Make Your Own Wallpaper and Borders

Unique Paper Designs for Your Walls

Wallpaper costs a fortune but newspaper costs next to nothing. That's only one tip that will help you make your walls look as fabulous as someone who has spent a fortune on expensive wallpaper. No, you don't glue the newspapers all over the walls - that would be silly - or would it? Okay, don't glue the newspapers all over the walls, but cut them in tiny strips and then add them to the wall and you'll be surprised at how really nice it looks. Paint a wall white, or a pale color, then cut the newspaper strips very thin - a quarter to a half inch wide - and stripe the walls. It's a striking look that's cheap and easy, although somewhat time consuming.

You will spend quite a bit of time cutting strips of newspaper, but after cutting the strips, the rest is easy as pie. Make sure to get the ends of each cut very straight so they'll line up well with the next strip. You don't have to cut just the black and white sections; cut right through the color sections as well, which will give you small bursts of color, here and there. A more colorful version of the striped wall can be made using strips of posters or glossy magazines.

A baby's room - particularly a boy's room - looks great when you use comic strips as wall border. Have family and friends cut comic strips from their local papers to help you with this project. You can also glue the comic strips to lamp shades, crib, hamper and other items in the room, using decoupage adhesive.

I receive tons of free catalogs that often have images of foods that are perfect for a kitchen. Cut the small pictures of cereal, crackers, oatmeal, pasta, cookies, juices and other images, then make a kitchen border. You'll find it easier to do if you first glue the pictures onto banner paper, then attach the banner paper to the wall. The banner paper will make it easy to do a collage effect, too, rather than just aligning the images in a straight line.