Miniature beds are useful items for doll houses or clever accessories for toys and dolls. For an art-project display, create several miniature beds for an imaginary family using the same theme but slight variations to represent different family members. For example, a series of fairy beds might be made of moss and small pebble, but the baby's bed may have a miniature teddy bear accessory while the teenager sister's bed may have a pink-petal pillowcase. Another option is to create miniature beds using small found objects. A cotton ball serves as a mattress while a matchbox is a small bed frame.
Instead of purchasing bedding or quilts from a store, design an art project in which you design and create a quilt that reflects your personality, interests or art inspirations. The simplest option is to purchase a white, cotton blanket or quilt and use fabric paints or markers to color on the bedding. For more advanced artists, quilting projects using scraps of old clothing or other blankets is a suitable option for a patchwork blanket. For a more intricate design, sketch out a drawing on a blanket with a fabric pen and then cross stitch the design into a colorful quilt.
Beds are a place for both sleeping and dreaming, and one option for a bed-art project is to transform a simple headboard into an inspiration board for dreaming. Decoupage-art projects involve gluing layers of colored paper scraps onto a flat surface like a headboard or foot board to create a permanent collage. Scraps may be from magazine advertisements, book clippings, newspapers, photographs or wall paper. Collect scraps that make you feel calm, relaxed, inspired or creative, and decorate a flat headboard to turn a regular bed into a dream machine. If you don't have access to a headboard, use the scraps to decorate the headboard of a drawing instead.
Beds are highly personal spaces that have the potential to reveal information about the bed's owner. To combine both art skills and story telling skills, design a project in which a drawing of a bed or a diorama of a bed reveals a story about the person who sleeps there. For example, a diorama of a bed might include rich satin sheets, a crystal chandelier over the center of the bed and a pink diary on the nightstand opened to a page about attending a movie premiere. When the pieces are presented, invite other students to write down a few sentences about the stories revealed from the drawing or diorama.