What art work is on your child's room walls?

[Hokulele]

I'm looking for inspiration!!

DD's room is looking bare. She's five years old and needs new stuff on her walls. I love what she has now but much of it is getting to be a little baby-ish for her. We are *not* into mainstream cutsey pie stuff!!! DD loves fairies and princesses, but most of that is just way over-the-top syrupy. And if she could choose she'd have Disney princesses all over the walls. *ugh*

I have no extra money floating around so I need to be creative. We already have DD's artwork displayed in a special part of the house.

Here's some of what is on DD's walls right now:

- a quilt from my family's country of origin - I love this, but it has numbers on it so it is getting a little too babyish.
- an embroidery done 40 years ago for me when I was a baby
- Spanish tiles (very cool and not at all babyish) that spell out DD's name
- a work of art done by the woman she was named after

Anyone have cool stuff on their kids' walls? I need ideas!!

[annettemarie]

In both the boys' and girl's room they have:
their very first wet-on-wet watercolor painting, framed
their baptismal clothes on a hook
the cross-stitch their Grandma made for each of them
a Madonna and Child print

Other than that, there's not a whole lot. Your kid's room actually sounds a lot cooler than mine, LOL!

[monkeybars]

DD is now 7 and right now the walls in her tiny room have:

- a redwork, "retro bunny" calendar quilt I made for her as a baby (I recently asked if this was too babyish for her but she loves it and says she wants to keep it up forever!)

- large decorative wall stickers of poppies and butterflies from Ikea (I think they have them all over now and they are not very sticky, so easily changeable for a fresh look)

- decorative mirror

- large whiteboard with built in cubbies and clock for her to display things, draw and keep changing stuff

[StephandOwen]

In ds's room he has a ton of "stuff", but it's all stuff that means something to him so.... we keep it for now He has a big part of one wall that is dedicated to Thomas the train. He has a poster hung up (that we got at a Day Out With Thomas years ago) surrounded by Thomas wallies. On the other side of the room over his bed he has a bunch of planets (posters) hung up. On another part of the Thomas wall he has a huge treasure map he drew at Pirate Camp this summer. On his closet door he has an emotions poster (poster with a bunch of different faces with the emotion it shows). On his door he has wooden letters that spell out his name that he and dp painted together. He has a bunch of random pictures hung up that he drew. Right above his bed he has a sign he wrote that says "stay away bad dream, come here good dreams" because he went through a phase where he was having a lot of bad dreams and that was his way of coping.

We don't really do themed rooms

[34me]

there's supposed to be something on the walls?!

[annettemarie]

Originally Posted by 34me

there's supposed to be something on the walls?!

Besides writing, you mean?

[not_telling]

Are you comfortable creating art yourself? My mom is an artist. My room growing up just had a green vine that she painted on one wall that kinda jutted out into the room, but she went all out in my younger sister's room. One wall had a big tree and the longest branch kinda wrapped around to the adjoining wall which had a meadow scene with grass, brown bunnies, some butterflies...

It stayed that way until after my sister graduated from college...so even as a teenager, my sister either enjoyed it or didn't really think about it.

[Tway]

DD's only 10 months--and she sleeps in our room, to boot--so I don't know if this is helpful, but just in case! We went with a safari theme for her room, and we hung up a shelf with a few stuffed safari animals. I also framed a few pics from our honeymoon in South Africa, because it was so wonderful (and hence the safari theme).

I also have a big photo frame filled with pics of family and friends, which we show DD every day and name the people in it. This is particularly important for us since DH's family is overseas.

Plus we have some artwork from my friends' kids' on the wall, too. Kind of a mish-mash!

[Minxie]

My son is heavily into trucks and construction machines so I found some great canvases on etsy. There's also a framed needlepoint of Pooh that I did for him and some framed limited-edition prints I had before he was born that just happened to tie into the decor.

[shanniesue2]

DS has a series of four watercolor paintings that my dad did of the hey diddle diddle nursery rhyme.

