ELLIE'S ANIMAL MENAGERIE

I really don't ever claim to be crafty and anytime that I am it's a total copy off of someone else. Thank goodness for everyone else's brilliant minds so that my impatient hands can take a whack at it. I love the idea of having a sentimental hand-made nursery, but alas only two hand-made things made it in there, but I'm totally okay with that. Like I said, thank goodness for OTHER creative people and big box stores (IKEAAAAAA).

The first thing that I "made" for Ellie's room was her curtains. And actually, I didn't make the curtains, I just hot glued a pom pom garland onto the curtains. No sewing involved. My kinda thang, you know? I'm quite proud of them.

The actual DIY was a wild animal menagerie. I eyeballed the idea for about 6 months, and wanted to do it, but then didn't and then didn't some more. About 3 weeks ago I realized I had no idea what to put on a particular wall space and the menagerie idea was revisited, contemplated, and completed. I love it. When I tried to describe it to people they weren't super thinking it was a cute idea, but I was certain, super super certain.

In my oh so not so humble opinion, I was right and it's adorable. You can find the original idea and directions HERE, but I think I found an easy shortcut, so here's my play-by-play:

I got my animals off of Amazon for about nine bucks. I didn't really want to spend that much, but I couldn't find these super great deals from Target that were described in the original tutorial. The frame was from Ikea and I got the gold spray paint at Wal-Mart.

I had j.rue nad j.rue2 cut the animals in half with a dremel tool. Apparently you should be able to cut them with a plain knife, but we tried that and decided against loosing appendages. I promise you a million times over, if you decide to EVER do anything like this, a dremel will make it 1,000 easier and safer.

 Then they were spray painted. The animals, not the boys.

After the paint had dried, approximately 2 weeks later because of my procrastination, I cut up a poster board, stuck it in the frame and hot glued the animals to it. To keep it all sturdy I put the glass and the cardboard behind the poster. Also, I'm sure I'll want to use the frame for something else one day, you know, when this fad dies, so I wanted to keep track of the glass.

And there you have it! Probably pretty much as easy as hot gluing pom poms on to curtains. Except getting those dang animals straight, waaay harder than gluing. Actually, pretty much not possible.