The one with the... Baby Nursery (Part 5- Wall decor)
With all of the big things done in the nursery, the only thing left was to dress up the walls!
For the wall above the crib, I wanted to do something fun with colors. I saw this post with a super cute alphabet wall in nautical colors and I was sold. This would be the inspiration for the alphabet wall in our nursery:
The colors they used would go perfect in the nursery and I liked that they used different size and fonts for the letters. It makes it look a lot more artsy than using all the same size and font letters. To start I needed the letters. I dragged Dave to JoAnn's about 30 minutes away because I knew they had a good selection of wooden letters. Once at the store, I spent a good 20 minutes trying to line up all the letters , carefully choosing different fonts and sizes so that it looked like the one in the inspiration blog. The letters themselves were not cheap...some of the larger ones were about $5 but the little ones ran about 50 cents. I also threw in some thicker cardboard letters (H, T, Z) and thicker wooden letters (D, O) to give it depth.
I ended up not getting the O because I wanted to see if I could find a ship's wheel to use as the O. JoAnn's didn't have any but I found one on ebay.
I spent one day on a weekend and just painted all the letters, mainly using paint that I already had from other projects. Here are some of the painted letters:
After painting them, I sprayed a clear protective coat on them, which I actually regretted later because it turned some of the white letters yellow. :( But at this point I didn't really care that much because my due date was fast approaching and I wanted to get the nursery DONE! Instead of painting some letters I decided to wrap them with yarn or twine to give it texture.
Once I was all done with painting and decorating the letters I laid them out on the nursery rug so that Dave could help me mount them on the wall. Speaking of the rug-- for some reason finding a rug for the nursery was quite a difficult task for me. First I couldn't decide whether I wanted an 8 x 10 or a 5 x 7 (the price difference was huge between the two sizes), and then I struggled to find a rug in a color/pattern that would work in the room AND that was soft. One day the baby will be crawling around on the rug so I wanted it to be as soft as possible. After looking on websites such as Overstock, Target, Wayfair, RugsUSA, etc... and even going to Pottery Barn kids to look at their way over priced rugs, I finally found one at Home Goods for a lot less than what i would have paid at any of the other websites/stores!
Most of these letters didn't come with mounting brackets in the back so instead of nailing them to the wall, we decided to use the 3M Command strips with velcro. None of the letters were too heavy so the Command strips work well! We had to use a lot of them because this was going over the crib and we didn't want any of the letters to fall on the baby. It sure beats nails though!
Here is the alphabet wall all done!
On the wall opposite the alphabet wall above the dresser, I wanted to do something like this from YoungHouseLove:
They took pictures, artwork, drawings, etc of things that were meaningful and framed them in different sized white frames.
It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to frame and once I made up my mind we went to Ikea to pick up some white Ribba frames. Then Dave helped me mount them on the wall, this time using nails because the frames are much heavier and they come with mounting brackets. We first cut a large piece of butcher paper and laid out where we wanted each frame to go on the floor. Then we drew the outlines of the frames on the butcher paper and taped the paper to the wall. From there, it was much easier to mark the butcher paper where the nail holes would go and mount the frames. Then when we were all done, we just pulled the butcher paper off!
Here's some of the framed pieces close up. This art work was done by our dear friend Erin. She kept with our nautical theme and sewed an anchor, whale, and a sailboat out of embroidery thread. Isn't it super cute? We have such talented friends!
I spent one day on a weekend and just painted all the letters, mainly using paint that I already had from other projects. Here are some of the painted letters:
After painting them, I sprayed a clear protective coat on them, which I actually regretted later because it turned some of the white letters yellow. :( But at this point I didn't really care that much because my due date was fast approaching and I wanted to get the nursery DONE! Instead of painting some letters I decided to wrap them with yarn or twine to give it texture.
