RECENT ARTICLES from Crafts Arts & Crafts Blog

How to Avoid Living in a Crayon Box! Decorating a Kid-Friendly Bathroom

Home > Art Resources for Children > How to Avoid Living in a Crayon Box! Decorating a Kid-Friendly Bathroom

You have made it! You have reached the top! You have acquired the ultimate luxury, the very essence of a parental paradise - your children have a separate bathroom! But now that they have it, how do you make it a space just for them without spending their lunch money, college fund and inheritance? There are inexpensive ways to make their bathroom a place so cheerful they will want to take a bath and brush their teeth!

Recent Arts and Crafts Projects for Kids

How to Avoid Living in a Crayon Box! Decorating a Kid-Friendly Bathroom

by Pamela Cole Harris

You have made it! You have reached the top! You have acquired the ultimate luxury, the very essence of a parental paradise - your children have a separate bathroom! But now that they have it, how do you make it a space just for them without spending their lunch money, college fund and inheritance? There are inexpensive ways to make their bathroom a place so cheerful they will want to take a bath and brush their teeth!

1. Start with a neutral décor. Neutral doesn't necessarily mean tan or cream. Blues or soft greens can be neutrals as well. You want a color that will grow with your child's changing interests and styles. Bright, vibrant colors are wonderful colors, but when covering every wall of a small space…well, one can tire easily living inside a crayon box (really!).

2. Add vibrant color and personality with accessories, wall and window treatments and easy paint effects that can be changed quickly and easily. This is a great chance to let your child use his or her own creativity! However, if your child wants a bathroom covered with vampires and ghouls with faucets dripping blood red water, you might want to draw the line and seek professional help!

3. Find a bright fabric to match your chosen theme and make your own shower curtain. It is a simple matter of hemming the top and bottom and adding grommets to hold the curtain rings. You can sew pockets made from the fabric (reinforced with fuseable backing) to the front of the shower curtain to hold washcloths, combs and the like. Add one or two grommets to the bottom of the pocket to allow moisture to evaporate.

4. Pick one color from the fabric you chose to use as a wall color (for a vibrant color, paint only one wall as a feature and leave the other walls neutral or simply paint the wall trim). Before you paint a wall, however, live with the color for at least 24 hours. Buy a small can of the color you choose and paint a large piece of cardboard. Prop the cardboard against the wall or tape it to the wall so that you can see the color at various times of the day. What may look wonderful by morning light may be ghastly under artificial light.

5. For a customized look for your windows, or if you just don't like the look of conventional curtains, try cutting out a portion of the fabric around a featured pattern and using fuseable backing to adhere it to a roller shade. Or add an edging to the bottom of the shade - wide rick-rack, a ruffle, tassel edging, pompoms, or a strip of matching fabric. Give you a hot glue gun and a basket full of trim and then "Katie, bar the door"!

6. Give life to the bathroom with painted knobs or specialty children's knobs in fun shapes to match your theme. You can paint the knobs in stripes, flowers, checkerboards, squiggles, animals and any other shape your child can think of! If you are handy with power tools, try making knobs of simple shapes made of scrap wood. Simply prime and let your child paint!

7. Remember to put a towel ring at a height your child can reach. You can personalize towels by cutting letters from of the fabric you have chosen and applying them to the towel with an appliqué stitch on your sewing machine or by using fuseable backing. Just make sure that the fabric is color-fast!

8. If you don't like the tile you have, dress it up with stencils made from ordinary sponges. Choose a simple shape and make a template out of paper. Place the paper over the sponge and cut with a utility knife or scissors. Clean your tiles with soap and water, then alcohol. Pour your paint into disposable tin pie plates for ease of clean up. Press the sponge into the paint, then press the paint-filled sponge to the wall. Don't move the sponge around, just lift it off carefully. Let dry thoroughly and apply a polyurethane finish.

9. Make certain that bathmats you chose for the room have a non-skid backing for your child's safety. There are many bathmats available now with themes for children.

10. To help little ones reach the sink, steps with a broad, stable base can be painted and decorated. But remember, if a child can reach the sink to get his toothbrush, he/she may also be able to reach electric appliances like hairdryers or storage cabinets filled with medicines. Keep them behind child-proof locked doors.

11. Fill a small basket with shampoo, toothpaste and other personal hygiene items that a child can easily handle. Decorate the basket in your theme with ribbons, painted or stenciled animals, or other trims. Again, hot glue can be a decorator's friend!

Sound like fun? It is! Making your child's bathroom into one you can be proud of is a rewarding experience! Now…if you can just convince your husband to change the Early Athlete's Foot décor of his own shower, your life would be perfect!

