Shower Curtain Playmat {Tutorial}

We first ran across this idea over at Filth Wizardry last year (who also gave us the brilliant idea of taping two markers to the sides of an empty crayon box to create perfectly symmetrical lines for drawing our roads!). I picked up a shower curtain liner at the dollar store, grabbed two Sharpie markers and some crayons and we were ready to create our own little town!

First, I taped the shower curtain to the concrete using colored duct tape.


Then we drew roads (using the handy box, tape, and Sharpie method) and started to fill in other aspects of our city. Sutton requested an ocean, Sawyer wanted Home Depot, and their friend, Hattie, wanted houses.



After I drew a few of the basic outlines, I let the kids start coloring in all of the roads/buildings/etc. with crayons. The texture on one side of the shower curtain is perfect for crayons, and because it was warm outside, the crayons glided on smoothly and easily.

Sawyer's favorite part ended up being the city skyline that he helped me create.

Here it is about halfway finished (and before we added the requested Target and Home Depot, I might add). Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of what it looked like when we had completely finished it :(

Sutton's favorite part ended up being this car wash. He washed every single monster truck he could find! The boys' cars and trucks definitely had a lot of fun driving around the roads all over our new town!

So, for a whopping total of $1 we had an entire morning full of fun in the backyard. We left the playmat outside for a few days, and the kids colored some more of it off and on. After a few days in the sun and being subjected to sprinkler overflow; however, the Sharpie marker did start to fade and rub off a little bit. All-in-all the playmat was a huge success, and I am sure we'll be doing this again in the future!

Posted in: Dollar Store, Kids, Tutorial