Casey Nash
Staff Writer
With the majority of seniors heading off to college next year, there are some very important preparations to be made. One of these preparations is the decoration of your dorm room. Here are just a few of the many things you can do yourself to decorate your room on a budget.
Dry Erase Board:
Dry erase boards can help out in many ways. Put one inside your room to post reminders, or put one on your door to let people leave notes for you. You can make your own dry erase board easily with scrap book paper, a frame, and some glass. Just take a picture frame and put some decorative paper inside the frame, covered by the glass. You can write on the glass with a dry erase marker and it works just like a whiteboard.
Pictures Frames:
Are you going off to college and looking for a creative way to hang pictures of you and your friends from home? A simple and creative way to accomplish this is to use a picture frame, some wire, and some clothes pins. Take the wire and nail it in rows across the frame. Then you can clothes pin multiple pictures into one frame. This will allow you to put up pictures in a different and unique way.
Crayon Melting:
Every room could use some artwork on the walls and this is a cool, quick project, which will brighten up your room. All this project requires is a canvas, some crayons, a hot glue gun, and a hair dryer. First you glue the crayons onto the canvas, and then you melt them using the hair dryer. You can control the way that the wax will melt given the way you point the hair dryer and how much heat you apply.
Lighting:
A cute way to lighten up your dorm room is to add decorative lights. You can put them up around the perimeter of the ceiling. For a little bit of a different look, purchase different colored bulbs for the lights. If you don’t want to spend money on the bulbs and would still like the lights to be colored, you can take Dixie cups with fun colors and patterns and put them around the lights. This will provide a different hue of color to the room and change things up.
Chalk Board Paint:
If you and your roommate are trying to find a good way to keep your belongings separate and organized, you can add chalkboard paint to almost anything. Adding chalkboard paint is like putting a permanent sticker on your things. You can paint the lids of Tupperware or dip the bottom of cups so you can label different items.
Curtains:
Hanging curtains can completely change a room. Try to find curtains that match the theme and color scheme of your room décor. Hang the curtains closer to the ceiling, rather than right above the window. This will make the room appear larger than it actually is.
Mirrors:
Another way to make the room look bigger is adding mirrors. Add cool frames you can find inexpensively at local thrift shops to give off a more artsy look, otherwise you may come off as conceited.
Letters:
There are many ways to make letters to hang on the walls. You can get the basic shape of whatever letter you want from a store like AC Moore or Wal-Mart. You can then decorate the basic letters by painting them, or covering them with materials like yarn or sticks.
Map:
Get a map and cut out your home state or the state where your families came from. Then put a little heart sticker over your home town. This is a cute little reminder of where you grew up and of your childhood. Despite where you may move for college, you may want to be reminded daily of where you came from..
Paint Swatches:
In most cases, you are not allowed to paint the walls of your dorm room. This limits the ways that you can add color to the walls; however, it doesn’t make it impossible to “paint” the walls. Go to the paint department at a place like Home Depot or Lowes. At these stores you can find little paint swatches, in every color, so you can see the different shades of paint that are available. Crafty and unusual ways to use these are to string them together. You can make a wall of rainbow colors and hang up the strings around the room, which add splashes of color to the walls.
Flowers:
Flowers, real or fake, can add a lot to a room. Real flowers add a nice smell to the room, keeping it alive, and fresh with a little piece of the outdoors. Fake flowers require less maintenance and they still add a splash of color to your room.
