DIY: Polka Dot Nursery Wall

Michelle was one of our Project of the Month finalists a couple months back, and we loved all her DIY projects but especially her innovative use of contact paper for her the awesome polka-dot wall in her son’s nursery. Thank you, Michelle, for sharing with our readers!

I desperately wanted over-sized, whimsical, silver polka dots for the walls of my gender-neutral nursery. The $220 price tag for special ordering polka dot wall decals was ridiculous. I knew I could do it myself for less. And I did! Actually, I came up with a fantastic solution for less than $40! I’m excited to share how I made my polka dots with the Project Nursery community and hope other baby mama’s find this tutorial helpful.

Believe it or not, my polka dots are made with silver contact paper from a home improvement store. It’s sold in 18-inch by 6-foot rolls in the appliance section. Apparently, people use it to make it look like they have stainless steel appliances—who knew? Any color or pattern of contact paper will work.

Project list: Contact paper, circle cutter, credit card, self-healing mat and something heavy to weigh down the contact paper (I used oversized candlesticks)

1. Spread the contact paper out on top of the self-healing mat and hold it in place with your heavy objects.

2. Gently smooth out any wrinkles with the credit card.

3. Set the circle cutter to your desired size and cut, cut, cut!

My dots are five inches in circumference (roughly the size of a CD), and I got 39 dots per roll (give or take a few misfires). Your pile of cut dots will look like this. Don’t worry about flattening them out.

Once you have enough dots, the next challenge is getting them up on the wall. If you have Type-A tendencies like me, this is a daunting task. If you don’t need the dots perfectly ordered, just slap those puppies up! It will go a lot faster. However, if you want your dots in straight lines, some prep work is in order.

I used Christmas ribbon as my moveable guide; I started four inches below the ceiling and away from the adjoining wall. From there, I set the dots nine inches apart. For the next row, I measured nine inches from the bottom of the dot above, moved the ribbon for guidance and set the dots directly between the dots above. I repeated this careful pattern for each row and ended up with seven perfectly aligned rows. Good thing or I literally would have lost sleep over it!

What I didn’t lose sleep over was the budget! In my case (because I already had a self-healing mat), I only needed two items:

- Silver contact paper, $9.99 for each roll (I used three but ended up with twice the dots I actually needed) $29.97
- Circle cutter (I scored one with a half-off coupon at a craft store) $9.99

TOTAL = $39.96 (that’s a $180.04 savings from the pro’s quote!) Connect the dots…I’m a happy mama!

With some of my extra dots, I reset my circle cutter to a smaller size and cut smaller versions of the polka dots to decorate a lamp I had lying around. It was fun to add the polka dots to another piece in the room for absolutely no additional cost!

Anyone inspired? If you replicate this project, please post a link below, and let me know how it turns out. Be sure to check out my blog for more DIY nursery and home ideas.

Have a DIY project of your own that you’d like to share with us?
Email editor@projectnursery.com with details and pictures.