To make, I painted a backdrop onto good quality card stock and fit this into my frames. 

I was lucky to find some wooden cut-outs that matched the animals embroidered onto his white cot linen at a craft shop. I then carefully painted them. Usually I don't have the patience for such finicky work, but I was very motivated to make his room special. It helped me work slowly and with a steady hand :).

Lastly, I attached the cut-outs with prestick to the glass. 

I absolutely love looking at pictures of nurseries and children's bedrooms and have lots pinned onto my Pinterest Board, Little People Decor, if you feel like browsing.

Till next time.

Make a Lego poster

Recently we swopped the boy's rooms around and it was the perfect opportunity to repaint and freshen up a bit. I wanted some funky "new" art for both children's rooms and so was on the look-out for some inspiration. Big One is already 10 years old, so I'm mindful of the fact that the art work needs to be approved by him. I was thrilled when he liked my idea to make him a lego figurine poster, using stickers from a book he had in his collection.  As soon as I mentioned it, I was pestered :)...he thought it was a terrific idea. 

When I started though, I realised that I had set myself a rather challenging task. Aligning all those little characters just right, so that this would be worthy of a prominent spot on his wall, would prove to be quite a task. It all worked out in the end (thankfully). So what you see below is the process in action.

mmm...yip, that unfortunately is how my dining room table looks most of the time. I wasn't sure if I was going to share this picture, 'cause I love that you all think I am super tidy and organised and do all my craft projects in a my nifty craft room (sigh, I wish), but no. Instead it's a very disorganised dining room table with unfinished projects, to-do projects, ideas, books , homework...you have the picture :). Oh yes, that's Big One at the end of the table choosing his favourite stickers.

Big One wanted all of these stickers on his poster, so I had a bit of convincing to do and had to encourage him to be rather selective.

It was tricky figuring out exactly what the lay-out would be and how to get all the stickers in a straight line and correctly spaced. I ended doing a bit of measuring and then used a straight piece of cardboard to line up all the stickers. Can you see it in the photograph above?

I tried to get as many stickers on the poster for Big One's sake. I must say, I would have chosen all the vintage, more traditional figurines...he on the other hand wanted the superheroes and baddies. He compromised on a few - sweet boy that he is :).

And up on the wall. He's happy, so I'm happy.

The book that we got all the stickers from is called the Ultimate Sticker Collection: LEGO Minifigure. It is a great little book with more than 1000 reusable stickers. 

Till next time. 

PS. Linking to 

Weekend Wrap Up Party @ tatertots and jello

 For the Kids Friday @ Sun Scholars
Show and Tell @ be different act normal 

5 Books Feature

 
I don't think I have ever told anyone how much I like reading book recommendations. It's true, particularly lists of recommended children's books. Now one such place where I can read book recommendations to my heart's content is a blog called  Silly Eagle Books and I want to share a little about it with you today.

Vanessa (the author of this lovely blog) has many lists of favourite books for babies, tots and children. I really like her list of best bedtime books and of books with your little girl's name in. (I can't wait to see her list with little boys names). She also sometimes features a favourite author, like the Eric Carle post here.

Vanessa has a passion for vintage books in particular and since reading her blog, I look at older books with a new appreciation and perspective. For Little One's birthday, I purchased a number of books that I would previously not have given a second glance. Probably the best example of this, was my purchase of Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. I took a chance and even though I had not read it before, I ordered it from Loot. Even when it arrived in the post, I was puzzled as to what all the fuss could be about. Well, a few reads later and this is now the first book requested at every bedtime. Little One (and I) just love reading it. There seems to be a wonderful comfort and peacefulness in the words, rhythm and rhyme of this book. It's a great buy for a one or two year old.

Vanessa has also really inspired me in how she uses books to decorate...books as art.  She inspired this bit of "Art" in Little One's bedroom.  I bought this old, badly damaged Noddy book at a second-hand store for next-to-nothing. I then painted an old broken frame and put the Noddy book cover inside as the picture! I think the title of the book is so apt  for the life of a toddler and in my mind I often think of Little One's name in place of Noddy's :).

  
A little while ago, Vanessa asked me (and some other book-loving bloggers) to share a list of any five books. I was thrilled to be asked and offered a list of favourite books for babies and toddlers (more than five actually). So I hope you will pop over and see what I recommend. And while you are there, check out some of Vanessa's wonderful crafts and those book lists of course :).

Shapes Picture: A Rainy day Art Activity

After the glorious autumn weather we had been having here in Cape Town, the rain arrived, in bucketfuls! I thought that we needed some ready-made rainy day activities, that I can  have on standby for the long winter to come. I decided to try some shape pictures with the children and also created a special shape box, so that we can do this activity whenever we are in the mood. This idea was very much inspired by a project done by Katherine Marie, which you can see here.

Art projects for under-two's are tricky, but I was hoping that Little One would be able to join in on this one. Needless to say, I was a bit too ambitious, because more glue went into his mouth than on the picture!

I think that these pictures make awesome kiddies' wall decor and I'm going to frame these for Little One's room.

PS. If you have any good ideas for under-two's art, please share these in the comment box.

Fun with Photos : Photo Art

I just LOVE projects that involve photographs and so I thought I would share this very easy idea with you. I wish I could say that I did this art work, however all these pictures were painted by a very creative friend of mine and given to me as a gift. This first picture is one that was framed in Big One's room when he was a little younger. The rest are pages from two books that start at his birth and share moments of the first two years of his life.

first smiles...

first funnies...

first steps...

first friends...

Every page of these two dear-to-my-heart books has a different feel and theme and is as gorgeous as these I have shared with you. 

This is really a project that anybody can do. Paper, paint and a matt photograph is all that is required. I have also added some embellishments (as you may have noticed) to some of the pages, just to add some more fun!

You can also do bigger pictures using more than one photograph. Paint a boat and have the children looking out of the portholes, a train with them sitting in the carriages, or a big bus or house with lots of windows and their faces peeking out...there are so many possibilities. Just remember that when working with more than one photograph on your page, the pre-planning of your picture is a bit more important.

So here is one more from the book, one of my favourites, a special Big One-Mommy moment.

If you do decide to do this art project, please let me know. I would just love to see your masterpieces!