I get by with a little help from... ahem... Pinterest

For ages, I have wanted to make Caleb's room more HIS room. For quite some time it had seemed almost like a spare room that he just slept in as there was so much other stuff in there. When we got his bed, we relocated a lot of the other stuff so it began to look more like a bedroom (the cot is still in there too, no sense in taking that down when we will be needing it again in a few months!). I wanted to get some sort of a canvas or picture for his room that would make it look nice but I didn't overly want to go with any particular theme. And of course, all of the pictures and canvases out there have some kind of a boyish theme to it. So, I actually decided to make my own! Check me out, ha ha! I don't think I've really tried to do anything creative for years so I really had no idea where to start.

Pinterest is a wonderful thing. I had never really used it before but it gave me a lot of ideas. I had already decided that I wanted the canvas to be bright with Caleb's name on it in wooden letters but I couldn't decide on the background for the canvas. I was originally going to paint it in plain yellow and stick the painted letters on it but I thought I would try something different and do multi-directional stripes for the background (yep, a pinterest idea that I saw and loved!) So there was still no theme but made it look a bit more interesting than just a plain background. I used frog tape for the stripes and then just painted the gaps with yellow paint.

I quite liked the look of it with just the frog tape on! I used frog tape instead of masking tape as there is supposed to be less chance of the paint bleeding. That's how it's meant to work for decorating anyway so I thought I would give it a shot anyway!

The paint did bleed a little bit in a couple of places but I don't think it is too noticeable. If I did it again I would try to make sure that I didn't paint too thickly too close to the tape as there are also some slightly chunky edges.

I should have probably primed the letters first.... you live, you learn! This was taken after one coat of paint, I ended up doing three coats to get a decent coverage.

The canvas in place on Caleb's bedroom wall. I put it up in the afternoon without him knowing, then I went into the lounge to get him and told him I had something to show him in his bedroom. He followed me in there and noticed it straight away. He gasped, smiled and said, "beautiful new picture for Caleb! Thank you Mummy!", then proceeded to read out the letters. For any artsy people out there, you may think that my attempt is pretty lame but Caleb's opinion was the one that mattered most to me and so I was thrilled with the fact that he loved it.

And the next morning, he was still loving it! I must say, I am actually quite pleased with my efforts. Thanks, Pinterest!