A kids’ bedroom with damaged walls

When my son moved into his new bedroom, I coudn’t find the time to repaint it.
When wall was particularly damaged. The one above is bed rest. Traces left through the years, from different work, where quite visible. Without even talking about some tiny hands « prints » that appeared one night after he had decided to apply some cream on his skin… He wasn’t even 3 years old.

I had a couple of ideas to paint and decorate that wall. My son loved boat, and still does. I thus wanted to draw a big boat with a kind of naive line and a lot’s of colours. After some research, I’ve found that drawing form Japonese artist Masako Masukawa.

Masako Masukawa, Houses (https://masako28.com/)

He had the naive and poetic spirit that seemed perfect for that bedroom.
A few days later, I talked to one of my uncles, who is an accomplish artist (https://www.jeanjacquesleonetti.art/) about it. I didn’t have the time to say the word « unconstitutional » that he was gone in my son’s bedroom, pencils in his hands to draw him a boat with no time, less than 1 hour.

He didn’t look like the one I had in mind but it was gorgeous. Sadly, he was drawn on the damaged wall, with the greasy hands, plaster, knocks… etc

This was when it became a little complicated. How to restore that wall without damaging the boat ?

The first thing that came into my mind was to draw an ocean floor for that boat, that seems to navigate in the void. I thus offered my son to draw fishes  and seaweed that will coat the bottom of the wall.

Before starting anything, I have cleansed the wall with a special washing powder, like St Marc or Chanteclair. The great news was that the mostly damaged part of the wall was below the boat.

After that I’ve organised a small drawing and painting workshop on paper for my 4 years old son.

He has drawn most of the fishes and then painted them.

After days of drawings, paintings and cuttings we had enough material to cover our wall.

I have pasted each fish and each seaweed with wall covering glue. Then we had them disposed underneath the boat. My son had his word to decide where to position each pieces of paper. To have a preview of the final rendering, I have fold in two a piece of tape that I have positioned behind each item and then taped them on the wall.

Around the wall sconce, that didn’t have the same diameter than the previous one, I have drawn fishes that would marry their base shape to hide the plaster that was still visible.

Once we agreed on locations, we just had to glue them all on the wall.

My son now has a bedroom where he feels good. He is happy to have been able to  highly participate in its decoration. With its graphic pasting, this wall has now the naive and colourful spirit that I wanted for that room.

If you’re looking for more advice for a kid bedroom feel free to contact me.

Bedrooms

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See you soon for new inspirations on that page.