Megan's Room

For Megan's birthday, instead of presents she wanted to redecorate her bedroom. She said "I want something more grown up....What about MERMAIDS?"

Mermaids. Okay, I can work with that. I tried to choose the solid colors for the main pieces so that someday, when she is tired of mermaids, we can just take those elements down and not have to start completely from scratch.

Since I was working with a fairly small budget, I actually went all crafty and made a number of elements.

I started by making these posters for her walls because as a digital scrapbooker, that's what I was most comfortable with. They turned out cute, don't you think? All of the artwork is available HERE. I had them printed at Office Max on tabloid sized paper for like $0.75 each. Can't beat that!

For the other piece of wall art, I found a drawing of a mermaid online that I liked, cut it out, and then cut it apart (so I cut the tail off of the body, the hair, the rock, etc.). I traced each piece onto the appropriate colored felt and cut that out, and then glued all of the pieces to another piece of felt in the correct places. It was sort of like a puzzle. I stuck it in a frame I already had, and since I already had the felt and the glue, it was free! I'll probably repaint the frame at some point, but here it is:

After I made the first set of posters, I started looking for bedding that coordinated with it. This is what I found from Target:

I liked it because someday when she outgrows the mermaid theme, the bedding will probably still work.

Pulling colors from the posters, I knew I wanted to use green, dark purple, light purple, and sand (that's a color, right?). I brought those colors in as throw pillows and curtains. I really wanted to bring in some textures as well, so I  looked for those when I was shopping. I found the green pillow and purple curtains at Walmart, but I couldn't find the purple or sand pillows anywhere, so my ultra-talented friend Laura made them for me. I love the sequiny, sparkly sand colored pillow.

To add another layer of fabric to soften up the room, I got a canopy from IKEA to go over the bed. Since it was plain white, eventually I'll sewed on some large sequins randomly to give it a little sparkle. I'll probably also add some pieces of Infatuation Yarn because I think it looks a bit like seaweed.

I looked and looked for a lampshade to replace the pink one that Megan had before, but I couldn't find one that was the right size, shape, and price. So I painted the pink one with turquoise acrylic paint.then I glued on a glittery fish applique, with some small white buttons for bubbles.  It looks FABULOUS when the light is off, but when you turn the lamp on, the shade blocks out pretty much all the light. So you only get lamp light coming out at the bottom and the top. It makes for a dramatic lighting scheme at night. I used Infatuation Yarn around the top and the bottom of the lamp to tie it together with the canopy (and because I was too cheap to go buy more ribbon.)

I looked for a mermaid doll to put on Megan's bed, but couldn't find one I liked, so I bought a regular doll from the craft store and gave her a tail. I don't have a sewing machine, so it was all hand sewing on felt (I would have used hot glue, but I wanted it to last a little longer.)

There are still several more projects to complete - I would like to repaint the letters above the window to match the color scheme, and I would like to get coordinating bedding for Kate's crib, but those will have to wait.

Oh! Although I haven't done much to make Kate's crib cute yet, I did make a mobile. I took a medium sized embroidery hoop and wrapped it with purple ribbon. Then I colored some drawings of seashells in PSE, merged all layers,  made a duplicate of the document, flipped the duplicate horizontally, and sent both documents in to Office Max. They printed them back to back. They don't line up perfectly (they are pretty close, though), but since I didn't cut them out exactly on the lines, it doesn't matter. I attached the shells at different lengths to the hoop using invisible thread. Fishing line would probably be easier, but I already had the thread so that's what I used.

All in all, I am really pleased with how everything turned out.