Superhero Room: Part 3 "DECOUPAGE BABY!"

Superhero Room: Part 3 "DECOUPAGE BABY!"

AKA: I now hate decoupage and comic books

(Have you read Part 1 and Part 2 yet?)

I had these wooden letters leftover from Robbie's nursery. I had really good plans at the time to paint them in the same brown of the cars and hang them with cutesy little ribbons above his crib. Then I had a baby and forgot about them in a little JoAnn's bag in the garage. I had the idea to hand paint them each with the design of a different hero. I thought, you know, paint one red and put a little spider on it, paint one black and paint a little yellow bat signal on it, etc... then I thought about using stickers or something... then I had A GREAT IDEA! Last time at Half Price Books, I had browsed through comic books. HPB's has comic books for 25 cents - 99 cents. SO WHY NOT DECOUPAGE. Decoupage is basically applying a thin layer of glue to an item and then strategically covering it with stuff then varnishing the whole thing.

So! Supplies gathered....

Step 1: Spray Paint back sides and insides of letters and newly purchased picture frame black. This way I only need to decoupage the front side.

Step 2: Shop for comic books & buy ModPodge.

Here are some of the results.

HOLY DECOUPAGE, Batman!

O, how the Hulk wishes he kept his temper.

R you ready for some Spiderman?

As you can see above, I did Superman "B", Robin "I" and Green Lantern "E".

Robbie's "Birth Day" photo in the Flash frame.

And then there was an issue. I made Sam move a shelf he installed after the paint job and as a result we had some holes in the walls. I promised to find something we could hang over the holes so we wouldn't have to fill and repaint. I ended up making this 16 x 20 decoupage collage using lots and lots of layers of superheros.

Yes, these letters are supposed to be "whimsical".

And now I am sick of decoupage and hope that I never ever have to do it anytime soon. (Although I had another great idea using old math textbooks... maybe fall break?) If you have any interest in this type of craft, I would encourage you to watch/read some "how to decoupage" videos/info online before you start. You will get better results if you use a very thin layer of glue. Also, with regards to comic books, it is much easier to use comic books that feel like "newsprint" than the slick "magazine" style pages. You will get brighter colors with the latter but you will have to take lots of drying breaks and will most likely end up with wrinkles in your product.

Superhero Room: Part 2 - "Curtains & Valences"

Superhero Room: Part 2 "Curtains & Valences"

AKA: Don't Let the Sunshine In

(Have you read Part 1 yet?)

Has anyone else noticed the GLARING BRIGHTNESS of the sun in the early evening hours? We start our bedtime battle... umm... routine around 7:00pm. Robbie takes a bath or shower around 7, then there are jammies to put on, books to be read, etc... He is tucked in his little bed a little before 8:00pm each night. However his west wall makes the room so bright! So we decided to buy some light blockout curtains. I bought these Eclipse Thermaback curtains in Navy from Target. Let me just say that if you have kids and have trouble getting their room dark enough to encourage sleep, these babies are a hit. We still have some light coming in around the edge of the windows, but it is nearly pitch back in the room now. In fact, it is so dark we had to leave the overhead light dimmer all the way down.

Curtains? Check!

But Navy curtains didn't exactly scream superheros. What did SCREAM superheroes was the officially licensed superhero fabrics you can buy at JoAnn's or the ones you can buy online covered in bold cartooney print with giant scary superheroes popping out of the design. I decided to go with a plain cotton print - red with little blue, white, and navy stars. The stars were slightly imperfect which reminded me of the stars you see in comic book when someone gets punched in the head... sooo... I pulled out my Singer that my mom gave me and got to sewing valences.

As a disclaimer, this trim looks really crooked! But it isn't! It's the picture! Promise! The fabric is not laying flat here! I really mean it! The trim is NOT whimsical!

Superhero Room: Part 1 "The Walls"

Superhero Room: Part 1 "The Walls"

AKA: Paint Samples LIE and Painter's Tape Doesn't Stick

For those faithful followers (hi mom!) you may remember that Robbie was born in September of 2008 and that we painted his room an adorable robin's egg blue and stenciled chocolate brown cars along the baseboards. For those that don't know that: See that post "Nursery News: It is Adorable!"

Since Robbie is almost three....sniffle... we decided to give him a "big boy room" and update the theme a little. I had "A Super Idea" when I saw some superhero posters and that got me going. Picture me - suddenly a whirlwind of internet research and online shopping for superhero themes. So what I discovered is this: 1. Superhero Stuff is mostly out of my price range 2. Superhero Stuff (especially linens, etc) is pretty cheaply made and low quality 3. Superhero stuff is scary 4. Superhero stuff DIY is way above my ability level.

I had the idea of doing a city skyline on the bottom of the room, but most outlines I could find for stenciling (like I did the cars) were very intricate. Vinyl decals were an option, but they were really expensive. Then I came across a blog where a woman had redone her son's room in superheros and did a very simple skyline using large rectangles and painter's tape. I really liked the idea and decided to do that. However when I went to write this blog I couldn't find the original website ANYWHERE to give this woman credit for her idea. If anyone ever comes across it, please let me know.

We also decided to put up new curtains and valences which meant the robin's egg blue had to go. I decided to paint it a nice pale blue to brighten up the room. Enter paint samples and paint buying. Once I had it on the walls it looked like this:

Not bad... except it is not blue... it is purple... a very light bluish PURPLE. (sigh) We decided to go with it because it still looks OK, and didn't want to drop another $50 on paint. (stupid lying paint sample).

Day 2 came the skyline design. I used green "Frog Tape" because everyone said it stopped bleeds. I didn't wait the "3 weeks" curing time for my base coat because I am impatient and ready to get my little guy back in his own room and own bed, so I still had some bleeds.

My advice to you if you decide to do this is to make your buildings a little bigger than you think you want them because remember you are initially painting the INSIDE of the tape, not the area INCLUDING the tape.
You will also want to use four colors because (nerd alert), the Four Color Theorem (Discrete Math) proves that you can paint ANY planer map like your cityscape using only 4 colors so that no touching edges are the same color. (nerd moment over). I painted black and dark brown first. First I used alternated using a paint brush and I mini roller, but eventually just ditched the roller and went solo paintbrush since the areas were so small. After a couple hours to dry, I went back and gave the buildings a second coat, removing painter's tape, and freehand in any areas that needed touching up (Gaps between the brown and black where the painter's tape was that needed to be either brown or black but not background bluepurple).

Day 3: I started out by taping around the room just like day 2, focusing on the buildings that would be my new colors. By the time I got around the room the first taped buildings were already falling off the wall. The tape WOULD NOT STICK!!! @!#%! So essentially I grabbed both new paint colors and brushes, rubbed the tape back down for a building, painted it, pulled painter's tape off, rubbed the tape back down for the next building, painted it, pulled tape off, etc.... all the way around the room. I touched up missing areas as I went this time.


After a couple hours to dry, I went back and retouched any places that needed a little more coverage.

My husband pointed out that several of the buildings tend to lean toward the north side of the room... I told him that they weren't crooked, they were whimsical!!! Overall I am very pleased with the results. If I had it to do again, I might paint all four colors the same day, removing and touching up paint as I went. I think this might prevent the non-sticking tape fiasco. Walls = DONE! Now onto decorations!