All that glitters is not gold...this, for example, is posterboard.

     Something about coming home from a trip always makes me want to change up my room. I think it's because after the novelty of living somewhere completely new for a few days, it can seem kind of boring to come home to the same room you're so used to. So I've been hatching up some ideas for how to make my room feel different without instituting any major changes that would break the bank or be a pain if I change my mind later. For the same reasons, the idea I'm going to show you today is great if you're renting your current dwelling, or if you're just really indecisive and commitment-phobic when it comes to interior design like me.

     One of the simplest ways to make a room completely unique is with wallpaper. But wallpaper is expensive, tedious, and a little too permanent for my liking. So I made temporary faux wallpaper...out of posterboard! I was inspired by these decals, but I wanted mine to be bigger...and cheaper. What can I say, I'm stingy! So I bought four sheets of metallic gold posterboard for a grand total of $5.96 and got to work.

     To make my polka dots a consistent size, I traced around a bowl on the back of the posterboard to make guidelines to follow when cutting. 

 

     Then, to make it easier to work with, I cut between each row and column of circles to make squares that would be easy to maneuver. All that was left then was to cut out each circle...

 

     And stick them on the wall! 

     I used good old-fashioned Scotch tape loops to hold each dot in place. To keep the dots somewhat lined up, I measured the placement of the dots in the top row and the far right column -- three and a half inches from the ceiling (or the wall), seventeen inches from the next dot. Then I just held up a yardstick to make sure the adjacent dots went on straight. Finally, when I had a nice even grid, I stuck a dot in the middle of each set of four, like the "five" side of a die. I eyeballed that part, because I was tired of measuring things. 

     I'm really pleased with the way this turned out. In person, it looks for all the world like the dots are painted onto the wall, but I didn't have to do any of the messy work of painting, and when I screwed up the placement of a dot or two, I could just reposition them, instead of painting over them! Much simpler.