Baby Nursery: Handmade With Love

I realized the other day that I have never posted any pictures of the nursery. McKinley's nursery was definitely a labor of love, but I enjoyed every second of it. As soon as Mike & I found out we were having a girl I started planning the nursery.

When we started shopping for nursery decor I couldn't believe how expensive things were. We had a small budget for the nursery so I tried to come up with creative ways to pinch pennies:

1. Instead of buying a changing table, we used a dresser we already owned, which actually worked out great because it gave us a ton of extra clothes storage.

2. Instead of buying a nursery bedding set, I sewed all the bedding and drapes. I am so glad I did this because not only did it save us money, but I got to use the fabric that I wanted, and I only made the bedding pieces that we needed.

3. I painted the canvas wall art for the room. This was the scariest project I did by far. I do not have one artist bone in my body. The most expensive part of this project was the cost of the canvases, but I waited to buy them until I had 40% coupons at Joanne's. The paint was only a couple of dollars.

4. I made the crib mobile. It is nothing fancy, but it works great and only cost me the price of a dowel rod, which is around 90 cents. I already had the fishing line, hot glue, paint, and most of the tissue paper.

5. Instead of buying lamps, I found Chinese paper lanterns. I bought 2 different size lanterns and hung them in two different corners of the room. Not only was this a very cost effective way to provide soft lighting for the room, but they take up no space on the dresser of bookshelves (which is very limited).

So here are some pictures of the (almost) finished nursery. We still have some pictures to hang on the wall, but for the most part I can check the nursery off the to-do list!

When I first started looking for fabrics for the nursery I wanted something modern and chic. I did not want your typical baby girl nursery colors. I went through tons of fabric samples, and in the end I through out my original vision and picked the traditional pink & green. So much for being modern and chic:)

My sewing projects included the crib bumper pads, crib skirt, and drapes with black out lining. Since these three items are all straight line cuts I didn't use a pattern for any of the projects. I just sketched out the design and figured out the measurements as I went a long. There was a bit of trial and error, but very few set backs. I am very happy with how everything turned out.

I knew I wanted McKinley's initial(s) somewhere in the room. I knew it wasn't in the budget for me to order something custom, but I wasn't sure how to execute something handmade with out it being tacky. Thankfully, I was walking through a craft store and saw a picture that inspired me to create the "M" canvas that now hangs above McKinley's crib.

The "M" canvas matches the stripped fabric used in the nursery. It is simply a painters canvas, a paper mache "M", painters tape, craft paint and some hot glue and velcro to attach the letter to the canvas.

The pom-pom mobile was inspired by decorations used at my baby shower at Otter Creek. I painted and hot glued two dowel rods together and simply stapled fishing line to the middle of the pom-poms before fluffing them. Mike helped me tie and hot glue the pom-poms into place on the dowel rods. We hung the finished mobile from the ceiling using an eye hook and more fishing line. The instructions on how to make the pom-poms can be found here.

In addition to the "M" canvas, I painted two canvases to go above the cubical book shelves. I knew from day one of planning this nursery that I wanted something that reflects our faith somewhere in the room. I found canvases very similar to these online and decided to recreate them as best I could. The nice thing about hand making this wall art is that Mike and I were able to pick and choose what bible verses we wanted displayed.

This was definitely a very time consuming project, but I wouldn't change it for a thing. I had so much fun creating a complete room from scratch. I just hope I will have the same amount of time and energy to do this all over again when the next little one comes along.