Lightning McQueen Bed

For his Lightning McQueen room, my son needed a race car bed.  I wanted a bed that would fit a twin mattress, and the molded plastic car beds from Toys'R'Us and the like were all made for toddler mattresses.  Plus, they weren't really Lightning McQueen, just red race car beds.  

Hubby to the rescue!  He probably was wearing his Superman shirt that day haha!  He laid out a large sheet of 5/8 inch MDF and I covered it in wax paper.  The wax paper became my pattern paper.  I used my son's large talking McQueen toy, the DVD cover, and a scene from the movie (which we left on pause), and I drew out the entire side of the car.  The only area I redid a couple of times was where the driver and passenger window go.  It had to be high enough so he wouldn't fall out of bed, but low enough to allow easy bed changing access and for him to easily get out of bed.  Plus, it had to look sporty without looking like a convertible.

HubbyWe did two layers of MDF in some areas: all 4 tires and large and small lightning streaks.  My hubby cut it all out with his table saw and then went over each edge and side to round them off.  If he wasn't asleep right now, I would ask him what the tool is called.  I can't remember.  We used the red accent paint from my son's room and bought some new paint in yellow, orange, black, and silver.  A paint gun helped hubby us get the blends on the large lightning streaks.

End result: We all love it!  And, most important, when my son walked into the room to see it for the first time, he said, "Lightning McQueen!"

For the matching artwork we did, click here!

Linking up with some great parties!

DIY Easy Large-Scale Artwork

Our son wanted a Lightning McQueen room a couple of years ago when the movie was still fairly new.  Our budget for the bedroom was fairly limited, and I was fairly choosy about what would go in the room.  He received some of those Crayola giant colouring pages as a birthday or Christmas gift, and while we were colouring them, I had a great idea! 

Background: I had previously purchased posters and had them mounted.  I had loved the look then and knew that at some point I would revisit this idea.

The BIG Idea:

Colour the pages in their entirety (son & me), mount the colouring pages ourselves (aka hubby), and create a deep wooden frame (also aka hubby).  Then paint the frames in a matching or coordinating colour to the bedroom!  We mounted the paper using spray glue on thin plywood, and then modge podged the top of the paper.

We had done a double stripe along the base of his room.  Main room colour was yellow, and the stripes were red and blue - we closely colour-matched these actual Lightning McQueen colours.  So we did the frames in the blue and love how it all turned out!!

Big impact for practically nothing!

 

I am linking up to some great parties:

Sew Can Do

The Girl Creative

Dittle Dattle

Making the World Cuter

Santa's Gift Shoppe

Trendy Treehouse

Sumo's Sweet Stuff

Skip to My Lou

Check out the Lightning McQueen bed by clicking here!

Linking up with some great parties!