When we found out we were expecting last year, we immediately starting talking about what we wanted to do for the nursery. We're both paint-happy and wanted to do something different than just a boring old pink or blue room. I have
always been a big fan of Dr. Seuss and thought
wouldn't it be awesome to have a Dr. Seuss room?! I started googling and found some pretty cool ideas but figured my husband would never go for it...it was going to be a lot of work. But he surprised and me was all for it! This was really his DIY project, all I contributed was planning the design, picking the paint colors, and assisting by sharpening pencils and washing out brushes.
Supplies:
Background paint color(s)
Trace Projector
Pencils with erasers
Paint for characters - we used sample cans for all of these colors
Black paint for outlining characters
Loads and Loads of patience
First we painted the background, we decided to go with a sky and grass look like in The Lorax.
After your walls are dry, the tedious task of tracing out the characters comes next. Since we used a trace projector (that my father-in-law already owned), we could project straight from the books and didn't have to make copies or transparencies. The downside of the trace projector is that you have to do some interesting maneuvering to get your images exactly where you want them.
The next step is to paint the outline in black, we used many different sizes of brushes in order to do this. This part takes a lot of time, a steady hand, and a boat-load of patience.
 |
| Thing 1 was the first on the wall, we were both very excited when he was completely outlined! |
After your character is all outlined and dry, you can start filling in - just like a coloring book.
We (and by we, I mean my husband) worked for a few hours each night after work and on the weekends. It took about a month start to finish and this includes about a week that my poor husband thought he was going blind from staring at all those black lines in The Cat in the Hat. But all that time was
so worth it!
We both love her room!
