Creating an Animal Themed Room

Alternate Title: How I spilled a gallon of paint in the middle of the”animal themed” boys bedroom and made my own area rug to cover it up.

A few weeks (or has it been months ago) we painted an accent wall in our boys room with a variety of animals.  This was inspired by these stock photos - I loved looking at the cacophony of animals and thought it would be fun to put on our wall.

Using a projector and a permanent marker, we traced the animals onto the wall and then filled in outlines with dark green paint.

And somehow during our painting I stepped back and – oh! my!  I knocked a gallon of paint over on the floor.  

I was able to get most of the paint out.  And while you can kinds see a green hue where the paint was dumped, you can’t really tell from photos that there is green paint smack dab in the middle of the room.

Boy, oh, boy – can your feet feel the “crunch”.

I needed a solution.  This idea is not my own.  I get to thank Elena, one of my dear friends, who came over looked at my puddle and said, “Make an animal rug!”

Thanks Elena!!  The boys love their “turtle rug”.

Thanks Lowes for your exceptional assistance.  Matt was able to match our carpet and they have remnants of lots of carpet on-hand.  He also explained how we would need to “bind” the edges of the carpet to create a rug.

Home with our carpet remnant, we traced a turtle on the back with a permanent marker.  We used a giant half circle for the turtle body and traced a bowl for the head/legs – so simple!

After we traced it, we used a utility knife to cut out the carpet into the shape we needed.

Binding an area rug at home

To bind the edges we used a couple of spools of green ribbon – 3 inches wide.

We also used a high temp glue guns/sticks, and I’d advise putting bandaids on your fingertips to help protect them from the heat as you have to press the ribbon into the carpet edge after you put the glue on.

We used about 1 glue stick every 8 inches – so plan on buying a TON. After you bind the ribbon to the top of the carpet, turn the carpet over and add a line of glue and press down the ribbon into the backing as well.

Viola!

You have a rug, made-to-order!

Lowes gave us a gift card to purchase supplies for this bedroom remodel.  Thanks so much for helping me create a solution and re-make our boys room!

We love being part of the Lowes Creative Ideas Network.

To all, check out their blog, it is full of Creative Ideas and inspiration.

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Thanks Lowes, I can’t wait to bring our boys home to enjoy our new room re-model!  Other Lowes projects completed recently here at Quirky Momma are Bird House Makeover, Bathroom for kids and DIY toy box.