Some Room Decorations

Ever since we moved E to his new room (and painted it a bolder colour--rather than our typical "some shade of brown"), I've been looking for some ways to decorate it. Because he is getting older and I don't want to be doing this very often, I wanted to try to find something that could stick around for a bit. Something that was not too old and not too baby-ish either.

Here was some artwork I kinda liked, from HomeSense. But I never got it--it just wasn't quite right.
In talking with my sisters, I was first thinking about trying some of those vinyl stick-ups or so. None of the ones I found really suited what I wanted either. My sister, Helen, made these cute wall-hangings. She bought the material from Quilt Essential Fabrics (in Abbotsford, BC) a year or so back, from an Eric Carle line. (Based on the book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?). I really liked them and she gave me her extra material to do the same kind of thing.

However, my hubby wasn't a big fan--he thought they might be on the baby-ish side, or not too fitting for the room E was currently in, so I had to do some thinking again.

I did sew some curtains for him to match the comforter (sorry for the sideways picture!), and we did hang up some bulletin boards for all of his "stuff" (he is a collector of stuff--anything--he NEEDS to keep, so this is a good place--otherwise it is all over the house!)

I still liked the idea of the frames my sister had made, so I decided to check out Quilt Essentials as well. I'm terrible at matching colours and prints. I just don't have an eye for that, so the ladies there helped me out a little. E picked the one fabric he liked (the transportation one!) and then the other ones were "matching" ones. I picked up a fat quarter of each, and then went home to decide what to do with them.

I did a little searching, and ran into a tutorial here about fabric covered wall canvases. So I decided to give it a try. I didn't like the brightness of the fabrics I had chosen just because the rest of his room was grey and navy, so I tried to incorporate some of the fabric from the curtains into it. . .but I didn't have a bunch of it left! So here was the new plan:

First I got my hubby to build some frames for me. . .

Then I followed some of the advice from the tutorial to wrap the fabric around the frames. Some of my staples didn't go in all the way, so I got to go a little crazy with the hammer too. E had to inform me that he didn't know mommy knew how to use tools. Did I show him! :)

With a little help in the idea department from an old IKEA catalogue, I finally came up with a "set-up" I liked:

Here is a close up of my "solution" to the fabric being too bright. . .and not having enough pieces of curtain fabric. This is actually two small pieces sewed together, and then I made a band that kind of matched the bands holding the curtains back. I figured this might look nice with the curtains, and add enough dark colour to the colour scheme. If I were to do it again, I wouldn't have chosen the orange that they recommended, but gone with a reddish or green instead.

So here it is on the wall (the most time consuming part was hanging it all up!) The big "canvases" are 17x17--perfect for those fat quarters! The small frames are 7x7. There is 3 inches of spacing between it all. Notice how this lay-out doesn't match the above one? Not sure which one I like better. . .but I suppose that can be changed. . .

And here is my happy kiddo.

So. . .that is one of my Spring Break projects completed.