**To see the complete bedroom redo click here**
I am in the midst of redoing my daughter Nora’s room. But I have also been busy putting the finishing touches on my Son’s room. Caleb and Gavin have a transportation, planes, trains, and automobiles theme. I am careful to not say cars. Because everyone and their uncle think I mean Disney’s lightning McQueen. My boys are obsessed with that movie and would have loved to have a whole room with that. But alas I was going for a more timeless feel.
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| here is the wall art project |
Anyways, their room is almost done. We have painted, sanded, and rearranged everything. My husband has built them bunk beds. Which aside from needing to be painted are done. So this reveal will be ready soon. (I hope). I did this wall art project in their room that I wanted to share.
My older son who is 4 loves cars, my youngest who is 2 loves trains. So I decided to combine this, and throw in planes for fun. Anyways I was stalking Etsy and found these great train pictures. They are on wood, and in three with a split image on all three. I love them. The color, everything. It was all boy but a little different then standard blue. So with those bought I was in search of some car pictures. I found a ton I liked, I wanted vintage but not old and stuffy. Bright and new vintage. I found the ones I wanted and bought them. We had some other car pictures in frames before and had just planned on reusing those frames. But the sleek black frames did not go, even it painted or re done. The boys room was turning more rustic. I loved it but realized my plan was not going to work. So I decided to try and mimic the train pictures.
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| the inspiration |
Since the car pictures were printed on fabric paper I knew I could nail them to wood boards. We ended up buying a large piece of plywood. I did not care on the quality since it would be painted. It is about a 1/2 inch thick, similar to the ones purchased on Etsy. The pictures were 7”x 9”, once I cut the border off of the pictures. I knew I wanted a border of the wood around the pictures since I would be painting the wood and wanted the color to show through. So I decided on the boards being cut down to 12” x 11”.
I also took along the train pictures to get paint to match the colors on the train. I purchased paint samples for each color and it was more than enough. I have since used the left over colors on other little projects. When we got home I painted all the boards white, since there would be some smaller lines with white and I wanted some color to show through. Once that was done, I took a ruler and pencil to the boards. I set the new boards down next to the train one. I wanted to mimic the lines. Some were un even, some larger and some smaller then the others. I did not want them to match perfectly but I wanted each set to go together.
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| lines drawn and ready to be painted |
I used a ruler to make the lines as straight as possible. Then I chose a row and taped it on the top and the bottom. Closing in the line with tape so that there was no way to get the color into the rows next to it. I tried just painting without the tape by just going off of the lines I drew and it turned out horribly. I had to repaint it white a bunch to erase my mistake. Going lazy on this was not going to work. I was able to paint a few rows on top and bottom at the same time because the rows were not touching so I could leave the tape on. But I had to wait for the paint to dry very well before I removed the tape to put new tape on to paint a different row. This took the longest, the waiting.
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| the ill taped painting attempt |
I had some touch ups once all was done. I just took a smaller paint brush and slowly touched up whichever color was needed. After all of that was dried, one coat for most colors. Some I did two because there was a fair amount of bleeding through of the tape and it needed so much retouching. It was then onto determining where I wanted the pictures of the cars to be placed. Obviously center. But I knew the arrangement on the wall would not allow for a lot of error since it would be so obvious. I set all four down next to each other and put the pictures in the middle. I really just eyed it, but I did use my ruler to make sure all were centered after the fact.
Next it was time to attach them. I used some fabric glue and connected them. I wanted a little more detailing so I bought some oil rubbed bronze tufting pins. I had planned to line the whole picture with them but when placing them on the picture it was too much.Between the painted lines and colorfulness there was a lot going on. It felt too hard for my little boy’s bedroom. But one in each corner seemed like the perfect balance. Now this was tricky. I figured I could eye it and place each one in the corner, wrong. I ended up placing one right where I wanted it and then cutting a tiny tiny piece of paper. I set it at the top and the side then marked where the pin went. I did that for all four corner or all four pictures. Once that was done we put a hanger on the back in the center. And it was done.
There is a few spots on the paint that it did not turn out the best. Some of the lines are not as neat as I would have liked. But over all it was a success. Isn’t that the rule though with home decorating? We like it, but if we could do it again X,Y,and Z would have been done differently. But it works. It is never enough. I can always improve.
So with that said my advise would be to make sure your tape is down solid, push it down. My biggest pet peeve with this project was the colors that bled through the tape. I tried to touch it up but there are some spots that could not be fixed. Other then that I think it turned out quite well. So take my advice, be more thorough in taping and it could turn into a near perfect job. Good luck!
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| all done up pretty in the boy’s room |
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| this is the train that started it all |
