DIY Nusery Art Projects

It was really important to me to have a creative and unique space for my baby girl to call home, so for me that meant making it my own, myself.  I'm a big advocate of skipping the big box stores in loo of doing it yourself.  I understand that not everyone is super crafty or has the time to make things themselves.  I get it, modern day life is chaotic, but honestly these projects don't really require a ton of time to invest into them and are really easy to make, plus you can customize it to your own personality and it's a pretty inexpensive way to decorate your nursery.  I know I posted the DIY butterfly mobile tutorial the other day but here are a few more DIY projects for you to try out.

 

There you can see the mobile that I posted the other day and the embroidery hoop art that I did as well.  Both are pretty easy to make and customize you can use any color fabric, paper, paint, and shapes.  Here is another DIY project that I did for the nusery too.

What better way to teach your little one the alphabet than putting it up on their wall?  For this project I went to my local craft supply store and got letters in all different sizes and from different collections of alphabet styles to create a uniquely shaped alphabet. Then I painted, modge podged scrapbook paper and glued beads and glitter to the letters making everyone different.  I painted the Z in zebra stripes, the G in gold glitter, the Y yellow and painted the P purple and put polka dots on  it to go with the theme.  Not all of them fit the B is for blue or V is for violet but a lot of them do.  I think that this is a great way to decorate a nursery wall that is not only totally cute and customize-able but also educational as well.

Here's another way to jazz up your nursery or any wall in your home really.  Get some cute printed fabrics and some cheap embroidery hoops and BAM you've got some custom wall art!  By far this was the easiest of all the projects and took the least amount of time to make, and I'm even thinking of adding a few more smaller ones too.  Ok so here's how you do it and what you need:

Supplies for Embroidery Hoop Art:

• Printed fabric of your choice
• Embroidery hoops of varying sizes
• Good fabric scissors
• Hot glue gun

 This could not be easier, choose your fabric and hoop size and cut out fabric to fit the hoop, like so:

Then you could iron the fabric but honestly there's no need to because the fabric is going to be pulled really tight in the hoop eliminating any wrinkles and I really never iron anything, ever, so why add another step.  Center the fabric to the top of the hoop where it will end up being hung from and add the outer hoop and tighten so that the fabric is nice and taught.

Next trim off excess fabric and cut slits every inch or so around the hoop to reduce bulk when hot gluing.  Then just hot glue the left over fabric to the back of the hoop all the way around to create a seamless look.

And that's all there is to it!  So simple yet so cute and they literally took tops 10 minutes to make.  You just follow the same steps for them all using differing fabric and once they're all done hung 'em up with a small nail right where the hoop comes together.  If you want you could also paint the wooden hoops different colors or buy the plastic ones that are already different colors or just leave them as is like I did.  The beauty to these projects is that you can really make them your own and totally personalize your space.  Well hope you enjoyed these fun and easy projects. Take care!

~Megan~

DIY Butterfly Mobile

I knew that I wanted to make my little girls nursery unique, fun and bright, and what better way to achieve that than make your own decor.   I'm not someone that really likes the cookie cutter crap they sell in the big chain stores and I would much rather something different and personal, and I really wanted that for my baby's room too.  So I decides to make my own mobile instead of buying a mass produced one that everyone and their mother had in their nursery.

I was originally going to find a cool looking fallen down branch in the woods to hang the butterflies from but my mom had an extra embroidery hoop that needed mending lying around, so I used that instead.  You can be as creative in the process and tools to make it as you want to be and use whatever you have on hand.  This is what I used and how I made this adorable mobile to hang above the baby's crib.

Supplies:

• Embroidery hoop or any thing to suspend the butterflies from
• Fishing line
• Ribbon of your choice to wrap the embroidery hoop
• Hot glue gun
• Glue stick
• Scissors
• Scrapbook paper of varying colors and prints
• Butterfly shaped paper punch or any shape punch you desire
• A thumb tack
• A hook to hang it from

I started out by hot gluing the ends of the embroidery hoop together again and then proceeded to hot glue the end of the ribbon to the backside of the hoop to hide where the seems are.  Then I wrapped the entire hoop with the ribbon and slightly overlapped the ribbon as I went to ensure proper coverage.  Once I came to the end, I simply hot glued the end of the ribbon to the back side so no one could see it.  This is what it looked like when I finished wrapping it.

Then I looped together three pieces of the same sized fishing line to make a loop for the mobile to be hung from, and then I tied them equally around the hoop so that the hoop is evenly suspended.  I cut out a bunch of butterflies using various printed and colored scrap paper to make a very colorful and fun mobile.  The printed paper was white on the back so I doubled the amount of those so that it would have the print on both sides.  Using varying lengths of fishing line I began to string the butterflies on the line making double or triple knots to hold the butterflies in place and a thumb tack to make a hole through the middle of the butterfly to be string the line through.  I knotted the top of the butterfly too just to keep it in its place.  For the printed butterflies I used a glue stick on the white side and stuck it to the fishing line and then overlapped the same print butterfly on top so that the print would show on both sides.  Once I had strung up 3 or 4 butterflies per line I tied them to the hoop and continued all the way around until it was full of floating butterflies. And that's all it took to make!  Super easy and cute.

After it's all put together, then I found the perfect spot over miss girls crib and hung it with a hook, and voila!! There you have it, a precious mobile for her to entertain herself in between sleep.    Here's the final product:

~Megan~