Hittin the Road

I've been wanting to do something a little special for the Con-Man lately. He has a new baby brother who's commanding a lot of my time and he's been handling it really well. He loves being a big brother and has been helping me out a lot but I know he misses being the center of attention. 

We've established that Con-Man loves cars. His room had a transportation theme, everything he got for his birthday was car related, and he has more MatchBox cars than he knows what to do with.





Lately he's been having his car drive on "The Car Road"- basically any flat surface in our house the cars can drive on. They go to the movies, to restaurants, to Walmart, to school, ect. 

So I wanted to get him one of those rugs that have a road on it so his cars can drive around. But the ones I saw online were kind of pricey and he already has a rug in his room. I mentioned this issue to my mom and she suggested something that she used to do:

She cut drop cloths down to size- in this case 3'x4', then paint 2-3 coats of flat white paint on both sides to make the cloth hard and create a paintable surface. She would then paint a design, finish it off with clear varnish, and use as a rug in the kitchen. She had one left over that was ready to go and gave it to me.

I sketched out some streets and places for Con-Man's cars to go- a school, farm, lake, and restaurant. 

Then painted it-

Once the painting was done I put a clear coat to seal it and glued the edges down to finish it off.

All finished! This was a fairly quick project and in my case it was completely free. I also like this better than one of the large rugs from the store because I can roll it up and put it away when he's done playing with it.

Con-Man loves it! It's so cute to see and hear him using his imagination as his cars drive around the town.

What fun kid projects have you done lately?