The Kid’s Playroom Makeover Week 5: My Colorful Accent Wall for under $10

Hello again dear friends!  How is everyone?  This last week our family was hit pretty hard with the classic cold/flu/norovirus/croup combo.  Each one of us was down for a day or two and all something different.  I mean WTF!!!  Kendall’s cupid’s arrow (the area between her nose and mouth) is still all rashy looking from wiping her nose, last night Chase finally had his first night of no coughing fits in maybe 5 days, my tummy is still a little off, and Sean is in bed with God knows what.  Super fun times!  At least the sun is finally out!  I swear seasonal affective disorder is real and I was strongly feeling those winter blues.  So glad to have even a couple of days of sun before the rain again.

So quickly, while the kids are doing their quiet time, let me tell you all about the $7 accent wall we did in 4 hours the other day!  But first let me define quiet time.  

Quiet time (noun) – Concept:  in lieu of taking a nap, a child or children spend an hour engaging in quiet activities such as reading or playing with quiet toys.  Reality:  an hour of making a mess and fighting with each other requiring parental intervention approximately every three minutes for the following reasons:

• Someone has to poop
• There is a bodily injury
• The children presume that quiet time is over after two minutes
• Arguments over a toy
• Someone has to pee
• The children protest quiet time after another five minutes
• Whining they are bored
• Someone has to poop for the second time

And so on.  SO I hoped that having a playful, joy-sparking playroom could help stretch these three-minute interventions to possibly seven or ten minutes.  It was worth a shot.  If you read last week’s blog post (you can read it HERE) I finished the wave wall and am still not sold on it.  It’s funny because it was the ONE element of the room I felt SURE of!  And now it’s the ONE element of the room I’m totally unsure of!  Fortunately the super adorable accent wall the kids kiiiind of helped me install this week is LIT!!!  Super sold on this one.  It took less than half a day and cost $7.  Yep.  $7.  Rather than using wallpaper or a stencil, we made our own stamps out of foam board and cardboard.  Because we have no shame getting ghetto like that.  Here are all the details:

Accent Wall Tools and Cost Breakdown

Foam Sheet – $1

Painter’s tape – $6

Super Glue – already had it (this would cost around $2)

Paint – I already had it (this would have cost $15 to purchase, $7.50 per color.  I had purchased sample quarts for another project)  Here are the two colors:

• Heliotrope by Kelly Moore is the pink/lavender.  LOVE LOVE LOVE this color!!!
• A mixture of South Shore Sun and Day at the Zoo, both by Kelly Moore.  This ended up being about 90% SSS and 10% DatZ

Cardboard – free, cut it out from the tray the paint store gave me

Paint brush – any brush will do.  I used this to apply paint to the stamps

DIY Instructions

1.  Grab three different sized glasses.  Trace 3/4 sized circles (a little over a half circle) onto the foam and cut out.  Do two for each size.
2. Using super glue, glue the two same-sized foam cut outs together.  Repeat for all three sized stamps.
3. Take your new, thicker foam and glue it to the cardboard using the super glue.  You want to cut the cardboard so that it’s right up to the edge of the stamp on the sides and top, but you have an extra inch or so on the bottom for grip.  Repeat for all three sized stamps.
4. Tape off your wall.  You can make the rows as close or far apart as you want.  For me, I wanted the space between the rows to be roughly the same size as the stamp itself.  Because my longest stamp measured 3 inches, I wanted a gap of about 2.5 inches (the space between the bottom of one circle to the top of the circle below it) so I made my taped rows 5.5 inches apart.  Also I added a 2.5 inch drop from the top of the ceiling because I thought I would make a mess trying to stamp where the wall meets the ceiling.  So in about 8 places along the length of the wall I used measuring tape to mark off the distance from the ceiling.  So for me this was 2.5, 8, 13.5, 19, 24.5 etc.  The idea was the tape would give a nice crisp line that would give the illusion of being too perfect to be paint. 😉
5. Start stamping!  The only rule here is that if you want that crisp line, you need the stamp to overlap the tape at least a little bit.  This is where I got the kids involved again.  They each did maybe 3 total stamps but they can now say they helped.  This part is totally up to you if you want a perfect repeat pattern, totally random, clustered close together, or spread apart… etc.

That’s it!  After I took the above picture I did have to go back through and do some touch up where paint seeped under the tape, which was pretty much everywhere.  But now it’s DONE!  

I want to give a huge shout out to East Coast Creative for her TUTORIAL on this stamping process.  I went for very fun and cheerful colors since it’s a playroom but could totally use this process elsewhere in a different color scheme for a more grown up look (navy or black anyone?)  Anyway I really think it turned out SUPER CUTE especially given the jaw-dropping (in a good way!) cost!  What do you think?  Comment with your thoughts!  And head to Instagram to see the stories behind the accent wall.  It was such a fun and rewarding project!

I can’t wait to share the full room reveal next week, assuming no more plague runs through our house.  Have a great weekend!

xo
Kristen