Welcome All Superheroes - Vinyl

It's been a few weeks since I have written any updates on my son's Superhero room. Needless to say, I am very, very close to finishing and am hoping by tomorrow night the room will finally be complete. I have been struggling on how to completely, complete the room. I had many "ok" ideas but nothing that just felt right.

I finally came up with a sign for the very short wall that everyone sees as soon as they walk into the room. I found the image online and was able to cut it with my Cricut. This is my first attempt at triple layering an image. Here are a few pictures of how I had to cut each color and then layer them one by one so that all three layers are together prior to putting it on the wall.

And then I needed a "welcome" message for my son's room that went along with the Superhero sign. For those that do not know (I was one of them), the sign is a picture of Robin and Batman, I thought it was just generic superheroes but my 5 year old instantly corrected me on my mistake. Below is the finished product!

Hopefully, tomorrow night I will have an updated blog showing off the finished room with tons of pictures!

Halloween, Halloween, Halloween!

I am a little sad that Halloween is over. Other then the Halloween luminaries I made in an older post, I did not have time to create any new Halloween decorations but I had a blast celebrating Halloween with my family and friends!

Halloween actually started the Thursday before with a party at my son's preschool. My son dressed up as a Presidential Candidate for the 2012 election. We found this idea from this site and then we also handed out party favors to each student in the preschool class. The party favors were mini frisbees with a sticker on the inside that said "Vote for Kevin!" and a sticker on the outside that said "Kevin 2012". Of course, we had stickers on Kevin's shirt, a big button on his jacket and a big campaign sign. Kevin was the best looking Presidential Candidate thus far, but you will have to wait until later in the post to see his costume.

Then on Friday, we had a Halloween food day with my best friend and her two kids. This is what the kids had for lunch!

My friend, Renae, made the jack-o-lantern fruit cups and the Frankenstein pudding cups; however we had the kids make mummy pizza. All of these ideas she found off of the Internet! Here are a few pictures of the kids having fun making their own pizzas and eating the food!

The mummy pizzas were very easy to make. We had English muffins, pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese (pulled apart and laid across the muffin) and black olives for the eyes.

After lunch we prepared the gingerbread (made out of graham crackers) houses so that when my 5 year old came home from school we can then make spooky haunted houses! The kids chose what color(s) they wanted and we had tons of candy for them to decorate. Below are a few of the pictures from this messy but very fun project!

The weekend consisted of baking 5 dozen pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and 3 dozen ghost cookies. The kids helped with all of this! And prior to Halloween weekend we carved jack-o-lanterns, roasted pumpkin seeds, attended HarvestFest, made spooky foam pirate ships, and even visited a Nursery to paint pumpkins. With everything we managed to do prior to Halloween, I cannot imagine how much fun Christmas and preparing for Christmas is going to be this year!

When Halloween actually arrived, the kids had 2 Halloween parties to attend plus lots of trick-or-treating! As I said before, my 3 year old is a Presidential Candidate. What did my 5 year old decide to be? A School Crossing Guard! I can honestly say they both changed their minds on a dozen different Superhero costumes and many other ideas but when I convinced them that we should be "different" these ideas stuck almost immediately with them. Brady loves the Crossing Guard because he sees one at school every day and she "protects" the children. It didn't take long for my 3 year old to realize that the President "protects" people too. So, meet my "protectors"!

And out of this entire post, we do have one vinyl project out of this! I made the "stop sign" out of vinyl! :)

Custom Vinyl Plaque & Other Vinyl Sayings

A good friend of mine that I still keep in contact with even though we now live many states away and have not worked together for over 7 years now had several requests for vinyl sayings. She is so good at finding bargains and turning old, out-dated items into new, one of a kind, awesome art pieces. I wish I had her eye and imagination to do the same for in my house!

One of the requests my friend had was to make a square sign that said "YOU CAME ALL THIS WAY MIGHT AS WELL COME IN" in brown vinyl. I made the sign where each line was a different size but all the same font and a perfect rectangle. My friend found an old plaque that was literally covered with pilgrims, sanded it down, painted it and roughed it up to provide an antique finish. When all done, my vinyl saying was applied and this is the final product!

I love how the sign turned out!

My friend also needed in brown vinyl, a saying of her last name "Ayala" and another that said "Once Upon a Time...". She used these sayings to complement a gorgeous wall filled with family pictures and other pieces of art.

Like I said...I wish I had her imagination and eye for decoration!

Super Hero in Training - Custom Canvas

I am STILL working on my son's Super Hero room and came across a perfect idea that would fit right next to my son's bed. The idea was great, the cost was way too expensive so I made my own!

From Red Envelope I ran across this canvas which starts at $79. I decided to take one of my 16 x 20 inch canvases (bigger then the $79 finished product) that I purchased for under $5 at Michaels and started from there. Even though the canvas is already white, I decided to add several coats of white paint on it. The paint adds extra texture and I wanted the canvas to have a brush stroke effect where you could see brush strokes when looking at it from different angles. I then added one coat of Modge Podge to give a glossy finish AND to add more texture. This will make it easier to attach the vinyl onto the canvas. I do have a little secret up my sleeve which is the best idea my husband has ever had! It is this!

