Our Room Makeover for under $10

Jacob and I have been married just over a year, and we have slowly redone the house.  Two rooms were left, and I've been "pinning" away trying to find something to do.  I loved the look of wall decals, but they are so expensive and you can't easily customize them. 

This weekend we found a $3 solution that turned out GREAT.  We decided we wanted to do a travel/map theme in one of the spare bedrooms.  Jacob used to run a travel company, and we have a lot of friends that serve overseas.  We'd already painted the room using $7 Oops paint from Home Depot.

After searching online, we found a simple image of the continents that we cleaned up in Photoshop.  We owned a overhead projector, but I know that's not common for most people.  You can easily rent one from most public libraries, or your local church or school might load one out.  So after projecting the image on the wall, we traced it with pencil.

Using an Elmer's paint pen we purchased for under $3 at Wal-Mart, we traced the pencil lines in white.  Wal-Mart had a great selection of individual colors or you can buy color packs for about $10.  They are located in the craft section.  Other craft store do carry these.  When selecting your pen, take into consideration the thinness of the lines you're tracing.  We used a medium point pen, but for more detailed work you may need a smaller tip. 

We LOVED how the wall turned out.  Here is a picture of the finished product.  The best part is that it cost us $3 to do this, and if we didn't like it, we could just paint over it.  We would be out only $3 and not the upwards of $50+ for a wall decal.   

We decided to do this same process but in another room.  I wanted to see if words would be as easy, so I selected one of my favorite quotes.  This time I found one online that I liked instead of doing our own in Photoshop.

After projecting it like in the other room, I traced the outside of the words. (It's a little hard to see, but that is the point....don't want it to show through!

Then I started at the top and filled in the image.  It's important to hold your pen in an angle so the paint flows out easily.  I also tried to start at the top and work my way down from the left to right.  For the most part, I had no issues getting the paint to come out smoothly without drips.

About half way through I did have to get the paint "restarted" by tapping it on a paper towel until the paint flowed out again. 

I don't consider myself a super artsy person, but this made me look like I am!  Here is the finished product.  It looks great and was super cheap to do!  I think I will take $3 over the expensive wall decals any day!