Oliver's Nursery: Sources and Projects

Thanks for all your feedback yesterday! In addition to the nice notes on the blog and facebook, I have been assured by my mother, who visited Oliver yesterday, that the room is much better in person.

As I mentioned, Oliver's nursery was a total labor of love. I think it took Nicole and I three or fours days to completely finish the continent painting, Nicole learned to sew in order to trim out the white curtains, and her mom took a community ed refresher sewing class AND enlisted the help of a neighbor to sew the striped cushions for the storage bench, not to mention all the many small projects along the way.

The deets: where it all came from, how much it cost.

Storage benches: Ikea Trofast, $39.99 each, with plastic containers and shelves, $188 total
Green awning stripe fabric: Ikea, 5 yards at $7, $35 total
Foam, piping, and zippers for striped cushions: about $60
Plaid throw pillows: 1 yard fabric, S.R. Harris, $7.49; velvet remnant (on backs), $2.50: Total $10
Nickel curtain rod: JC Penney: $30 (on sale)
Curtains: Ikea Merete, $19.99, trimmed with two yards of striped fabric from S.R. Harris, $14: total $34
White frames: Target, $7.99 a piece: $24 total
Dresser knobs: Pier 1, $28 for two sets of four (no longer available)
Mirror: Home Goods, $39.99, spraypainted Rustoleum dark bronze (which I had on hand)
Lamp: Home Goods, $29.99
Orange tote bags: Old Navy, $16.99 each (no longer on the website, but I think you can still get them in stores?)
Nickel robe hooks for tote bags: Target, package of 2, $3.99
Paint: California Paint (no VOC) in Coastal Sand, one gallon, about $40

TOTAL: $556.95

A few of the detailed projects:

Curtains before

After


Mirror Before


After


And please pause to appreciate the orange piping on these striped cushions, and the perfect alignment of the stripes. Amazing job, Sharon!


Let me just say, I am SO glad I was not the one to tackle this endeavor.

Finally, two big points about what we didn't change.

We could have changed the wall color before we started down the path of painting murals. But the homeowners liked the pale green, painting all those slanted walls and cove ceilings would be a pain in the arse, and once we decided to do a mural, we needed the windows to kind of disappear. Since they already had custom roman shades that matched the walls, repainting also would have meant new window treatments, and we simply didn't have the budget. Plus: not broken, don't fix.

And, the carpet. Kind of blah neutral carpet. We couldn't change it--again, budget, plus it runs through the rest of the upstairs--and I'm not really a fan of layering rugs over plush wall to wall. Sisal? Sure. But anything with a pile, well, it's not my favorite look. Plus, budget. I do think that by choosing a color for the continents that is quite close to the color of the carpeting, it makes it all feel deliberate. And with the furniture more balanced out, I really think the wall to wall makes the room look huge and airy, so it all works out in the end!

While it is so nice to have this room done, I have to say, I will miss hanging out with Nicole and Oliver. But she assures me we will do the rest of the house together--once she wins the lottery.

As for the rest of you. If you'd like help transforming your home into a space you love, on any budget, email me at heatherjoypeterson@gmail.com for design services and rates.

Oliver's Nursery: After!

We finally finished Oliver's nursery today, and I love how it turned out!

Before
After


Before

After



Before


After

Before


After


It's so funny how things evolve; so much has changed since the beginning, and yet this looks like exactly what the room should be. Originally, we planned to really focus on the alcove area, but the room already felt lopsided with all the furniture at one end, and playing up the alcove would have just added to that imbalance. Instead, by bringing this major statement wall treatment throughout the room, it feels like we doubled the room's size.

To make the most of the empty half of the room, we created a play area by bringing in storage from ikea and making cushions to sit on top.


A rocker that belonged to Oliver's mom when she was a baby makes a little seating nook, and the curtains close off the closet and provide a visual ending to the room.


