Budget Boys Room Decor

Guest post by Kendra's sister, Trina, who isn't only insanely creative, but also extremely cheap--that runs in our family, too!  :-)

I feel unqualified to talk about home décor because I don't do too much of it, and what I do do is more often dictated most by how inexpensively it can be done. So, here are a couple of cheap/simple projects that I recently did to try and put a little fun in my little boys' room.

 

I found these cute painted wooden shapes half off at a craft store, so picked them up even though I wasn't sure what to do with them. What I eventually came up with were these wall hangings. A couple of years ago I bought some basic wooden frames on eBay for a different project I was doing (they ended up being about $1 each), and these five were left-over. I just painted them with acrylic paint to match the room. The fabric was scraps left from when I made my boys' quilts. I cut rectangles and then sewed another fabric on the edges, and ironed the seams. I hot-glued the cloth onto foam core board cut to fit inside the frames, then put the frames and fabric boards together. Finally, I just hot-glued the wooden transportation shapes to the center. My 5-year-old thought he was pretty cool when I let him help operate the hot glue gun a time or two.

The other project was for a dresser we refinished a while ago. We removed the ugly 70's  door-knocker-style drawer pulls, and I wanted to put something cute on to match the colors in the boys' room. Initially, I found these really adorable transportation-themed drawer pulls on eBay, but they didn't last a month before they were breaking.  I debated spending $5 each for some other cute ones online, but couldn't bring myself to do it. Instead, I bought plain wooden knobs and painted them with a basecoat of blue.

  

My two year old thought he needed to help with this project.

Don't worry, his paint was washable.

When the blue was dry I painted little pictures on the knobs, and outlined them with a fine Sharpie. The final step was to spray with some clear lacquer.  I actually messed up a couple with this last step because the Sharpie ran. I'm not sure if I applied too much of the wet lacquer, or if I should have let the ink “dry” a little more. I was able to mostly fix those knobs by re-painting over the Sharpie, and was extra careful when I lacquered them the second time.

For more fabulous and frugal decor ideas, don't forget to check out The Shabby Nest's Frugal Friday Party!