Pile o' Craft: BOY'S ART

Long blank walls without any features like windows, doors, or furniture petrify me! It means either I have to get pretty creative or spend some money. My little boy's room had two of these walls. Yikes! I had been collecting vintage transporation decorations for almost a year, so I had quite a few knick knacks, but the big bang was missing. I liked the idea of getting something like this

or this

to fill in the great void (pieces are from pbk if anyone is interested), however, they were above my budget and didn't even match the colors of the room. Besides, I knew I could make one for free, and what can be better than free?

First, I decided to recycle some old wooden plaques that I was not using. I didn't have a really big one, so I put two matching ones together and ended up with the split art look. My finished project ended up being 32"X 20". Then I simply painted them antique white to establish a base color.

For simplicity's sake (and to avoid making it look like cheesy DIY art) I decided a screen print of a car would be my best option. I took the vintage cars on his bed that I was using as a model and measured how big the car needed to be to fill the canvas. Then I drew the car by multiplying the original car's lines by that scale. I am not an artist, so turning it into "painting by measuring" really worked for me.

After I painted the car, I decided it needed a little personality, so I mod-podged some paper accents to the art and dirtied it all up by glazing on some diluted brown paint. It was pretty easy to do and saved me quite a bit. Plus, I got to choose the colors and add personalization to it.

For fun and diminsion I added some planes above the car art.

To finish the other wall, I bought some unfinished wood shelves and a magnet board half off from Roberts. He loves his little vintage transportation room. Now I just need to paint his walls tan and it will be completely finished!