I know it doesn't look like much, but this is a piece of drywall that my husband cut to fit perfectly inside the back of the canvas. You could use any type of wood or board, we just have tons of extra drywall in our garage so my husband used that. By having this inside the back of the canvas you do not have any sag when applying the vinyl to the front of the canvas. It's now as solid as a hard cover book or a table.

Now that my canvas is painted and prepped to add vinyl, I needed a special logo. I could use Captain America's logo which is what is shown on the Red Envelope site, but I have that sign further down the wall where I want to put this canvas on. I searched the Internet for ideas and found the perfect solution! From The Lady Wolf's blog I found this set of files that had the perfect Super Hero logo for my son! This is the Superman's logo but instead of "S" for Superman, I can replace it with "B" for my son's name. My canvas now looks like this!

The 2 red lines are just markers as I layered my image prior to putting it on the canvas. I also need the markers to line up the text on the bottom half of the canvas. I now followed the same theme as Red Envelope for the bottom half of the canvas. I used red and blue for the bottom half as that is also the same colors for Superman.

The picture above shows the bottom half lined up by using the markers and taped on. After taking the transfer tape off and removing the temporary markers, we have the finished product.

At this point, all I did was add one more layer of Modge Podge to secure the vinyl on the canvas. I also did this because I used glossy vinyl for the red but the blue and the yellow had a matte finish. After using Modge Podge, the entire canvas now has a glossy finish. Here is the canvas in my son's Super Hero room!

Excuse the top of my son's head in the picture, I was tucking him in for bed and didn't see he made it in the shot! But...for literally pennies on the dollar I love how my son's new canvas turned out! And if you like Super Heroes then please check out the rest of the blogs in October as nearly all of them are about Super Heroes!

Graffiti or Custom Art???

I typically do not blog only on my son's room but that has been my main focus this last month! I know this will be my only chance for the next few years as it's only once that your boy outgrows a twin size bed and moves up into a full size bed. It would have been so much easier to just purchase full size Disney Cars bedding to match his room decor but instead we have completely taken out everything associated with cars and switched over to Superheros.

Nearly every blog this month has been on Superheros so what is one more??? Well, you will still get a few more but this is a nice, short and sweet blog on graffiti. In previous posts I cut out different Superhero logos out of styrofoam, painted them and then framed them onto the wall. While doing this one of my scrap stryofoam pieces was the Batman logo.

The piece wasn't perfect enough to just hang on the wall so I decided to temporary place it on the wall, just long enough for my husband to take a can of spray paint and over spray the Batman logo. We then removed the stryofoam piece from the wall and now have this!

I then went to my loyal Cricut and cut out a bright yellow vinyl sign that simply just said "Batman" to place in the middle of the graffiti. And now I'm hoping this "graffiti" can now be called "art"! :)

Oh...and I have to mention...when we showed my son the new "sign" the very thing he notices is the sign just to the right of the door of this!

I had also cut that out earlier in the day...so he doesn't notice a 2 foot wide spray painted sign of Batman but a 6 inch wide, little tiny sign of "POW"... Once my son did finally notice the Batman he did love it!

NY Cityscape Vinyled - Superhero Room cont.

My son's Superhero room is still a work in progress. The major stuff is done now it's time to add little things throughout the room. This blog is a simple project that made a big difference to one wall of my son's room.

I found online different cityscapes and decided on New York city since I know at least a few of the superheros protected that city in their prime. I wanted to make the cityscape as big as possible, which meant I had to piece the sign together. I have the height as 11.5 and then the width is 63 inches wide. I could have gone wider but then I would also need to piece together the vertical parts of the puzzle too since I'm past the height of my Cricut mat. With the current width of 63 inches I had two cuts in my one-piece city-scape that I had to line up on the wall just perfectly to make it appear seamless. Because I lined it up directly above the chair rail and having the vinyl all black, it was relatively easy to ensure everything lined up perfectly!

Here is a before picture of my son's room without the cityscape.

And now a couple pictures of the newly added cityscape!

You may notice that I have new blue cubbies underneath the cityscape. That came from my youngest son's room. And the garbage can is new! That is going to be my son's new laundry basket. I haven't decided if I want to paint it or not as I have seen some cool looking painted garbage cans converted into laundry baskets. And by the way...the lid is my son's favorite piece of the entire room as it's also a SHIELD! I also have new green and blue baskets. I purchased those from JoAnn's Fabrics a few months ago at 75% off, the total cost of 5 baskets was under $10! More pictures to follow on this room very soon!

Custom Captain America and Superman Custom Signs

In a previous post I explained how to make a Batman sign out of stryofoam and then to frame it out of floor trim.  This post is very similar but is for Captain America and Superman.  And I also want to give credit to where I found this awesome idea from the blog, All Things Thrifty, specifically this post (for Captain America) and this post (for Superman). 

