Little Girl’s Gallery Wall for Under $10 (and a striped room!)

As you know from my last post, I’ve been working on my daughter’s room lately. Her room hasn’t been done since her nursery days, when the paint was a sweet lavender (Sherwin Williams Wisteria), had all white furniture. It was cute. Fast forward six years, and her walls were filled with stickers, marker (she’s a creative one and let’s just say, paper is not always her favorite surface, if you get my meaning). Basically, her room was a MESS. Her furniture no longer matched (since we got rid of her crib, changing table, rocker, etc), and it was a hodge-podge of furniture I was getting around to re-doing and desperately-needing-a-paint-job walls.

Case in point:

The new color scheme basically revolved around that free dresser makeover. I thought it would look dreamy in SW Watery, and I decided to throw in pink accents. What to do with the walls…hmmm…

STRIPES!

Yes, apparently I lost my mind somewhere along the way when I decided this. I kid (well, sorta). It ended up looking awesome, but man, that’s NOT my favorite job.

I wanted to do something fun to the walls that would NOT compete with the blue and pink. I didn’t want the room to smack you in the face with 30 different colors, you know? I chose a super soft yellow (SW Lily at 50%), to pair with the white.

Got my measuring tape out, and got to work.

Let me rewind a sec.

FIRST, I primed the walls.

Then, I painted the entire room white satin. I chose satin because, well, for reasons previously stated. Satin wipes off better than flat, without being overly shiny. Flat’s my favorite choice, but I had white satin paint on hand, and my girl’s not the neatest, so I went for it.

Then I got my tape out and measured 12 inch marks. Now, here’s where it got tricky. I used 1 inch blue painter’s tape. I wanted each stripe to be 12 inches wide, so for the white sections, I included the 1 inch on top and 1 inch on the bottom of the white stripes, so the white paint measured 10 inches wide to total 12 inches with the 2 inches of tape. Does that make sense? I only had to paint the yellow stripes, since the whole room was already white. No need to paint the white again!

I DID THE ENTIRE ROOM. I deserve a medal, really. I do.

The color is so soft, but it’s just enough contrast for me, after all the decor is added into the mix. Plus, her headboard is now pink, so once you see the whole room, you’ll understand why I went so light with the stripes.

I read somewhere that going over the tape with a dry brush with just a tiny bit of paint to seal in the tape works well for leakage. Worked like a charm! I also removed the paint THE second I was done. There was only one spot where the tape tore some paint off, but good thing about the super light yellow is that it wasn’t even that noticeable, and now that spot is covered by the gallery wall.

Which leads me to the other point to this post!

Her new gallery wall!

I talked about this in my last post on Thrifty Art, but this wall was SO inexpensive, I couldn’t even believe it. One of the few times I’m so happy I’m a frame hoarder. I went down to my stash of yard sale finds, stuff my family gets rid of and hands down to the hoarder of the family (yours truly), old frames that no longer matched with our ever-changing decor…you get the point.

I started playing around with shapes and layouts…

Finally, when I was pleased with the layout, I took a final picture, and grabbed my pink spray paint (Valspar Berry Frost) and got to work outside. First, I sprayed almost everything pink. Wasn’t floating my boat. The pink was overpowering, and I wanted it more like a splash of color, not the whole freakin’ sea, know what I mean?

I took some of them outside and gave them some white spray paint. Much better.

I picked up a couple little things – a wooden R, a decorative key – both $1.49 at Michael’s, and sprayed them both. Other than that, and a couple new cans of spray paint, this project hardly cost me a thing! Not bad for a big wall all fixed up, huh?!

I’m not showing the dresser under this wall yet, because it’s completely empty and in desperate need of a lamp and some accessorizing;) That’ll come soon, hopefully!

So funny, when I was taking these pictures, the weather was crazy – it was sunny one second, cloudy the next. You can see how the color changes on the wall in every pic!

I included some black and white pictures we had, just so we didn’t introduce more color on this already colorful wall. And you might remember the “To the moon and back” sign I made a while back. Perfect for her new color scheme!

You really don’t have to pay much for art – just grab those picture frames every chance you get, and you’ll be ready when the day comes! Some may call you a hoarder, but you and I will know, you’re really a genius;)

Stay tuned for some new projects next week on this room – I’m really excited to show you how it’s coming along!