Get Crafty: the Play Room

 

We moved into a new house a couple of months ago and one of the big selling points for me when we looked at it was the extra room off the kitchen – or, THE PLAY ROOM. We’ve never had one previously but it was something I had often daydreamed about. I had always planned to make it gender neutral, but when it came time to decorate it I decided to let H do it. It is her playroom after all and I want her to enjoy being in there. 

We headed over to Target and started perusing the home décor aisles. H almost immediately found a pink owl rug that was on clearance that she just fell in love with. So we decided to use that (owls and flowers) as the basis for our decorating. We found some owl and flower reusable stickers that I knew would be perfect for the closed off fireplace.

Now that we had a theme I got to work on some projects to complete the room:

Toddler Art

The playroom has a closed off fireplace with a mantle, and the wall above the mantle was screaming for a painting. So I figured who better to make the painting than my little artist?! Craft stores like Michael’s and A.C. Moore almost always have 40 – 50% off one item coupons on their websites, so I was able to get a large canvas for a steal. I put a plastic tablecloth on the floor and set her up with paints, brushes, and sponges and off she went!

She worked on it over a few evenings and I have to say, I think the finished piece is pretty beautiful!

Flower Lamp

Since my husband is no longer working from home we had an extra floor lamp that I decided to use in the playroom. I’m a big fan of dimmer lighting in the evening – I think it makes everything more cozy and relaxed. The lamp was not so much ugly as it was boring, so it seemed like the perfect candidate for a project that I had seen in a book and was dying to try out – a flower lamp. 

Anyone who reads my posts knows of my love for silk flowers, and this project required collecting a lot of them over a period of time since I refuse to pay for the full price ones at a craft store. Once I had enough I just hot glued them all over the lampshade. I then used a can of green metal spray paint to make the base into a giant stem.

The finished product is a flowery piece of ridiculousness – perfect for H’s playroom!

Felt Board

I had hastily thrown together a felt board about a year ago when H was going through a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse phase and I was desperately trying to come up with ways to engage her AWAY from the TV.

I decided to make a new one for her playroom as a fun way to reinforce some of the things she’s learning in preschool, like numbers and letters and time. They are learning letters with the idea that all letters can be constructed using combinations of big line/little line and big curve/little curve. It took literally seconds to cut those out of stiffened felt and now she can use them to make letters on her board. For the board itself I picked up a pretty teal poster frame from Christmas Tree Shoppe and used spray adhesive to attach black felt to the cardboard backing.

 

Paper Chain

We had a housewarming party last weekend for kids and adults and H and I made a paper chain to decorate her playroom. H sorted the strips of paper into color piles and then handed me tape as we constructed the chain. It looks so cute we’ve decided just to leave it up there.

Starting next week it’s nothing but holiday crafts! This year I’m making H an advent calendar, we’re working on some ornaments together, and I’ll be making some wine bottle tags!