Art For The Boys' Room

"Free Art"

Bare walls are not my favorite. While at the rental, I've been looking at many many bare walls. However, artwork for walls is pricey, and I'm usually not a fan. For the living room and dining room I am pretty sure we'll have WAY more than enough pictures of family. One of my former CILTS painted a beautiful picture of a local barn that will hang in our dining room. I've taken several nature pictures that we've have been blown up to hang in our room. The nursery has some Beatrix Potter prints that will go up when I find that box. But the boys' room...nothing. Hmmm. The above picture is a firetruck that Little Monkey got for Christmas. It was our "muse".

I decided to see what I could do the kids could do. I've seen in magazines where people use their kids' artwork to decorate. So I gave it a shot. Using construction paper I drew out several pieces of the truck for Snug to cut out.

It took him the better part of an hour to do this project, but I am really pleased with the results. There were a few tiny pieces I cut (the siren, stripe, and the traffic cone, which he insisted had to be present) so that they actually existed...he did everything else.

You can see his pile of pieces in the background. While he worked on that, I took an off white piece of scrapbook paper and put it behind the matting that came with the 10x13 frame ($5 at Wal-Mart...the only things I had to buy for this project).

Snug and I then assembled the truck on the mat/scrapbook paper so he knew what the end goal looked like. He hadn't thought of the traffic cone yet in this picture.

Next I took the pieces off and he put glue on the backs. We use "itty bitty, teeny weeny, baby drops of glue". I didn't make that up, a kindergarten teacher I used to work with did, but it is genius for getting the puddles of glue to STOP.

We took turns putting the glued pieces together. Sometimes I turned things just a bit...I don't like to interfere with his artwork, but this one was for the bedroom wall.

Ah, there is the traffic cone. Anyway, this is the end result. Snug was very proud. He said it was "very very hawd!!!". You can scroll back to the top to see how accurate we were. (Yes, I know the actual truck has a traffic cone, but it also has many details I thankfully didn't have to come up with.)

Little Monkey did the marker piece in his high chair as we worked on the fire truck, and the water color picture was Snug's fireman. He doesn't really paint "things" unless prompted, so we talked about what a fireman would look like and he painted as we talked. On his own, he likes more abstract art :o) The frames will be painted in the colors we used in the boys' room.

Picassos we are not, but we do have "free art" for their room!