Once I was all done with painting and decorating the letters I laid them out on the nursery rug so that Dave could help me mount them on the wall. Speaking of the rug-- for some reason finding a rug for the nursery was quite a difficult task for me. First I couldn't decide whether I wanted an 8 x 10 or a 5 x 7 (the price difference was huge between the two sizes), and then I struggled to find a rug in a color/pattern that would work in the room AND that was soft. One day the baby will be crawling around on the rug so I wanted it to be as soft as possible. After looking on websites such as Overstock, Target, Wayfair, RugsUSA, etc... and even going to Pottery Barn kids to look at their way over priced rugs, I finally found one at Home Goods for a lot less than what i would have paid at any of the other websites/stores!
Most of these letters didn't come with mounting brackets in the back so instead of nailing them to the wall, we decided to use the 3M Command strips with velcro. None of the letters were too heavy so the Command strips work well! We had to use a lot of them because this was going over the crib and we didn't want any of the letters to fall on the baby. It sure beats nails though!
Here is the alphabet wall all done!
On the wall opposite the alphabet wall above the dresser, I wanted to do something like this from YoungHouseLove:
They took pictures, artwork, drawings, etc of things that were meaningful and framed them in different sized white frames.
It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to frame and once I made up my mind we went to Ikea to pick up some white Ribba frames. Then Dave helped me mount them on the wall, this time using nails because the frames are much heavier and they come with mounting brackets. We first cut a large piece of butcher paper and laid out where we wanted each frame to go on the floor. Then we drew the outlines of the frames on the butcher paper and taped the paper to the wall. From there, it was much easier to mark the butcher paper where the nail holes would go and mount the frames. Then when we were all done, we just pulled the butcher paper off!
Dave came home from his mom's house one day with a roll of wallpaper border that was used in his room as a kid. It's got super geeky computer-related words on it, but we liked that it was a part of Dave's childhood so we decided to cut out a piece of it and frame it.
We got so many baby shower cards from friends, family, coworkers and I saved them all to go in the baby's memory book. This one jumped out at me and I thought it would be cute to frame!
Many of you know that earlier this year we lost Dave's father to cancer. He was the best father and father-in-law anyone could have asked for. When we were at the West Point Academy for his internment, I picked up this needlepoint kit at the gift store. It was the first time I had done needlepoint and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Dave asked me to add the "Class of 1965," his Dad's graduation year. We both love and miss his Dad so much and we wished that he could have been around to meet his grandson. We found out the sex of the baby before he passed. We got to see him smile when we told him that the last name would be carried on by his grandson. This framed needlepoint is one of the ways that we are honoring and remembering him We plan on making sure our son knows how great of an individual, father, and grandfather he was.
In this frame, the top picture of Dave as a baby with his Dad and the bottom one is me as a baby. The middle is blank because that's where the baby's photo will go!
The next one is a few bars from Dave's favorite lullaby, which is entitled "Lullaby" by Billy Joel.
Continuing with the nautical theme, I printed out a clipart of Mickey in Disney's Steamboat Willie and cut out a silhouette using card stock. Then I made a blue and white striped background out of card stock and framed it all in this shadow box.
And finally, we framed a picture from our maternity photo session done by our friend Alice. It just so happened that we took the pictures near the ocean in California and there was one of us in front of a sailboat!
Here it is... the wall of framed pictures/art all mounted! The empty shadow frame on the bottom left will be for the baby's hospital paraphernalia-- hat, onesie, bracelet, etc.
For the wall above the changing table, I got the idea to make bunting, or nautical-looking flags, from this site (found via Pinterest):
Using fabric that I already had on hand, I cut out triangles, sewed them together, ironed on interfacting, and then sewed them onto ribbon to make this:
Lastly, we needed a place to put all the books that we were beginning to collect for the baby. I went to trusty Pinterest to find this blog where they made ledges out of plywood:
It was a good idea but we really didn't need that many shelves and although these seem simple to make, after the cutting, gluing/nailing, sanding, priming, painting, etc...it could quickly turn into a much larger project that we had the energy for at this point. A friend recommended that we use pre-made shelves from Ikea, which were perfect for the job! Just mount them on the wall and voila, done!
So that's all for the wall decor. The next post will be the Baby Nursery reveal where we put it all together!