Originally, we had thought about having my dad paint a mural on the wall, but we are totally open to letting DS choose his decor as he gets older (he's on 2.5 now and doesn't really care). And my dad is a really talented artist and I didn't want to have to face painting over his artwork... he had already done one hey diddle diddle painting for me as a college grad present (early childhood major, so it was fitting), and just finished out the nursery rhyme with 3 other paintings... so se have a cat and the fiddle, a cow jumping over the moon, a little dog laughing, and a dish and a spoon. When DS out grows them, we can just hang them else where in our house. And hopefully pass them along to DS's very future family.

[lilyka]

my kids have:

Icons (their patrons, a guardian angle icon, Christ and The Virgin Mary among other small ones)

Their art work (a good way to display this is on a clothes line with clothes pins.)

They have decorative hooks that match the decor of the room. (Ava has a couple of coat hooks with a base like a star, Lily has a small rack of coat hooks with flowers and Madeline has a metal hook that says LOL)

Two of them have wall stickers. You can get these for about $10 from walmart or target or for a little more off etsy. way fun.

I don't think any of them have art work right now. In the past though we have just gotten posters and framed them. Oh wait, Lily jas a giant poster of Jack Sparrow. it does not fit with the flower theme at all but it is awfully nice to look at.

We actually do not have a lot of wall space in any of the bedrooms so we keep wall hanging stuff to a minimum.

[Shahbazin]

My kids have a bunch of posters on their walls - laminated, so they'll last. Mostly stuff I had that they liked, or that I liked as a kid - a poster from AKC of all the dog breeds (the photos are of puppies), British sheep breeds, colors in Shetland sheep (I used to breed sheep - Shetlands, in fact ), & 3 Escher prints.

[kcstar]

DS, at nearly three, has decided to self-decorate. Considering the "Last Lecture" bit about letting your kids paint their bedroom... I'm inclined to leave it. In his bedroom, at least. Not anywhere else.

[lach]

If anyone is looking for a free (minus framing, obviously) source of nice artwork, libraries and bookstores get sent posters as part of the promotional packet for new children's books frequently. Far too many for them to hang up (though you've probably seen a few scattered through the store or the library). If you ask the librarian or bookstore owner, they're probably more than happy to give you a few.

[Shannie77]

We have a big picture of a fairy but not a kids one. It is an adult fairy picture. It was just kicking around so we put it up in there over her low open shelves. Then we have three rows of raingutter book shelves. We have a mirror with hooks from goodwill for her dress up clothes. I also got some frames from goodwill. One has 6 spots and we have put pics of her and her friends in each of them. The other two frames have her art work. I also want to put up a wire for hanging her artwork from so she can just put her stuff up as she pleases.

In our old home her room was quite bare and just for sleeping but given the configuration of this house we decided to make her room a place for her to play too.

[Alyantavid]

My kids' aren't very exciting. DS1 has dirtbike posters and pictures and ds2 has artwork he's done himself.

[Hokulele]

Originally Posted by monkeybars

- large decorative wall stickers of poppies and butterflies from Ikea (I think they have them all over now and they are not very sticky, so easily changeable for a fresh look)

- large whiteboard with built in cubbies and clock for her to display things, draw and keep changing stuff

OOOh... great idea. Where did you get the whiteboard/clock/cubbies? DD could use that. She has a bazillion nature "treasures" (sea glass, pine cones, rocks etc) Would it be good for displaying that?

I'd forgotten about wall stickers. Ikea had some a while ago that I loved.

I love all the responses!!! Thanks for the ideas!

[busymama77]

Originally Posted by Alyantavid

My kids' aren't very exciting. DS1 has dirtbike posters and pictures and ds2 has artwork he's done himself.

Exactly. Finger paintings, cool collages thing that he's made at school, and a cross that was given to him at his Baptism. Baseball pennat, picture of the KC Chiefs football team. He's also got three pictures/paintings over his bed that goes with his quilt and sham set - "A is for Airplane" type of thing....

[mumm]

Originally Posted by 34me

there's supposed to be something on the walls?!

Each child has exactly one thing on their walls. Their name cut out of pretty scrapbook paper, each letter in a different print.

They are allowed to decorate their mirrors (sliding mirror closet doors) with white board markers, so that changes frequently.

[Joyster]

I keep meaning to get some frames to frame some of my sons artwork. He takes watercolour painting at school and some of them are really lovely. I'm just waiting for the day when DS2 will be bringing home some artwork like that too.