Breaking the Rules - Part Two

I recently told you about how I broke the rules and painted on my oldest daughter's walls back in the day when she owned her own room. Since then, those walls have been painted over {twice?}, and Greta now shares a different room with her two little sisters. The girls' whole room has been getting a makeover, first by way of their closet and also from an even bigger project that we've been working on. I've chosen new bedding {but still looking for the perfect sheets!}, planned out a study and craft space, and thought about how the room should feel. My girls love to put on their fanciest dresses, their shiniest shoes, and lots of accessories. They are girly girls, so I think their room should feel that way. And girly to me is youthful and elegant and timeless.

Pearls, silver and gold accents, chandeliers, flowers, and pretty wallpaper all spell girly to me, but there was a problem. When my husband and I moved into our house, we removed wallpaper from no less than six of the rooms. I know some of you have removed wallpaper before. It's a pain. So it's not hard to believe that when we were left with clean white wallpaper-free walls and I suggested that we put up pretty new wallpaper, he looked at me like I was crazy. In fact, he looked at me like I had asked him to eat the wallpaper. "We just spent days taking wallpaper down. And now you want to put more up?" I believe those were the words that left his lips. So I abandoned the wallpaper idea and tucked it away for down the road when he had {hopefully} forgotten about soaking the walls with fabric softener and peeling away pieces of paper bit by bit.

Turns out that six years later he still hasn't forgotten. My husband was no more eager about the wallpaper project now than he was back then. Determined to achieve a vintage wallpaper feel with the girls' room, I did some investigating and found this.


photo from jones design company

This incredibly talented blogger has painted "wallpaper" in her home office. Genius! I was in love, and I was ready. Following the steps from Emily at Jones Design Company, I set out to "wallpaper" the girls' room.

First, I used an old pizza box to cut out a template for the wallpaper design and grabbed a pencil and a small paint brush.

Next, I traced and traced and traced some more.

After I traced the design, I used a small paint brush to paint inside the lines - over and over and over again.

Eventually, the hours of tracing and painting started to pay off as the wallpaper began to take shape.


 

Lou Lou kept me company during all the tracing.

The only un-wallpapered wall is in between the window on the right and the girls' closet.
That space is being reserved for a chalkboard wall and desk area.

This project took forever. It took so long that I think I started to go a little crazy with all of the tracing and painting and thought my right hand might fall off. But it was well worth it. Frankie calls the walls her "castle walls," and Greta tells me she loves how fancy it is. I love how girly and elegant it turned out, bringing us one step closer to the finished product. Who knew I was such a rule breaker?