Budding Artist

Lately I've been wanting to decorate Jackson's playroom. Right now it's just tan walls with nothing on them, windows with no curtains and fabric bins full of toys. I thought that a good, cheap way to decorate the walls was for Jackson to do his own artwork. So, I headed off to Michaels for some inspiration. First i was going to let him paint a canvas, but canvas is EXPENSIVE (even with my 40% off coupon) :) So, I happened to walk past the foam display board and figured "why not?" I'm not 100% certain this is going to work out anyway, so better to spend $14 figuring that out vs. the $60 for canvas. I bought the tri-fold because I decided I was going to be EXTRA crafty and split the artwork into 3 pieces. (I know, is there no limit to what I can come up with??). From there I found the vinyl letters and some washable paints and headed to my cousin's to pick up Jackson. My cousin and her kids helped lay out the letters (I wish I could have done more words, but we were pretty limited in the # of letters that came in the package). And once the letters were on we headed home to start painting. Jackson and I covered it in blue paint and let it dry overnight. The next morning I checked on our masterpiece and all 4 corners of the foam board had curled up. WAY up. Like a foot off the ground up. I guess there is a reason people don't use this stuff to paint on. But, I was determined to finish this project so I got out the paints and let Jackson go to town. He got to pick the colors, he got to do whatever he wanted with them, and I tried not to intervene at all except to help him make handprints (which didn't really turn out anyway) and to keep him from splattering paint on the cupboards and fridge. Once the paint was splattered on there I started to second-guess the whole thing. It wasn't this bright, fun, artwork I had envisioned. It was more of a muddled mess of dull colors. But, we forged ahead anyway. I pulled off the letters (and a lot of the foam board that came with them) and was pleasantly surprised that the white really helped brighten it up. I let the paint dry for a few hours then decided it was ready to go on the wall. The board is still completely curled at this point, but I found out that if I cracked the backside of the board I could make it relatively flat and you couldn't see the cracks on the front. So, I got to cracking. When I flipped it over, it wasn't so bad (the paint was even more smudged since it wasn't dry yet and I had been pressing my knee on it on top of the bathroom towels), so I started measuring. The area I wanted to put it was a lot smaller than I had remembered, but again, I forged ahead (I'm nothing if not determined). after a bit I got it up on the wall and Jackson, who HATES having his picture taken, proudly posed in front of it. He even smiled!
All-in-all it wasn't a bad experience. It's on the wall, it brightens up the playroom, it was cheap, and Jackson had fun with it. So for now, it stays.