The End of the Wall Decals

I FINALLY got around to finishing up the wall decals in the nursery. If you remember here I had spacing issues when I put up my original wall decals. Well those spacing issues got worse when I realized I had to move the change table about 4 inches to the left in order to be able to access the drawers on the right side without the door hitting the radiator box. This left 2 small openings for animals. Now I hummed and hawed over which animals to do and I REALLY wanted to do a hippo (like Kim suggested) BUT I discovered I didn't have enough room between the monkey and the elephant or on the left of the monkey. So I put the project aside and thought some more. Then last weekend I came across my original templates for the decals in the tree (bird and gecko) and thought hmm that would work!!! So I pulled out my fabric remnants and went to work! I love the outcome!!!! Go here to see how I made these decals.


I love that the monkey is feeding the bird... Ryan's favourite after work thing to do is to take a walk down to the lake and feed the ducks. Hopefully the blueberry will love to feed the ducks and swans as well!!!

I'm hoping to get this nursery 100% finished by the end of next weekend!!! All that is left is the pain in the butt radiator box...Stay tuned for the big makeover reveal!

More Wall Decals!

Last weekend during my laziness I did manage to get at least one thing done... I had fun working on the wall decals in the nursery!! Now just to recap the progress in the nursery....

This is the wall to the right of the door when you first walk in.


This is the corner opposite the crib (the colour is off in this photo).

That side of the room is more or less complete... the other side of the room however was looking awfully bare!!! This is the other side of the room with the new wall decals. No I did not clean up for this photo... you can tell that I've been using the change table as my work station for projects!!! On the left we have my grandma's old secretary's desk that we will be using as a dresser plus when the baby gets older it will double as a drawing station as it flips down into a desk. On the right is the converted makeup table to change table. Ignore the wooden boxes on the left... I haven't figured out where to put my jewelry boxes just yet in the house... well actually to be more correct I haven't even thought about it!! haahaa!! The plan is to put a large shelf across that entire wall to store more books and toys for the blueberry!

Anyway, back to the wall decals. I put together those 4 decals on the weekend.. unfortunately I had some spacing issues and now have to think of one more animal to add to the mix between the elephant and the monkey. Anyone have any ideas on additional animals??

Here is a close up of my lion and giraffe.

My elephant.

And my favourite the monkey!!!

I just used left over material I had from other projects that matched with the colour scheme in the room. To see how I made the decals go here. This weekend I am hoping to get the big shelf primed and painted and installed!!! Oh its coming along so nicely... we're almost done with this room which means onto other rooms!!! :-)

Leaves Leaves Everywhere!

Well after writing my post yesterday morning Ryan was all excited to head off to Fabricland and pick up material for the leaves. Seeing as it was Sunday and Fabricland doesn't open until noon he had a LOONG wait ahead of him. So we popped in a movie and relaxed. The second it was 10 minutes to noon he hopped up and was ready to go.

Now this was Ryans first trip to Fabricland. I normally go by myself... and I now know the reason. It took about a half hour to get Ryan on the same concept idea as I was with regards to colour. I believe there were MANY leopard and zebra prints that Ryan picked out and wanted on the walls. I also had to teach him about which fabrics can be ironed on a wall and which will just melt to the wall (ie anything with lycra will melt to you walls unless very careful). We wandered around looking and were probably there for about 45 minutes to an hour. Finally we found 3 lovely materials. Two were for the leaves and the third is going to be PERFECT to recover the wonderful glider chair I purchased off Craigslist... more on that another day. These are the two materials that surprisingly Ryan found (with a little help in the colour tone category from me).

Nice and bright and although they are blue and green they are more or less gender neutral colours. If we have a girl we will add a few pink leaves to the tree as well. If its a boy it will stay the way it is. I should probably add that these two materials were chosen more based on price... they were each only $3 per metre and we only got a half a metre of each... setting us back a whopping $3 plus tax!!! WOOHOO!!!

Other than ironing the double sided webbing to the backside of the fabric I left this project up to Ryan to do. To see how to make material wall decals go here.

Ryan spent Sunday afternoon drawing a leaf pattern and then tracing it onto the 2 materials and cutting them out. I was attempting to nap at this point... but when you live with Ryan that doesn't actually happen very often!!! After dinner after Ryan had cut out all of the leaves he instantly wanted to iron them on the wall but didn't know how to do it. So together we pulled out the iron and got to work. We quickly found that the green and blue material was very thin and when you put the iron directly on the leaves the iron would be covered in the glue from the webbing. SO out came a tea towel and we just ironed the tea towel over top of the leaf which worked perfectly every time. (I should add that we were both still in our PJ's... ignore my half awake look in these pictures haahaa)

Ryan very enthusiastically ironing the leaves on the wall!!! I know you can't see it but his mouth is wide open... as it always is when he is concentrating!!
AND TAH DAH!!! The end result! We LOVE IT!!!! We decided to put a few of the extra leaves we had floating down from the tree. The best part about it is if in the future we decide to change the colour scheme those leaves are completely removable and we can always add new colours!! We are both VERY pleased with how it turned out!!!!

