Adventures in Paint: Cheap and Simple Home Decorating Part 2

Welcome to the second installment of my two-part series showing how I decorated my house on the cheap with paint.  If you missed Part 1 of this series, check it out HERE.  So many people I know, are afraid of paint.  I even used to be one of them.  But then it finally dawned on me: if I don't like the paint, I can always paint over it.  This was such a freeing revalation.  Here is how I decorated my first son's room.

He was six years old at the time and totally into dinosaurs, he's since moved into another bedroom in the house without cartoons on the wall.  Luckily for me, the latest addition to our family is a boy and I didn't have to repaint it for the nursery.  I found fun dinosaur images on a Google Images search.  I wanted cartoon dinosaurs that weren't too scary.  Once I found the ones I liked, I printed them out, sketched them onto the wall and painted them.  The T-Rex, we call "Red".  I painted the rock and volcano free-hand.  It's actually super easy, especially when you trace a general outline on the wall first. 

This Brontosaurus is named Bert and the Caveman's name is Ugh.  I LOVE that Bert has people feet and hands.  Now, if you're not artistically inclined, you can use a projector to project the image on the wall and trace it.  They are fairly inexpensive or some libraries even loan them out for free. 

This Pterydactyl was added a couple of years later and his name is Big Bird.  He keeps  the skies painted in the room friendly. 

 The brontosaurus was added when the new baby came.  We've named him Bluto.  I used the same technique with all of the dinosaurs, sketching them from a cartoon image and then painting them.  Bluto keeps watch over Baby Boy.

Outside of the kids' bedrooms is a large hallway with a small desk and drawers built in for an area to do homework.  It is currently home to our video games.  Homework is done downstairs.  Anyway, I have a bunch of mis-matched pictures and frames, so I thought I'd put them in a collage-like order and it turned out great.  The mis-matching frames actually gives the space some character.  I tied it all together with some cheap cardboard letters that I found at the craft store and painted. 

Total cost to paint the boys room: Paint $25, brushes - Free (I already had on-hand)

Total cost for the picture collage: Letters $15, pictures and frames - Free Many were hand me downs and others I already had on-hand in a back closet. 

So, what I learned is that you don't need a ton of money to decorate your spaces.  Just a little time and confidence in your artisic ability.  Go ahead and take a chance, I'm willing to bet you'll probably surprise yourself!

What kind of projects have you done where you've surprised yourself with how well they turned out?

Shared at: Thrifty Thursday, Homemakers Challenge, Friday Homemaking, Penny Pinching Party, Loving This Crazy Life