Every now and then I get into a bit of a "DIY kick." I see a place in my apartment that could use a bit more "me" in it and try to come up with the perfect decoration/modification. I wouldn't say I'm "handy"; I think I'm just good at following directions (recipes, etc).
In my bedroom, I had a rather large blank space on my wall. I already have a lot of photographs and pictures hanging on the walls throughout my apartment, so I was looking for something a little different. I saw online that you can buy wall decals; but after some adding, I realized they were over priced, time consuming and a bit hard to work with.
Then, I had an idea! I would just find a decal I liked, and paint it onto the wall myself. Compared to the $50+ that retailers were charging for the decal itself, the only material I would need was a small amount of paint and a brush.
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I thought about freehanding it, but then I remembered that I'm not very good at free hand. The perfectionist in me wasn't going to settle for anything less than perfect if it was going to be on a wall I saw every day.
I got the idea to find an image of a decal I liked, borrow a projector from work and traced the image onto the wall. The whole project took about 4 hours and cost me less than $5.
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It's easy! You will need:
- pencil
- small paint brush
- small amount of paint (I used a total of 3 ounces of acrylic paint)
- a picture of the image (the simpler the design, the easier the project will be. As you can see, I took a very basic design and dressed it up with some color.)
- laptop
- projector (this one is the hardest material to get ahold of most of the time. My work graciously has let me borrow one for a night and bring it back the next morning.)
Project the image you chose onto the wall; you might have to fiddle with this a bit to get the image in just the right spot. With the projector on, trace the outline of the image in pencil. After it is traced, you can turn off computer and projector. Lastly, just color within the lines you traced. Voila!
In the pictures you see the decal I got the idea from, before I painted, and then the final project. It's a creative, easy, inexpensive way to dress up a room!
