Monday, February 05, 2007
Making Do on Mondays: Improvised Art
This is a really quick couple of suggestions; I'd hoped to expand it a bit but have since got caught up in one of my more demanding mothering weeks. So where I lack, I hope YOU fill in with ideas of your own!Art can be expensive. But sometimes expensive art is a good investment as it can be both edifying to us and supportive to the creative minds of people who make a living on such things. So, while I may balk at spending $30 on a generic reprint of cutesy animals at Wal-Mart, I would be more likely to spend the money on a small original piece of work we found at the farmer's market or something. Fortunately (I suppose), we don't have much discretionary income to debate on that art choice right now. So when we finished insulating and drywalling and painting my kids' room, the walls looked pretty bare. We of course put a crucifix up and then a statue of the Archangel Raphael on the dresser, but what about those walls?
For one, my mom picked up some chunky vehicle wall hangings at a garage sale so we threw those up there. Then we hung an old family baby quilt (the kind you can't bear to use) in one open space but their are two things I want to specifically talk about.
I am my libary's best patron; since we are pretty liberal with leaving library books lying around the house, some destruction was inevitable. Before my Leo turned two, he'd ripped three library books up that we had to pay for. Luckily for me, one of those books had gorgeous, quirky illustrations and since we essentially bought the book; the non-ripped ones were all ours. I found some cheap, antique looking frames and put our favorite three pictures on the wall; it looks like custom "kid room" art!
Lastly, we bought the boys a dinosaur calendar a couple years ago. After the year ended--not wanting to just chuck the thing-- we took those great pictures and had them laminated (3 pictures each in two complementing strips) and hung those on the wall. I wanted to do something narrow and long for the spaces we had and the result turned out to be lots of fun.So there's that, a couple cheap ways to decorate kids' rooms! Now go rip up some library books... (just kidding)
-Ellie
Labels: useful ideas
one of us ::
7:45 AM ::
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