Little boy room decor

I thought I would share a couple of projects I've done recently.  I wish I would have taken more photos along the way.

You may recall a bookend project I did for my oldest son years ago.  Well, these are the same bookends with the dinosaur pulled off and replaced with these awesome gears I found on Etsy!  I just hot glued them on.  They were originally supposed to be for a magnetic board for my son to play with, but after getting them I realized they would probably break the moment he started to play with them.

I also made hot air balloons.  I know it looks like a daunting task, but I could not even believe how simple these were to make.  Here's what you need:

• Cute fabric of your choice (I got mine at Hobby Lobby, about 6 different patterns)
• Paper Lanterns (all they had were red at Hobby Lobby but after adding the fabric, you can't really tell)
• Small rope or jute (I had some on hand and I'm sure this, too, came from Hobby Lobby)
• Mod Podge (and lots of it)
• Small cup
• Something for the balloon basket (I may have gotten mine from Dollar Tree or Hobby Lobby, the used to have handles on them but I just cut the handle off)
• Hot glue
• Embellishments (I used gears, small fabric cut in to triangles, and buttons)

So this is what you do:

• Cut a styrofoam cup in half, I used a paper dessert cup and just cut the bottom off.
• Hot glue the cup on to your paper lantern, this will end up being the bottom of the balloon.
• Cut strips of fabric (I used 2 different fabrics for each balloon, the lanterns came in 3 different sizes)
• Use mod podge on the lantern then lay your strip of fabric down (I alternated between the 2 fabrics)
• Use more mod podge (it's ok if you get it on top of the last piece of fabric you layed down, you will coat the entire thing with mod podge when you're done) and add the next strip of fabric.  Continue this process until the entire lantern is covered.
• Use hot glue and tuck in your extra fabric to go inside of the lantern.  You will do this for the top and bottom of the lantern.
• Mod Podge the entire outside of the balloon and let dry
• Go back and staring from the top, hot glue on your yarn/rope/jute so you can connect your basket (you can see from the photographs that I tried a couple different ways to do this)
• Add your embellishments
• Hang from the ceiling, I used fishing line to hang them

I added these drop clothes as curtains.  Make sure to wash and dry before hanging, you may have to iron them as well.

I got these cute letters from Hobby Lobby.

And finally he got his magnetic gears to play with.  We were trying to go with a Steampunk theme, I still have a lot I want to do....to be continued...