Decor for Shared Space

Got roommates?

Sharing a communal living room can be difficult in terms of how to decorate it.  You want the living space to be a reflection of your tastes and style, but don't want to step on each other's toes and overpower one another.  Otherwise the space won't feel so communal anymore and someone will feel like a stranger at home.

Here are a couple crafts to decorate the shared space equally and still have your own personal ties to the decor (plus if you do these crafts together it can be a roommate bonding craft too).


This first technique is my favorite, I call it "Typewriter".

We had this groovy old school couch and wanted hang a painting above it to match the colors in the couch.  As you can imagine, the style and colors in the couch were so out of date it was hard to find an affordable decoration to match it on a college kid budget.  So, being the crafty girls we are, we decided to make something instead.

We decided that each of us would decorate our own small square canvas with the first letter of our name.  So we all took a trip to Michael's and picked up matching canvases and 4 colors we thought would best match our couch.  After that we spent time on the computer making a Word document with our letter in all different fonts and sizes.  If you don't have enough variety of interesting fonts I suggest going to www.dafonts.com.  I always find the most interesting fonts there and you can download them to your computer for free.

After collecting all the letters you need, print out the sheet and cut out the letters.  You can then arrange them on your canvas varying their placement and direction.  Once you've laid out the letters in their final position, trace the letters onto the canvas with a pencil.  After that all that's left to do is paint in your letters.  However before painting, plan out what color each letter will be.  You don't want to end up with three letters of the same color clustered in one corner or they won't stand out from afar.

The credit for this second craft goes to my roommate.

My roommate is in a sorority and one of many gifts the sisters give to one another is decorated paddles.  I was rather jealous of my roommate last spring while she was decorating a paddle for one of her sisters.  It just seemed like so much fun! And afterwards you get to keep something cute with your name on it that someone who cared made for you.  So we decided that being roommates qualified us to have our own "sisterhood" and adopted the craft for a gift between our roommates. 

There are no rules to decorating paddles (which is what makes it so fun) except that you usually put the name of the person it belongs to on it.  We used scrapbook card stock on the face of the paddle and decorated it with scrapbook letters, flowers, glitter clothes pins, and paint.  We decided goal of this craft was to decorate the paddle in a way that reflects the style or personality of the person you're giving it to.  In the end they turned out rather well and they were fun to make together.

I think the best part about decorating paddles is the thought and detail that go into making them.  For example, the paddle on the far left has two clothes pins which you can hang pictures with (as shown) or any other memorabilia.  The paddle on the far right has green paint on it which glows in the dark, hence the subtitle "Chlo Glow".

Have fun and make them your own!

~Crafty Girl~