Fun decorating ideas for summer

Summer is already here, and I thought it would be nice to share some ideas that may help to keep your little ones busy. These are probably my favorites. Moreover, I used them to decorate my children's bedrooms. And believe me, there's nothing for kids like decorating their living space with their own hands.

The first one is the easiest and most fun, in my opinion. You will need glass sticker paint, like Amos Glass Deco - Window Sticker Paint. Usually a set comes with free patterns, but you can easily make your own from any coloring page. Put a transparent sheet that comes with the paint onto the pattern and have you child color it. Coloring is something that almost every child loves doing, that's for sure. Let the paint dry and then just pick the finished sticker and stick it on glass. Look at the window in my elder daughter's bedroom in the pictures! If you ran out of space on windows, try decorating something else: a mirror or a vase (we did this, too). But for a bedroom window it's the best. Imaging: you are a child sleeping in your cozy bed, you open your eyes in the morning and see colorful rays of sunshine coming through the window to wake you up. I'm getting a bit pathetic, but the subject deserves it :)

The other one is no less fun. You'll need a modeling clay, a type that doesn't require special equipment.

Roll out a thin (0.6cm or 1/4 inch) sheet of the material, trace your child's hand on it and cut the shape out. Let your children paint it with bright colors and then hang on the wall above his or her bed. I also helped my daughter to decorate her hand wall hanging with seed beads and round holes, which I cut using a pen cap.

When I was a child, we used to trace our hands and feet on paper once in a while. Here you can get something more durable and also turn your hand into an art form :)

We have different kinds of wall decorations hanging over the children's beds, but this one is probably the favorite. By the way, charms in the shape of a hand (Hamsa) have been used since antiquity to protect against the evil eye.

And the last, but not least. One of my old ideas I haven't had an opportunity to share yet is a "rainbow" mobile. We have such, hanging from the ceiling in the kids' bedroom. It's more difficult to make, but doesn't require any special supplies, just a piece of cardboard (cereal box), white plain or colored construction paper, and paint.

Prepare colored circles 3cm (1 1/8 inch) in diameter, with an equilateral triangle drawn within each circle. You will need 20 circles of each color, 7 colors, i.e. 7x20=140 circles. Yes, that's a lot, I know :) Take a circle and make flaps at its three sides like shown in the picture. Do this for all of the circles, then start building a ball by gluing the flaps of different pieces together.

When almost done, put a string or thread through one of the junctions and tie its end to a piece of paper.

Finish assembling the ball. Make balls of the 7 colors of a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet (poor Richard of York!)

Make the top of the mobile from a piece of cardboard. Cut two circles, 10 and 12.5cm in diameter (4 and 5 inches). Divide the larger circle into 8 equal parts, make one radial cut and fold a pyramid with 7 sides. Thread a string through its top and glue the pyramid to the smaller circle. Then pierce 7 holes in the smaller circle at equal distances around the bottom of the pyramid, and tie the colored balls. The threads should be of different length so that each ball is lower or higher than the other. Can't figure it out? Be patient, I will be posting a more detailed tutorial on this later this week.

You might also like some of the other ideas (different levels of difficulty) I already wrote about, like the caterpillar picture frame, cookie wall hanging, dough owl, or cloud and rain (well, that's not for summer :)

Have a great summer!

UPDATE: Detailed, step-by-step instructions for making the "rainbow" hanging can be found in the post "How to make paper ball ornaments".