One of the things I have had time for over the last few weeks, though, is putting Isabelle's art wall together in our playroom. I've known for a while that I wanted to do it, but I didn't think Isabelle was quite ready due to her preference for eating chalk, rather than drawing with it!
I knew I didn't want just a standard easel in the playroom, and to be honest, we haven't really got the floor space (well, we won't after Christmas!) and since we have a great big blank wall, I thought it would be perfect for some wall mounted art materials.
After getting lots of inspiration from Pinterest, I knew I wanted to have a chalk board, a role of paper, a wall decal, an area to display her artwork and somewhere to store the art materials.
I have to be honest - Simon did all the hard work! I dictated, and he built!
I decided that for the chalk board, I wanted it inside a wall mounted frame. I thought it would give it a more defined edge, and also stop rogue pieces of chalk disappearing off onto the wall. As we own a framing business, that was actually very easy as Simon found the frame in his workshop and I asked him to paint it teal to match the Ikea storage boxes in the playroom. To put it all together, Simon painted some chalkboard paint onto the wall, and popped the frame over the top. We got our chalk from Ikea, and Isabelle seems to really love it. She can only reach half way up so far, but it means there is plenty of growing room! And no chalk eaten yet, so we are calling it a win!
Next up, I wanted a paper roll attached to the wall for her to draw onto in crayon. This actually proved to be a little more tricky. I had thought I could buy a holder for the paper roll in Ikea, but it wouldn't have worked at all. So, Pinterest and Google to the rescue, and I found this great blog which had something exactly like I wanted. I showed it to Simon, asked him to build one and paint it pink to match our other storage boxes, and he created this! Out of everything, I love this paper holder the most. It looks so bright and colourful, and I'm so pleased with how it turned out. Of course, the roll is 'changeable' for when this roll runs out, and overall I think Simon did a fabulous job with it. It went up on the wall too, behind where our chair usually sits. Isabelle loves squeezing back there, and has enjoyed using her brand new crayons.
I chose the wall decal having seen it a lot on Pinterest. I looked at lots of different ones, but kept coming back to this. I ordered it from Etsy, and poor Simon had the task of putting it up. It wasn't easy, as the letters are so skinny that they ripped several times. But he persevered, and it turned out wonderfully.
The wall decal sits just underneath our shelf. I debated over what type of storage to have, but decided I wanted to keep the art materials out of little hands reach, unless they are asked for. We bought a floating shelf from Ikea, but it was much too wide and sat very far from the wall, so Simon chopped it down to make it just perfect. After it went up, I sourced some brightly coloured buckets from eBay which now hold all Isabelle's crayons, chalk, pens and other little bits. She mainly likes emptying the buckets out and putting the things into another bucket at the minute! The buckets add another bright touch to the playroom - which is what I want the room to be all about.
Overall, I am thrilled with how it turned out. I have left a space above the paper roll which will be used to display Isabelle's artwork once something is produced on the paper - at the minute it's mainly my drawing on there! The big pegs on the shelf are hopefully going to go onto the wall to hold her beautiful creations.
Hopefully, the art wall will provide a creative space for Isabelle for years to come as her art skills develop. Well, hopefully develop - as long as she inherited them from Simon, and not me!