Pamela Cole Harris is an editor and writer with 35 years experience (Yikes! Has it been that long?!?). Visit her website, http://www.homeandgardenmakeover.com, for a free newsletter with Pamela's irreverant views on home decor. Or for information on starting your own successful home business, visit http://www.pajamabusiness.com, or for some good food and fun travel, visit http://www.thewellfedtraveler.com

 

CRAFTS FOR KIDS, ART RESOURCES FOR CHILDREN, FREE COLORING PAGES, & FREE ARTS & CRAFTS IDEAS AND ACTIVITIES

Photo by Terren in Virginia	It is almost Thanksgiving time so check out our Thanksgiving Coloring Pages & Thanksgiving Crafts for Kids Page to find some great turkey and thanks-giving crafts project ideas for kids to celebrate Thanksgiving such as .. Acorn Crafts .. Autumn / Fall Crafts .. Cornucopia Crafts.. Back to School Crafts .. Halloween Crafts .. Indian Corn Crafts .. Leaf & Leaves Crafts .. Pilgrim Crafts .. Pinecones Crafts .. Preschoolers & Toddlers Thanksgiving Crafts .. Scarecrow Crafts .. Sticks & Twigs Crafts .. Thanksgiving Coloring Pages & Printouts .. Thanksgiving Decorations Crafts .. Thanksgiving Table Decorations Crafts .. Thanksgiving Turkey Crafts .. Thanksgiving Worksheets & Printouts
Photo by Switzerland County (IN) Tourism	It is almost Christmas time so check out our Christmas Coloring Pages & Christmas Crafts for Kids Page to find some great Christmas crafts project ideas for kids to celebrate Xmas such as .. Advent Calendar Crafts .. Candy Cane Crafts .. Christmas Angel Crafts .. Christmas Cards Crafts .. Christmas Bells Crafts .. Christmas Coloring Pages .. Christmas Elf Crafts .. Christmas Gift Bags Crafts .. Christmas Gift Tags Crafts .. Christmas Placemat Crafts .. Christmas Poinsettias Crafts .. Christmas Tree Crafts .. Christmas Tree Ornament Crafts .. Christmas Wreath Crafts .. Gingerbread House Crafts .. Gingerbread Man Crafts .. Mittens and Gloves Crafts .. Recycle Christmas Cards to Make Other Crafts .. Reindeer Crafts .. Winter Penguin Crafts .. Winter Snow Crafts .. Winter Solstice / Yule Crafts .. Santa Clause Crafts .. Santa's Sleigh Crafts .. Snowflake Crafts .. Snowman Crafts .. Wrapping Paper Craft
	We Just Added a Bunch of Animal Crafts ... Armadillo Crafts .. Camel Crafts .. Chickens / Hens / Roosters Crafts .. Cows Crafts .. Elephants Crafts .. .. Giraffe Crafts .. Goats Crafts .. Hippo Crafts .. Horses Crafts .. Kangaroo Crafts .. Koala Bear Crafts .. Lion Crafts .. Monkey Crafts .. Moose Crafts .. Penguin Crafts .. Pigs Crafts .. Rhino Crafts .. Sheep / Lambs Crafts .. Tiger Crafts .. Wolf Crafts .. Zebra Crafts

 

CHANGES TO ARTISTS HELPING CHILDREN - PLEASE READ

Artists Helping Children is No Longer Acting as a Nonprofit Due to the New Provisions of The Pension Protection Act of 2006 Passed on August 03, 2006. We Are No Longer Accepting Donations of Any Kind. We are Currently Keeping This Site Up As Is and Will Continue to Post Information on Any Updates to the Status of Artists Helping Children. The Site Still Has a Wealth of Information and Can Still Be Used as Such. We Are Obviously Deeply Distressed Over This Provision That Was Secretly Included In This New Law and We Were Taken by Complete Surprise. We Hope in the Future That We Will Be Able to Change the Status of Our Organization so That We Can Once Again Resume Our Help to Children. Thank You Very Much to Everyone Who Has Worked With Us So Hard Up Until Now. Please Continue to Use This Site for Free Coloring Pages / Printouts, Arts and Crafts Project Ideas, and as a Resource for Childrens Art Articles, etc. Don't worry, All donations of items that were sent to us will still be sent to hospitals and shelters, etc. All recent checks sent to us will be mailed back to you. Thanks.

Take advantage of the huge childrens' arts resources pages of kids' coloring pages and coloring printouts, childrens' free art resources such as arts and crafts for kids, craft projects & ideas, crafts for kids from common-household materials (trash to treasure section), paper folding projects & origami project ideas, kids' drawing lessons, articles for parents to involve their children in the arts, articles on how art heals & how to get children involved in community service, how to design and decorate your children's rooms, and much more.

Artists Helping Children is a Children's site dedicated to comforting children by empowering artists and others to donate artwork, donated murals, donated art supplies, donated toys and a lot of love to sick and needy children. Artists Helping Children also helps artists by giving them information on how they can help the sick and poor children by volunteering to paint murals and other art for hospitals, shelters, clinics, etc. No child should ever have to be sad or have to suffer, that is why we hope that more artists and individuals will help bring colorful art to white walled institutions. We also give you ideas on how and where to donate crayons, colored pencils, clay, markers, paper, and other arts and crafts supplies ... such as what hospitals and shelters you could use these arts supplies to bring a little hapiness and joy to these childrens' lives and to so many white-walled institutions. We also have filled this site with free coloring pages & coloring printouts for children to color with as well as 1000s of free arts and crafts projects for kids to se when they need some crafts ideas.