by Adeina Anderson, SA Living Crafting Expert
Decorating a room can get really expensive and time consuming. There is an extra room in my home that is now where two new kittens I just adopted will be living for a while. Boog and Elliott didn't really care what the room looked like but I thought it was a little to plain and non-inviting for my two new buddies. My son built them a fun jungle gym and I knew I needed an all natural feel in the room for the boys. All of the furniture in this room is very plain and very boring, there is a bed, a dresser, a bookshelf, and a desk, so we really needed to add something fun.
There was a sale at a local linen store so I went and bought what they called a bed in a bag. The neutral colors on the bedspread that I purchased were a great beginning for the transformation of this room. Spending a lot of money on this room was not in my budget right now so I decided to bring my creativity into the room and started looking around my home for ideas. There was some old Styrofoam in the garage left over from a project I never got around to and I have a lot of paints and brushes from past projects. There was also some old canvases in my garage that I decided to pull out and use.
The search was now on for other items to use for texturing the Styrofoam. It was amazing how many things I found around the home to use for texturing, tissue paper was a good base for the Styrofoam, just use some modge podge and a foam brush to adhere it to the styrafoam and let it dry overnight. After it is dry you can start painting it and adding more texture. There is a great product sold at your local craft store called texture magic. It is paint that is thickened and can be used to add different levels on an item. Next I found different items like q-tips, film containers, old paper, and different sized paint brushes to make designs on the styrafoam with paint.
When painting on the canvas you want to start with a base coat of white or off-white before you add colors. After the base coat has dried I squirted about six different colors that matched the bedspread onto the canvas and just grabbed a foam brush and started swirling it around on the canvas in all different directions. Then I took a q-tip and ran lines through the painting this added a thicker texture in some areas. Be sure to let all your projects dry overnight before trying to hang them. You can purchase hanger backs for your paintings at a local frame shop or craft store.
Another great idea is to paint the styrafoam or a piece of wood or even a canvas whatever color you want as a background and then take a hot glue gun and swirl hot glue all over the painted item. Let it dry and using a rag and some "Rub and Buff", rub the product all over the hot glue, it adds a really pretty finishing touch.
Just remember the best part about this project is that you can really get creative and have fun.
