Category :
wall decoration
Monday, January 13, 2014
[Guest Post by
Subbu Padmanabhan]
The delight in seeing one’s own near-perfect handiwork come to life is quite unparalleled by the satisfaction induced by the picture perfect outcome of a qualified expert. This joy provides everyone with unfailing inspiration and so when I experience the same elation, I want to share it.
Adding life to walls with cartoon characters may not seem new. But doing it yourself brings in the needed novelty that is a result of your own unique creative skills. I decided to give my son Sharan's room a little transformation with his favorite animation characters and have now been doing it on request from other mothers too. Here's some tips on decorating your kid's room wall with his / her favorite cartoon characters:
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| Add life to your kid's room wall with cartoon characters |
First and foremost, before you start doing anything with the wall, understand that the result has to interest your kid in the long run. Kids appreciate everything with a fancy value, but tend to move from one interest to the other quickly. Involve your kid in understanding what he / she would like to see on his / her wall for the next few years. You certainly don’t want him / her saying, “Mmmm, I like Chota Bheem better”, after two days of your hard work.
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| DIY Wall Decoration |
Materials you can use
From my experience, acrylic colors seem to be the best fit for adding splash of colors on the wall. I have used it on many walls with ease and have seen it give a striking finish to my works.
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| Acrylics for the wall |
I use cartoon images from the internet for reference and mark the outline on the wall using a pencil. Once the outline is in place, just paint the colors without letting them spill out of the outline. Cartoon characters look good in solid colors and so you don't need to give any gradient effect to your paintings.
In short, very basic painting skill is required to indulge in this DIY fun.
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| Chota Bheem on the bedroom door |
You don’t have to use the whole wall area. Choose a portion of the wall space and make it your canvas. Don’t be scared to alter and give it a makeover. If your kid would love it, give him / her sections that he / she can complete. That would add to the fun, right ?
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| The feature wall of the kid's room |
It is as simple as that. Take your time. Don’t get bogged down by setting yourself timelines. Get it right and then move to the next step. Enjoy the process. And most importantly, relish the product of your own efforts. Take pride and show it off to family and friends. I would love to hear your thoughts on designs that you have executed in your own rooms. Maybe, next time I do something like this, I will incorporate your ideas. Do leave me a comment.
~ Subbu Padmanabhan
About the contributor
Subbu Padmanabhan is a mom to a 4 something year old boy, and works as faculty in a premier play school. She likes to indulge in mini crafts projects, for the school and her home, during her spare time. The wall art that you see in the backdrop of
this bedside lamp is her handiwork too. She lives in Bangalore.
Saturday, October 08, 2011
A plain wall needing embellishment can certainly set off the DIY instinct in us. While creating a new piece of art is the most obvious choice, we sometimes tend to forget our works from the past that are crying to get out from the dark insides of their designated storage space.
More often than not, everything that is preserved tends to get ignored and lose to our own yearning to craft something new and more creative. Such discrimination is usually meted towards work we believe isn't our best.
We may have moved on from being a novice, but it gives no reason to disregard our previous work as a rookie. It may have its imperfections, but every work of art that is our own is a masterpiece in its own right and deserves to be proudly displayed on a wall or a glass case where everyone can see.
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| Old floral painting from the archives (2003) |
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Floral water color painting
Revived, framed and displayed (2011) |
Do you agree? Would you rather work on a new project than to resurrect an old work of yours? How do you ensure all your work get that much deserved showcase space? Share your views. We would love to know your point of view.
Note : This painting is a reproduction that I painted way back in 2003. If you do know that original artist, please do drop me an e-mail at woodoozmagic@gmail.com
~ Preethi
P.S. Linking in : Lines Across my face, Colours Dekor
- Somu
Thursday, June 23, 2011
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| Bamboo Room Divider / Wall Decoration |
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| Bamboo Decoration |
Room dividers are a great way to provide partition in a room with larger dimensions. Most commonly, these dividers are used between the living and dining space, when the hall and dining rooms are part of the same larger space. Some of the often used dividers are : wooden dividers, screens, book shelves, or the folding wooden panels.
Bamboo dividers can be a wonderful addition to the décor of the room and is a nice deviation from the regular space dividers. Because these partitions are not solid panels, they also create the perception of a bigger space while at the same time creating the much needed divide between spaces.
This particular divider can also be used as a wall decoration unit. In this case, we installed the bamboos in the backdrop of a plain wall to provide the wall emptiness with some glitz. The bamboo sticks were sanded, varnished and the artificial leaves added to the grand finale effect.
Let us know what you think.
And thanks to
Emreen, for, she is the one that led us to the bamboo leaves (
KUSAL).
Monday, June 13, 2011
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| Bamboo Room Divider / Wall decoration - Before |
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| Bamboo Room Divider / Wall decoration - After |
Quite an exciting project, but just as time consuming and laborious too. The need was to make a bamboo unit to fill up a non-intrusive wall space.This is something that my friend saw at a showroom and wanted us replicating it. Since we were already working with bamboos on a different project, we jumped at the opportunity after browsing through some images on the net.
Bamboo as a raw material is readily available, inexpensive and is easy to use These bamboos are less than an inch in diameter. The hardest part of the project was to sand the bamboo stems to remove the waxy outer coating and to achieve a smoother surface. The slowest part of the project was the time it took for the oil paint (green) to dry. Once dried, it was varnished. A hole was drilled in each of the nodes in the bamboo for a leaf to be inserted. The bamboos were made to stand by screwing them onto a wooden plank.
The base is a regular black box made from 19mm plywood planks. The planks were joined together using 2 inch screws. No other fancy joining technique used. The insides were painted black while the exterior was covered with black laminate. The box was stuffed with thermocol after placing the bamboos in place and finally covered with pebbles. Only thing missing is the bamboo leaves.
We delivered in late in the night yesterday and so, we are yet to get a full fledged feedback. We are sure some changes here and there would be required. Will follow up. And considering we have been onto this for the last 45 days, we are gonna take a well deserved two weeks break from woodworking :)... So,here it is - a bamboo room divider.
P.S. Do you know where we can find artificial bamboo leaves in Chennai ? Would appreciate any pointers in this regard.
