Homemade Wall Decals (on a budget)

I'm sure everyone at some point has looked at the wall decals that are becoming the fast and easy way to decorate a room. Most of the ones in the stores run over $20 for a few small vinyl decals. I have been looking for the perfect picture for the large blank wall that is in our bedroom. The problem is that there is less than a foot of space between the wall and the foot of the bed and that is the way Ryan gets to his side of the bed (did I mention we have a small room!) So putting an actual picture on the wall would have been a disaster as everytime Ryan would try to get to his side of the bed the picture would inevitably have fallen. So I knew wall decals were the way to go, BUT they are a little too pricey for my wallet. I resorted to finding another solution that wouldn't ruin the paint on my wall (I'm not about to repaint!). SO I found one solution, using liquid starch apparently sticks fabric to walls. I went on a search for liquid starch...... Seriously WHERE DO YOU FIND LIQUID STARCH??? After checking EVERYWHERE I gave up on that idea. Then I found this person who had used applique webbing and ironed it on the wall. She said it worked great and didn't ruin the paint. So on a rather rainy Sunday I ran off to Fabricland to pick up some material as well as the webbing. I was in luck, they had a 40% off everything in the store sale!!! NICE!! I ended up buying about 10 feet of the webbing (I have a LOT of decals in mind for the house...) and a few metres of material for various projects. This set me back about $34, but considering I plan on making 2 sets of curtains AND many wall art projects I think its a bargain!

Anyway, down to the process!! I asked Ryan what he wanted on the wall and since he is obsessed with FERBA (he had a crazy dream and invented an 'association'... Asking him all about FERBA if you need a really good laugh!!) and inevitably elephants. So I went on the computer and put together a template which I printed out. Then I grabbed my large roll of Heat N' Bond webbing and ironed it to the wrong side of the fabric.

Then I peeled back the paper layer and lightly placed my stenciled out elephant against the sticky side. Then I cut out my shapes. Now came the trial and error stage, I placed the elephants on the wall and lightly used my iron to stick it to the wall. If it was placed wrong I found I could actually remove it slowly and reposition without ruining the wall or the decal. It was amazing!! One tip though when trying this, only heat the decal for a few seconds, it will stick no problem BUT it will also make it easier to remove in the future. The longer you iron it the harder it will be to remove. I tried picking at the edges to make sure they would stay and they are stuck there, BUT can be remove with a little picking and if you slowly pull them off they leave the wall untouched!!! SOO here is the result of my art project! I LOVE IT!!! It brings out the greens and purples in my quilt and looks great!!! What do you think??

And just to prove that there is little space between the bed and the wall.. here you go. Yes the brown knob at the bottom of the picture is the bed.

I plan to do some more hearts on the wall eventually, but for now I'm going to see how I like it over the week. On another note, here is a picture of what some of the other fabric I bought on my trip was transformed into. (I would like to note that I did make the bed and no matter what I did it looked lumpy. The duvet was being particularly fussy and lumpy.. It needs a good beating to put it back to shape.... which I will be doing shortly) :-)