No Posters Please
When we moved into our new house I was faced with the dilemma of decorating the kids' rooms. My son's was pretty easy because he's a boy, he has his own room, and as long as there's a bed and his stuffed animal, Mr. Potamus, he's happy. Mostly it's the battle of making sure the walls aren't covered in posters. My step daughters were trickier because they share a room and have different tastes. I wanted to make sure everyone was happy...including me...okay, mostly me.
Maybe you don't care but I have a thing about wall to wall posters. I think it comes from the Laura Ashley wall paper from my childhood room. According to my mom it was really expensive and we weren't allowed to tarnish it with holes. So no Sean Cassidy posters. Back then I was devastated by those stupid pink Laura Ashley roses; rows and rows of little pink roses. I was a teenaged girl and I wanted to plaster the walls with posters and articles from Tiger Beat Magazine and photo collages with magazine phrases taped to them. Now, I think back on the clean, streamlined look that was forced upon me and realize that I've become my mother and I now have an aversion to a "cluttered" looking room. My adult self cringes at the thought of photo collages and posters. I've tried to find a happy medium and have allowed the occasional poster, but I also have managed to throw in some design elements to make my Type A side happy.
As I mentioned, my son is pretty easy. Throw some Dallas Cowboy football fatheads on the wall and he looked the other way on my "other" decorating in his room. I had to get creative with the girls and turn my decorating into a group craft day, otherwise it just seemed like me forcing all of my ideas onto them. If I let them create the artwork then it technically turned into their idea. This is what I call evil genius decorating. I'm sure they see right through me but it's a craft day one way or the other and who doesn't love a good craft day?
Their new room had a lot more wall space for me to fill. I was in Ikea looking for some inexpensive art when I saw a museum frame with some 3D paper butterflies in it. An idea was born. It doesn't take much for the crafting light bulb to strike. A quick butterfly search on Pinterest gave me even more ideas and I was off to Michaels. Most of my ideas start out with necessity and end up on Pinterest. My search turned up a few photos of canvases covered in butterflies. I loved the idea and now needed to sell the girls on loving it too. It didn't take much, they were sold at butterflies. I showed them the photo from Pinterest that was my favorite which is this one with the heart made of butterflies. A quick conference with the girls on colors and I was ready to map out our idea.
We decided to keep the ombre effect and use blues instead of pinks and reds. We also decided to have the butterflies start in the corner and fan out as they spread up the canvas. It seemed a little easier to handle then trying to re-create the heart. I was going to let the girls do a lot of the work and was trying to keep it streamlined. They're 9 and 11 years old and love to take on the crafts by themselves. It's a battle for my Type A side as I also love to take on crafts by myself and have a hard time handing over the reigns. I'm working on it and this was my big test to see how much of it I could let them do.
I started by finding a nice big white canvas. I went to Aaron Brothers. They have lots of different sizes and one would think I would have started small to see if I liked it first, but if you'll refer back to my very first blog post or if you've been reading them at all you'll understand why I just jumped right in with both feet and hoped for the best. Aaron Brothers is another great store that has a steady monthly stream of 40 - 50% off one item coupons. This will come in handy here as I soon realized how expensive these canvases can be. Amazon has a huge selection as well like this one. The whole point was to find an inexpensive solution and without the coupon that would not have been accomplished.
I also decided that I wanted to add some depth to the canvas by painting large stripes of color horizontally. I knew I had some craft paint back in my goody box at home so I was almost done with the supplies I would need. If you don't have any craft paint you can easily find some at Michaels. They're small cheap bottles of color that last a long time. That last part is key as I don't use them a lot but when I want them they always seem to be ready for me by just shaking them up. The girls weren't sure the stripes would look good and since I was letting go of the reigns and working on giving up control of the craft I sat down with them and had a strategy meeting. You'll notice by the photo that the stripes made it into the project. Don't judge me. Rome wasn't built in a day. I'm a work in progress and my Type A side is strong. I'm sure you're also saying how right I was because the stripes look amazing!
The biggest part of the project was all of those butterflies. Now this is where you're going to get mad at me for sounding like Martha Stewart again because I used a fancy Cricut machine to cut butterflies. The Cricut is a paper cutting machine and comes in handy when you're doing any sort of paper crafting, such as cutting hundreds of tiny butterflies. If you can't get your hands on one of these I have an alternative for you. I love my Cricut machine; and by mine I mean the one I talked my girlfriend into buying and then made her keep at my house. If you don't have a friend like this you need to get one. If you're currently unable to make that happen, you can also buy a paper punch. They're like a hole punch except they cut paper into different shapes and sizes including butterflies (Fiskars makes them if you decide to go this route). If you are buying one of these just make sure to read carefully so you know exactly what size butterfly will be cut.
As I am currently obsessed with the Cricut machine, I had the girls use it for this project. One of my step daughter's was on paper loading duty and the other was on glue duty. In this case we used a hot glue gun since it was fast and quickly dried the butterflies exactly where we wanted them. I could write an entire blog on just how much I love my hot glue gun but I'll spare you that for right now. If you don't own one you need to stop reading right now and immediately go purchase one. You'll thank me later. The girls took over the project at this point with only a little supervision (mostly because those hot glue guns get pretty hot and can burn little fingers if you're not careful). Otherwise, they did all of the rest and were very proud of the final result.
Because I am unable to leave well enough alone, I added a small finishing touch after the project was hung on the wall. I remembered seeing this photo (pictured left) in my original butterfly search and thought it would be fun to have some of our butterflies "escaping" from our canvas. I hot glued some magnets on the back of my butterflies and pushed some flat metal thumbtacks into the wall. My DIY butterfly magnets would now stick wherever I placed the thumbtacks. Fancy, right? I'd love to claim credit for that idea too but I got the idea from this Pin. I always try to make sure I give Pinterest credit where Pinterest credit is due. I hope you all will do the same for me if you're reading and sharing.
What I love about this craft is that it's super kid friendly and has a million ways you can adapt and alter it to fit your child's tastes. Go crazy and have fun! As always, send me photos of your finished products.
