I finally finished Juliet's nursery! (She's already four months old, nothing like finishing things in timely fashion! But, since she's still sleeping in our room, no big deal really.)
I'm so happy with how it came out. At first, before she was born, I had schemes for chair rails and blue paint and all kinds of nonsense. But since we're thinking this will only be her room for a year or two, and then the girls will share a room; I decided to stick with the tan walls, and just add the color via the artwork. I love how all the alphabet and book elements came together in the end!
The alphabet wall is a set of stickers I bought at a baby store here in Tucson, which is sadly out of business now. But you can find them on Amazon
pretty inexpensively. I don't like that the letter B is pale green and the letter C is yellow, whereas all the other letters are darker and stand out more, but otherwise I think it adds some nice color to the room.
And Juliet will totally talk to the letters on the wall while I'm changing her, which makes me rather happy. (Please forgive the imperfection of my photographs - we don't have curtains up in there yet, so the lighting is odd, and it's a very small room, so it's hard to back up enough to get a whole wall in a shot!)
I'm most proud of the book collage art on the wall over the crib. I tried to use lots of children's classics - Maisy
, Clifford, Curious George, Little Critter
, Babar, and some Disney, some Eric Carle, Goodnight Moon, and a Golden Book I had as a kid called We Help Daddy.*
A couple of my friends helped me with the collages, which were pretty simple. Just before Juliet was born I went to Bookmans and spent about $20 trade credit on a big stack of picture books. Then we flipped through, cut out our favorite illustrations, and mod-podged them onto some old canvases I had. I put four coats of modpodge over the top, and fortunately they dried nice and matte (I was a little worried about the shiny factor for a while there!). They just look so cheerful!
Next up is the bookshelf which contains most of our board book collection (although there are a few left in Eleanor's room). I snagged that 'J' at Home Goods before we'd even decided on Juliet's name for sure - glad it worked out! The lamb is from my childhood, and plays Mary Had a Little Lamb. My grandma made the quilt that's over the back of the glider.
And then above the closet is the book garland left from my baby shower. This picture doesn't quite do justice to its three dimensional qualities.
Juliet will stare at it, transfixed, if we're in the rocker. I think it's the shadows. I like that you can see the words on the pages too - the detail is great!
Maybe soon I'll remember to share what some of our favorite board books are! But for now, I hope you enjoyed the tour of Juliet's book-themed nursery.
Have you ever made any book art?
*Oh goodness. Just checked, and the cheapest one is $15 used. Now I feel bad for cutting it up. Also, a couple of the book titles are my affiliate links. Thanks for supporting Quirky Bookworm!
