Project Playroom: The Accent Wall

I am not afraid of color. You would not know that if you stepped into my house as most of the walls, tile, cabinets and furniture (so far) are white, beige, gray or greige (a combo of the two). I made two very bold color choices when designing this house. One (which you will see in a post in the near future) is a kelly green vanity in the girls' bathroom. The second is this accent wall in the playroom. 

Both of these decisions were met with much hesitation when I told my builder about the bright bold colors as he is all about the neutral tones. I have two kids, I am an artist/crafter/designer myself and wanted to do something that popped in my otherwise sterile and boring house (just wait until I repaint my dining room table legs hot pink!). I was later told by said builder that he loved my decision on color, so there! 

I had originally planned to paint more than one wall in the playroom this beautiful teal color (Miami Teal by Benjamin Moore), but decided to stick with this one side wall. The windows in the house are to the left of this wall, and get incredible light in the morning as our house is Northeast facing. 

I kept this wall simple as the color is already an attack on the senses, and put the spin art canvas M and I created last year as the main focal point. Below are table and chairs from Ikea, and for now we have that yellow crisscross rug from Overstock. I had plans to buy a new fancy rug for in there, but that won't be happening until the girls are older and aren't spilling things all the time, or drawing on rugs with markers!

Hanging in the corner of the room is a tent from Land of Nod, that is affixed to the ceiling. More on that awesomeness in a later post! 

Project Playroom: A Family Portrait of Sorts

Let the new house posts commence!

I have decided to start sharing some of my design ideas/projects that I have been working on lately. I am starting small for now (new nightstands, an accent wall, etc.), but have other big things in the mix (recovering chairs, wallpapering and designing the formal living room) that I will happily share with you all, and more importantly ask for your opinion! I have lots of great ideas, but seem to be having a hard time picking exactly which one I like the most in some cases. But for now I wanted to share with you my first project to be hung on the wall.

Behold, our family portrait, of sorts:

From the left it is Marlo the unicorn, Dada J the elephant, Val the deer and Mama J the giraffe.

I remember a few years back my husband said that he had only one opinion about the decorating of our new house - no antlers or animal heads of any kind. So my antler chandelier was out, but I was dying to put some sort of animal head (not real of course) or some sort of antlers somewhere in the house. Shortly after this discussion, I came across these cardboard animal busts, made by Cardboard Safari, on a site called Darby Smart a fabulous website full of ingenious DIY crafty projects. I purchased them last summer before we moved out of our old house, and not until almost a year later did I actually start this project.

I let the girls assign who got what animal, and also let them (help) pick the colors as they come in plain brown cardboard. I took it upon myself to spray paint the front and back of every little piece. After two coats on each side of the pieces, I then assembled them into their bust form (which was not as easy with the extra layers of paint - it took a little extra muscle, but a friend later recommended I should have used an exact-o knife to make the slots larger - doh!).

They all now hang proudly in our playroom for all to see. I couldn't be happier with the way they turned out.

Here is a shot to get some perspective as to how big they are on the wall. They are approximately 11 inches in height. 

More photos to come of the rest of the playroom!