A gallery of DIY art ideas with 6 simple ideas to personalise your own room.

As I explained previously, Miss M has a lot of art on the walls of her room. I made most pieces myself and am astonished at the variety. Last week we looked at how to make the wire wall art; today we will look at some of the art in her room and how to create your own gallery of DIY art ideas.

‘Gallery wall’

When you walk in Miss M’s room, the wall directly across from the doorway has one of the only gallery walls in our house. Clockwise from the top left, this gallery wall includes the following DIY art ideas:

Ampersand – this I sketched and painted freehand.
On t’aime (We love you) – I used masking fluid like this one to mask out the words. It has the consistency of super glue. I then painted the canvas with watercolours and peeled off the masking fluid when the watercolour paint was dry.
Child’s drawing – this was actually a drawing by my niece, which was chosen by her kindergarten to be printed on greeting cards and sold to parents and grandparents as a fundraiser.
Photo – This was taken by a friend of a friend and is a photo of the beach where Peter and I got married.
Quote from ‘Matilda’ by Roald Dahl – Not only is this quote one of my favourites, but it also comes from a book that bears Miss M’s given name in the title. The quote was so appropriate; it was just typed up and printed out. The dots are made by ink stamps.

Alphabet art

Continuing around the room anti-clockwise to the other side of the window, we come to the alphabet artwork. This was very easy to make, but quite time consuming.

I printed out the letters of the alphabet in a font that I liked (and hoped would fit). I then spent ages cutting out each letter to use them as a stencil.

The next step was to randomly paint a large piece of cardboard with watercolour paints. I then took each letter that I had already cut out, traced around them on the watercolour cardboard and then cut out each letter.

Finally, I stuck the watercolour letters on another piece of cardboard with glue.

Frame, hang and enjoy!

Book art

The next five frames are all pages of a book.

Possum magic art in our gallery of DIY art ideas

When I was pregnant and nesting (and packing boxes ready to move house), I was trying to come up with a nursery design that would grow well with our child, be fun, but would still have a nod to Australia.

As is often the case with me, I had a flash of inspiration at an inappropriate moment (normally in the shower). I would base Miss M’s room on one of my favourite Australian children’s’ books: Possum Magic by Mem Fox.

We already had numerous Australian animals as stuffed toys, which fitted with the theme perfectly. The soft, watercolour pictures of the book also suited a baby room but would not be out of place in a small child’s room.

As I have explained before, Mum was an educator. While working in her final post as director of a kindergarten, she was able to purchase a ‘big book’ version of Possum Magic for me. We chose our favourite pictures from the book and trimmed them to fit the frames.

Clothes line

The next piece in our gallery of DIY art ideas started simply as an interesting way to display some photos of family members who were far away.

At the time I made this, I don’t remember seeing any DIY tutorials on how to make similar clothes line artwork. I also had not seen any ‘clothes line’ photo frames to buy.

Clothes line wall art with photos and baby clothes

I used an IKEA Ribba frame as a base and started by painting a piece of cardboard (cut to size) blue to represent the sky. To make the clothes lines, I then stretched string from one side of the frame to the other with just enough slack that the photos would hang nicely.

At some stage, I had painted some mini clothes pegs in colours that suited the rest of the bedroom. I then used these to ‘hang’ some of our favourite, recent family photos as well as one of the first bodies that Miss M wore.

Dream wire wall art

This is one of two wire ‘shapes’ that Miss M has in her room. They are an amalgamation of our handmade ‘Once upon a time’ wire wall art and our Scandi-inspired Easter egg crowns.

Strangely, the light pouring in the bedroom wind means that the walls look yellow or green in this picture, when they are actually blue. This also this hangs only a little away from the footprint, below, where the walls are clearly blue.

Footprint

The final element of Miss M’s gallery of DIY art ideas is this plaster footprint.

I made three of these 3D footprints for Miss M’s first Christmas and gave two away as Christmas gifts to her grandmothers. You can find out how to make one yourself here.