DIY Custom Electrical Panels

My previous home improvement blog post involved "sewing" and painting some curtains to cover my closet, which have turned out to be a wonderful investment of time (just a few hours) and money (just a few dollars!)

Now it's time for another frugal and fun home improvement project: custom electrical panels. Because we (okay, I) chose a theme for each room in the house, I've been toying with inexpensive ways to unite the furnishings and decor while conveying the theme. Also, because we did a lot of painting and tearing down sheet rock, many of our electrical panels ended up stacked on various counter-tops.

For our travel-themed room, I used some pages of maps from an atlas of Alaska that I bought for a dollar at an estate sale. I traced around the panel and adhered the map to the panel with decoupage glue. Then I used a craft knife to cut out the space where the plug-ins go through or the light-switch flips up and down. Lastly I covered the maps with a few layers of the same glue and sprayed a clear sealer over the top.

Voila!

I used the same method to create some panels for one of the spare bedrooms where I've decided to have an owl theme.

The cute owl wrapping paper came from World Market, and I used the same paper to add some pizazz to an old Ikea bookcase.

I also covered the panels in the hallway bathroom in a giraffe print to match the tile and mirror:

The living room downstairs is going to be outer space themed, but I wasn't able to find paper that satisfied me, so I painted them with acrylics.

I'm hoping to do more of these fun (and easy) decorating projects, and I'll try to keep up with blogging about them!