I will have a lot more projects this week and in the weeks to come. Including my kitchen cabinet project that will finally happen next week while I'm on vacation!!!!! YEAH!!!!!

Nature's Nursery

Surprise!! The secret is out... Ryan and I are expecting our first child! We are VERY excited for the little blueberry to arrive... waiting (or patience) isn't one of our better qualities... haahaa!! Remember awhile back when my mom came over to repaint what used to be our walk in closet and I stated that it was to be my new craft room (if you don't remember you can go here)... well I lied. It is actually being transformed into the nursery. This way we don't compromise our spare room and the little 3rd bedroom is perfect for a nursery!!! I have actually managed to find away to get the crib, a glider chair, a dresser AND the change table in there. Speaking of the change table, remember when I repainted my makeup table and lined the drawers with fun paper (here) well that lovely makeup table is to be the new change table!


The plan with this lovely piece is to pick up a change pad that has the snaps on it so I can snap it to the back of this dresser. It will work perfectly. Its what my mom used as a change table with my 2 brothers and I. Plus it has lots of drawers to keep diapers and such!


Well the general theme of the nursery is going to be animals and nature. I had decided that I wanted to have a large tree in the corner of the room where the glider chair was going to go so that the little blueberry would have something fun to stare at. As I always do before any project, I googled 'tree mural' images and found this lovely tutorial. And they had the perfect tree outline!!!









Basically you are supposed to get a projector and project this image onto the wall and trace it. WELL I didn't have access to a projector and I THOUGHT I couldn't draw. BUT on a Monday after work... after I'd already bought the paint for it I got very excited. I pulled out my trusty HB2 pencil, pulled up the tree outline image, put my laptop right next to me and went for it. I have to say I was VERY SURPRISED with myself!!! I can't even draw a stick person well but for some reason I was able to duplicate this tree!!! It only took about 20 minutes to lightly draw it on the wall.


Being so excited about it, I believe it was the very next day that I decided to paint the tree. I bought the same CIL satin finish paint as the walls just in a brown (I don't even remember the colour because I was so excited I didn't keep the paint chip...). I pulled out a half inch paint brush and went to work.


In the end this is what was left! I was rather surprised with myself and my ability to draw/paint!! Mind you I had to keep reminding myself that trees aren't perfect! It was quite easy and super fun to do!!!




NOW you may be thinking it looks a little bit like a scary tree... believe me when I was done I was like AHHHHH the baby is going to be scared to be in this room. BUT I knew that wouldn't be that way for long.


This is the plan for the tree.

#1 - We plan on continuing the advice from the tree mural tutorial and making fabric (not wallpaper as the tutorial suggests) leaf wall decals (to see how I made my wall decals go here) Which will transform the tree into something like this.

Once we know the sex of the blueberry we will be making leaves for the tree in a variety of colours. Ie. if its a boy there will be lots of greens and blue leaves (we aren't going for colour accuracy here) and if its a girl we plan on making green and pink and purple leaves and possibly some blossoms as well. Mind you Ryan wants to go to Fabricland today to find material for the leaves... SO this may change....


We also plan on making animal silhouette wall decals all around the room. There will be a monkey (or 2) in the tree or possibly hanging over the crib. Definitely a giraffe... I may possibly put it in the corner by the door and transform the giraffe into a height chart. Some elephants. All of this is to tie in with our lovely quilt that we bought at an auction which will be hanging on the wall above the crib (securely fastened). I will show those pictures later


#2 That owl hole. Ryan has a project to do... he is going to make some type of a curved shelf to go in the corner under the owl hole. Then my friend Katelyn is going to crochet us an Amigurumi owl to go in the owl hole. Here is one she crocheted for her mom. You can check out her blog here.



#3 - SHELVES!! I found this fantastic picture here that I LOVE! So I have recruited my dad to make us 2 shelves that will look like the tree branches and we can put books and toys etc.

That is the plan so far!! At the moment we have the room painted and the tree painted and that's it. LOTS of projects in the future. Now you know why I've been a little lacking with blog posts... #1 anything I have done I wasn't about to reveal just yet and #2 I haven't really felt up to any projects lately, I would rather lie on the couch and watch TV. :-) BUT that will soon change!!!!

