Ok everyone! I know a lot of you have been waiting a long time for this! I am sorry it took me so long to get this written and up here for you. Truth is I didn’t expect such a HUGE response when I first posted it. In a perfect world I would have had the tutorial written before I even posted, but alas I didn’t know you would all love it so much! So a huge thank you for your patience, and without further ado here is how I did it! Oh and if you missed the awesome room that got everyone wanting to know how to do it just look HERE! And at the bottom you will see my younger son’s room done with my monkey business kit! *This tutorial is for personal use only. Do not share or redistribute in any way, definately do not claim this as your own idea. If Martha Stewart contacts you to come on her show to show her audience how you made your amazing room, you be sure to let Martha know that you got the idea from me so I can go on her show!!* you get the idea everyone right??? I would really like to be the one to go on the Martha Stewart show to share MY idea 🙂 Onto the tutorial!
Cut your images out, this can be tricky since they are larger!
Cut a piece of contact paper to fit your image. Lay your contact paper with the backing facing up, and gently peel away the backing to that the sticky side of the contact paper is up. Leave the backing paper on just a little bit at the edge so that it is easy to put it back on.
Very carefully put your cut out images FACE down on the sticky side of the contact paper. You want to do this slowly and carefully to minimize air bubbles, and that stuff is super sticky so if you make a mistake it’s REALLY hard to pull your image back off the paper (ask me how I know this!) Once you have filled your sheet up (use as much as you can so you don’t waste any!) then place the backing paper back on and smooth everything out.
Flip it over and use a credit card to smooth out air bubbles, working from the center out. If you get some naughty ones that won’t budge you can prick them with a pin and use the credit card to smooth them out some more.
Ah here come those scissors again, did you bring your patience with them? You now need to cut everything out AGAIN…I know I know, I tried to think of 100 ways to do the cutting just once, but alas it was not possible…TRUST me I tried everything! Careful now when you cut, you NEED to leave about 1.4 inch edge of contact paper around each image. This is how it sticks to the wall so don’t miss this step!
You can see my cute little monkey with his extra edge cut out around him. Now the fun begins, remove that backing paper and find a place to stick him on the wall!!!
Like here, with another little jealous monkey! That’s all! I hope I didn’t miss anything you really needed to know, but if you have questions just send me an email and I will help you with it. Now contact paper is made to be removed and it should come off the wall without peeling paint off, but ya never know what can happen so I don’t want anyone getting mad at me if it ruins thier wall or anything! I can only say that I have done this in my own home and it has worked great and no walls have been ruined, but I can’t promise the same for you, so use your best creative judgement! Oh and I would LOVE to see what you do with this technique….so please please please share your pictures with me when you do this, and be sure to send all your friends right here to read this tutorial so they can do it too! I hope it was worth the wait. And here are the pictures of my younger son Josh’s room…he waves to the monkeys every time we are in there, he talks to them, pets them and gives kissed too…so precious, and so worth all the work!
Of course the swinging monkey and the little monkey loving his banana are pretty precious too…and I had to have the little jealous one, cause that’s my 2 boys right there!
and a naughty monkey not listening to his mommy above the closet!
OMG that is just adorable. you did a wonderful job 🙂
That is fantastic. I'll have to try and remember to do this when we finally get around to doing our little monkey's room again.
Thanks for the tutorial. Your little boys are very lucky to have a mom like you! Hope you get that Martha Stewart invite!
Amazing stuff, just the coolest and have to give it a try. The only contact paper here(new Zealand) is on a roll and for covering books. is that what you use or is there a different one i can look at getting from usa, and ideas on what and who to contact.
Again just in awe of you work, 2 spoilt little boys – trisha from NZ
Just a quick note to let you know that a link to this post will be placed on CraftCrave today [18 Feb 12:00am GMT]. Thanks, Maria
Nope the peekaboo monkey is my favorite!
I thought they were hear no evil, speak no evil, and see no evil? I LOVE them!
OMGosh Amanda! This is the CUTEST thing I have EVER seen! Thank you so much for sharing this!!!
Thanks so much for the tutorial! Just one quick question, hope you don't mind, when you print them, did you have them printed as photos? Because your pictures of the back of the prints don't look like they are printed on photo paper, but I didn't know you could print anything else at Sam's Club.
Thanks everyone! I would love to see what you do if you try this! To answer questions…yep it's the contact paper that you cover books with, the roll is a little less than 30 inches wide. And yes they are printed as photos, the monkeys were 16 X 20's and some of the bigger outer space elements were 20 X 30, I filled in the extra space on my canvas with leaves and bananas for the monkeys and stars for the outer space. Then save it as a .jpeg and send it to be printed just like it would be if it was a photo…and it's ready to go! Please let me know if there are any more questions 🙂
That's awesome! You did an amazing job. I use contact paper a lot at work to make counter displays (photo department at Walgreens), and it's a pain to work with, but the results are worth it!! Love your monkey room and your outer space room.
Oh, I was just thinking of this today and wondering when you were going to post!! I can't wait to try it on my little one's room over spring break!! Thank you so much for sharing!! I'll be sure to send you some pics!!
I absolutely love this idea! I'm going to try this in our nursery for baby #2!!
Should I use clear matte or clear gloss contact paper??
I used the clear matte contact paper, you can't even see it once it's on 🙂