The Great Race Car Bedroom Make-Over

On Your Marks - Rev up your engines, because we are going to transform your son's room into an awesome race car themed bedroom. He will practically be able to hear the roar of the NASCAR engines as they zoom on down the track, while he imagines he is driving his very own race car to the finish line. This fun race car themed comforter set features all different kinds of race cars, from stock cars to formula one race bullets, your son is going love the variety and different racing themes shown.

Youthful Appeal - This particular textile print has hand drawn stick figures driving the race cars, and was created for The Sticklers by a local Southern California graphic artist. The youthful theme, and familiar stick figure faces, will make your child feel like he had a hand in drawing or designing his own bedding. The smiling faces of The Stickler figures will welcome your son to bed every night, before he lumbers off to sleep to have this very own race car dreams.  

How We Did It - For this bedroom, we used the race car comforter as the focal point of the room, and then began to work our way out to bring in other racing themed decor. We found this great racing floor rug online that has a formula one car on it, with black and white checkers around it, as well as a cute juvenile coordinating decorative pillow that matches the color schemes in our bedding. One great thing about this race car bedding set, is there are a lot of colors to work with, so you can really pick whatever color you like best, and bring out those colors with coordinating toss pillows, window treatments, rugs, a new sheet set, and wall decor. We picked out a few of the race cars from the artwork, cleaned them up in Photoshop, and printed them out on some basic sticky wall paper that you can find at any office supply store, and stuck them to the wall to bring in some dimension to the flat wall. Then added a few other wall hangings, and the race track has now been brought indoors to your son's bedroom!

How to Sleep with the Fishes

Check out this fun bedroom designed by surf room designer Dean Miller. The entire bedroom was designed around our Under the Sea comforter pattern. This fun textile arrangement was hand drawn by a local Hawaiian artist, who wanted to bring his love for the ocean to life, by drawing colorful tropical fish swimming around a coral reef in the glittering sun. Dean Miller decided to use this fabric to hand sew into comforters, and bring an underwater paradise to life in your bedroom.

We started with a pretty typical and bland bedroom, and immediately wanted to lighten the walls to bring out the rich blue deep sea look of the comforter. I found this great light sea foam looking wall paper that has these tonal coral reef patterns inset in the background. (Well at least they resembled coral reef to me!) The wall paper also brought in a bit of texture, and depth to the background instead of simply painting the walls. We wanted to focal point to be on the aquarium, and bedding. The furniture we used was the same as we had on hand, except for the boat type bookcase, which I love and keeps with our ocean theme, but not in a corny way. The biggest addition we made was building out the wall, and adding in a real aquarium with real tropical fish swimming around while you sleep. This part of our room makeover took a bit of planning, but turned out not to be as hard as it looks. The aquarium is pretty much flush with the wall, and is framed with some wood trim to give it a more designer finish. One of the wood trim panels is held in place by magnets, and can be flipped down so the the fish can be feed and cared for. The tank is pretty much self cleaning so there isn't really a need to go in and out of the fish tank. Putting the aquarium inset in the wall is similar to putting a flat screen television in your wall as well, same concept and tools are used. We hope this inspires you to bring some creativity into your interior design, and if you need some tropical themed decor or bedding, be sure to visit us at www.deanmillerprints.com Mahalo!

New Tropical Comforter by Designer Dean Miller

Surf room designer Dean Miller has designed a new beach inspired tropical comforter that is sure to bring a little aloha into your bedroom. This tropical comforter has a rich navy blue background with tonal hibiscus flowers to add a little depth to the background. Hand drawn multicolored surfboards are interlaced with classic wooden surfboards, woven in with the comforter's main woody car theme. If you take a deep whiff, you can practically smell the hibiscus flowers blooming off of this tropical comforter.

To re-create that beachy feeling, but yet keep a modern boys room feel, we used hard wood floors to accent the classic wooden surfboards in this room, and added darker furniture pieces to the room. A wood nightstand, and dark wood headboard will keep the focus of the room on the bedding. Surf themed accents will bring some color, and provide a clean look through out the bedroom. We added a night stand lamp made out of colorful surfboards, a bright hand-woven jute rug that features a woody car, as well as a woody car metal sign that we framed with some old pieces of wood, and sanded down to add that driftwood feel to it. The main highlight of the room that brought it all together, was adding a couple of floor to almost ceiling high palm tree stencil sketches that we created. These stencils were created by using a couple of palm trees off of one of our other textile artwork pieces, taking the color out of them, and enlarging them to fit the room. We simply taped a paper copy of the artwork to the wall, outlined it, and then painted it on with black paint to create that shadow look. You could of course add a couple of coconuts, or maybe a colorful bird, but for our particular room we wanted more of a setting sun feel. This tropical comforter is available in our web store, along with pillow shams, fabric bed skirts, and matching accessories to bring your surf room to life. Much Mahalo! Dean Miller - http://www.deanmillerprints.com

New Tropical Birds of Paradise Fabric

Tropical room designer Dean Miller has just received a new Birds of Paradise fabric that is sure to bring a little aloha to any room. This original design has a rich navy blue solid background with green tropical monstera leaves, and ferns.  The iconic birds of paradise flower completes this tropical design, as the hand drawn flowers are tossed around in a multi colored repeat. A red flower with a contrasting blue birds beak is intermingled with the traditional artist rendering of what a tropical Birds of Paradise flower looks like.

This textile artwork is simple, and refined enough to transform any bedroom into a tropical paradise. You will be instantly transported back over to the Hawaiian Islands where you will fondly recall your last vacation, and how you dreaded going home. Dean Miller is currently accepting pre-orders on his limited edition bedding Blue Birds of Paradise Bedding, which is available in comforter sets, toss pillows, window dressings, and can even be sold as Hawaiian fabric by the yard. 

Dean Miller loves to buy a couple hundred yards of fabric at a time, and make limited edition bedding, so if you see a print you like, be sure to try to snatch it up as quickly as you can before it is gone!