Just like in the Batman sign, the biggest difference in my signs compared to the one on "All Things Thrifty" is that I'm using stryofoam and she uses mdf board.  The mdf board would be far sturdier and easier to paint but with limited tools on hand, I chose to use stryofoam.  The total costs of the projects between the two materials is probably pretty similar. 

I am combining my Superman and Captain America signs into one blog as I realize I did not take many pictures of Captain America.  To start, I cut out the Superman logo with my Cricut and pieced the vinyl sections together onto the stryofoam.  I then cut out the black and red vinyl sections.

The next step was to paint a cherry red and many coats onto the stryofoam.  The stryofoam takes many coats and you want it to dry completely between coats.  Spray paint works much better but only a few colors are available in the type of spray paint that is safe to use on stryofoam. 

The next step is to add bright yellow felt to the back of the Superman logo.  I decided to cut it into sections to ensure a secure fit.

And here is the front of Superman after the felt is attached!

As I mentioned before, I failed to take many pictures of Captain America.  However, now you can see what Captain America looks like after being cut, painted and having the blue felt attached. 

I used blue felt and white felt for this sign.  I did paint the star white and the rings a bright red.  The blue felt is already attached and I'm just getting ready to attach the white felt.  The next picture shows where I am at with all three signs.  Things are starting to look pretty good!

And now we see all three signs with the back styrofoam piece attached.

For Captain America I chose a silver/gray color so that the white will stand out on the logo.  If you have already seen my Batman post then you know we still have one more step to do.  The picture below shows what my awesome husband did to really make the signs stand out in my son's room.

My husband took extra floor trim that we had, cut all of the pieces and painted them a semi-gloss black.  Then he attaches the Superhero signs on the wall and with a staple gun, he frames the signs to the wall.  The finished signs are below!

The room is starting to look pretty sharp and my son is so excited to see all of the Superhero stuff in his room!  There are more Superhero stuff in the room that you can see my checking out my other posts and there is more still to come!  When everything is all complete I will make sure and post all angles of the room until then I hope you like what you see! 

Custom Batman Sign

This project proved to be a little more time consuming then I expected but I love the end result!  If you have read my previous posts this last month you can probably guess I'm still decorating my son's Superhero room.  I found this idea to make Superhero logos from the blog, All Things Thrifty, specifically this post.  I used the same 3 logos from the blog and the same dimensions.  However, I did not have a scroll saw, projector and some of the other necessary tools to complete a project of this magnitude.  That is, until I discovered the many uses of stryofoam!  I think by the time I have finished my son's room he will have more stryofoam then anything else and no one will even know it!

Because I did not have a projector, I cut out the logos in vinyl with my cricut.  This was also not as easy as it sounds because my cricut is limited to sizes of 12 x 24 inches but my logos were more like 24 x 28 inches in size.  So I had to piece together the logos onto the stryofoam and then I used a specialized stryofoam knife to cut out the logo.  The knife is plugged in and heated to a very high temperature and smells horribly when cutting; however, it cuts the stryofoam like butter!  Super easy!  Just have to take it slow and follow the lines!

The picture below shows the vinyl pieced together of the Batman logo that I want to cut.  I want to keep the section in white and cut out the black.

And the picture below shows the stryrofoam cut out!

 By following the post on "All Things Thrifty", I cut the piece a bright yellow!  This is where my trouble starts.  With stryofoam you need to have very specific paint or it will eat away the stryofoam.  The same holds true for glue!  Most craft or acrylic paint will work, it's best to brush it on and not use spray paint (which would have been much easier) but it's best to read the bottle to ensure the paint will work.  Here is my new yellow Batman logo!

 The next step was to pin and then glue black felt behind the yellow piece and then attach everything to a black painted board (in my case stryofoam).  The next picture shows everything glued together!
 

And here is the sign above my son's bed!

Because, the sign is made out of stryofoam the edges are not as smooth and finished as I would like.  I love the look but up close, it is rough looking.  So I had my husband use extra floor trim that we had and frame the entire sign.  Before he did that, my husband painted the trim a semi-gloss black.  And this is the finished look!

I think the frame just makes the entire sign stand out!  AND I have finished the Superman and Captain America signs as well!  My husband framed and painted and put them all on my son's wall.  Sometimes I am really happy to have a rained out weekend as my son's room went from nearly all bare walls to an almost finished Superhero room in less then 24 hours.  I will post the other 2 signs and an updated picture of the entire room very soon!

Friends and Brothers are Better then Superheros!

In a previous post, I showed how to make photo canvases by using stryofoam and fabric.  Now, you will see how these canvases look on the wall!  With a special, vinyl sign above it!

To attach the canvases I used a product I bought at Walmart called Command Strips, very similar to velcro but does not hurt the wall (or paint) when you want to remove it.  Because my canvases are super light this seemed to be the easiest way to attach it. 

As you can tell by the picture above I used tape as markers to ensure the bottom was straight and that all pictures were the right distance from each other.  At this point I wasn't sure if I wanted to put the sign above or below the canvases so was placing them temporarily on the wall to determine the right location.  The next picture shows the final product!

Now you can see the entire wall!  It's still not finished but getting very close!