Random Space Transformed

Ever since reorganizing the bathroom I realized I did not need the white cabinet that Ryan and I had bought to store our towels. So we took the cabinet that was across from the toilet in the nook next to the bath tub and have used it as extra space in the bedroom for socks etc. Well then we had this bare nook in the bathroom and after thinking about it we realized it would be the perfect place for the laundry hamper. I went to Ikea and bought 3 small floating shelves... they are only $6.99 each. I ended up only using 2 of the shelves because as Ryan and I were going to water a friends plants at her place we walked right past a garage sale and found the PERFECT wall hanging that just SCREAMED us. And it was still in its wrapping and only $10!! SO away we went with our purchase, at the time I had no idea where to hang it until I started hanging the floating shelves and though that 2 shelves looked better. Anyway, enough with my blabbing... OH I also had fun with my new home made wall decals and made some more... just remember this is across from the toilet. I forgot to take a picture of the before... but it was just a blank space before. So here it is!!!

It was hard to get a good angle to get it all into one photo... I plan on getting a bigger laundry hamper as well but other than that I like it!!! heeeheee its kinda humourous!!!

Elephants Never Forget

After starring at my bedroom wall decal for a few days I still felt the wall was too blah... don't get me wrong I LOVE my new decal... but its a very big wall and the view from the bed left a lot of empty wall space! So after some thought and some bantering back and forth between Ryan and I we found a saying we thought was very appropriate for us. Just to paint a picture, we have a rule that we kiss each other goodnight. Yes thats right it is a rule.... if one of us forgets they wake the other up just for that kiss. Its kind of a funny joke now between the two of us. Anyway, now with our new decal we will never forget!!! (You know that Elephants Never Forget!)

I know it looks crooked in the picture... it really isn't THAT crooked.. I had to do each letter individually which was a little bit tricky but I love the end result!!!

Homemade Wall Decals (on a budget)

I'm sure everyone at some point has looked at the wall decals that are becoming the fast and easy way to decorate a room. Most of the ones in the stores run over $20 for a few small vinyl decals. I have been looking for the perfect picture for the large blank wall that is in our bedroom. The problem is that there is less than a foot of space between the wall and the foot of the bed and that is the way Ryan gets to his side of the bed (did I mention we have a small room!) So putting an actual picture on the wall would have been a disaster as everytime Ryan would try to get to his side of the bed the picture would inevitably have fallen. So I knew wall decals were the way to go, BUT they are a little too pricey for my wallet. I resorted to finding another solution that wouldn't ruin the paint on my wall (I'm not about to repaint!). SO I found one solution, using liquid starch apparently sticks fabric to walls. I went on a search for liquid starch...... Seriously WHERE DO YOU FIND LIQUID STARCH??? After checking EVERYWHERE I gave up on that idea. Then I found this person who had used applique webbing and ironed it on the wall. She said it worked great and didn't ruin the paint. So on a rather rainy Sunday I ran off to Fabricland to pick up some material as well as the webbing. I was in luck, they had a 40% off everything in the store sale!!! NICE!! I ended up buying about 10 feet of the webbing (I have a LOT of decals in mind for the house...) and a few metres of material for various projects. This set me back about $34, but considering I plan on making 2 sets of curtains AND many wall art projects I think its a bargain!

Anyway, down to the process!! I asked Ryan what he wanted on the wall and since he is obsessed with FERBA (he had a crazy dream and invented an 'association'... Asking him all about FERBA if you need a really good laugh!!) and inevitably elephants. So I went on the computer and put together a template which I printed out. Then I grabbed my large roll of Heat N' Bond webbing and ironed it to the wrong side of the fabric.

Then I peeled back the paper layer and lightly placed my stenciled out elephant against the sticky side. Then I cut out my shapes. Now came the trial and error stage, I placed the elephants on the wall and lightly used my iron to stick it to the wall. If it was placed wrong I found I could actually remove it slowly and reposition without ruining the wall or the decal. It was amazing!! One tip though when trying this, only heat the decal for a few seconds, it will stick no problem BUT it will also make it easier to remove in the future. The longer you iron it the harder it will be to remove. I tried picking at the edges to make sure they would stay and they are stuck there, BUT can be remove with a little picking and if you slowly pull them off they leave the wall untouched!!! SOO here is the result of my art project! I LOVE IT!!! It brings out the greens and purples in my quilt and looks great!!! What do you think??

And just to prove that there is little space between the bed and the wall.. here you go. Yes the brown knob at the bottom of the picture is the bed.

I plan to do some more hearts on the wall eventually, but for now I'm going to see how I like it over the week. On another note, here is a picture of what some of the other fabric I bought on my trip was transformed into. (I would like to note that I did make the bed and no matter what I did it looked lumpy. The duvet was being particularly fussy and lumpy.. It needs a good beating to put it back to shape.... which I will be doing shortly) :-)