The curtains also add height to balance the continents, which even spill up onto the cove ceiling.



A pair of tote bags hung on the far wall bring strong color to the other side of the room, balancing the awning stripes on the new cushions and the multi-stripe on the curtains, and provide additional storage. The little airplane trunk was picked up by Oliver's parents on a trip to Arizona.



We kept the dresser grown up, pairing a wood-based lamp with linen shade with a round mirror.


The bead detail on the mirror picks up the rope handles on the totes and the rope detail on these ceramic knobs.


Oliver already had the airplanes, the piggy bank, and the little Hummel figurine, which belonged to his grandfather.


Here's Oliver and his lovely mom, Nicole, checking out the new digs.


I think he likes it!


This room was created with a tiny budget and a while lot of love. I'll share a breakdown of the projects and the budget tomorrow.

Thanks for looking!

Continent wall treatment: How To

After sharing a sneak-peek at Oliver's nursery last week, I had a few people ask about how we ultimately decided to go about painting the continents. This tutorial will probably be boring to some of you, but I promise I'll be back with something fun tomorrow: a reader design dilemma about mixed-gender shared kids rooms. Good stuff.

First, I should say that Oliver's parents finally decided to go for the map treatment we had been considering after I showed them a picture of Max's room, over at Janell's blog. They could finally visualize it in a room, and with the more neutral color palette we decided to go big and use all the walls, not just the alcove.

Okay, so I considered a number of options before we proceeded paint. I thought freehanding the maps would be fine (I'm such a dork, I used to draw freehand maps for fun), except we were doing all the continents, on sloped walls, and I thought the overall perspective would get off if I made it up as I went along. Next I considered using that trick where you draw a grid over your image and draw a corresponding grid on your wall in order to keep your perspective in line, but I didn't want to deal with erasing the grid lines from the original wall color. Plus I wanted to get a sense of the placement before I made ANY marks. The whole thing became much simpler once I decided to just go ahead and invest in a projector. (Believe me, I can see many uses for this thing!)



After reading lots of reviews, I chose the tracer from artograph because the viewfinder window is 5 inches (meaning, it can project an original image that is 5 x 5 inches; lots could only do 3", which really isn't very much) and because it could enlarge that image up to 14 times. Since I knew I was planning on continents that were several feet tall, this was completely necessary. Also, it was reasonably priced. They go for anywhere from $49 into the $80s, depending on where you buy.

To get my map source material, I did a google image search for "world map outline," knowing that it would be simplest to deal with a single, strong outline and not something more detailed so I wouldn't have to figure out what to keep in and what to leave out as I was tracing it to the wall. I found a few that had the right level of detail to the outline and the right shape on the page (some were more slanted than others, especially North America.) One weird word of warning: lots of map sites seem to carry viruses, so my Norton was pretty busy.

Once I had my images, I just copied them to be a full page on standard 8 1/2 x 11 paper, printed them out, and, where necessary, drew over the outline with a fine-tip marker to make it bolder--the projector is not all that powerful.





The projector called for a REALLY dark room, and we did end up taping cardboard over the windows. I played around until we found the right size and placement on the wall, propping the projector on a box, propping the box up with books, and moving the whole contraption closer to and farther from the wall until we got it just right. It's a good idea to tape the picture down to your surface and mark the projector's placement on the paper--just trace around the corners of the projector with a pencil--because the thing can definitely slip. I learned the hard way that trying to realign the image on the wall is nearly impossible.

Once all of that preparation was done, I simply used a pencil and traced the outline of the map right on the wall.



That's florida.

Next, we used a mini foam roller and some wide, flat artist brushes to paint in the continents with our main color--a no-VOC paint in "Coastal Sand," which seems quite fitting. The paint was regular latex interior housepaint in an eggshell finish, same as the walls. We gave it two coats. This was easy but time consuming.



There's Australia, all coastal sandy.

Finally, we came back in with a dark brown paint to edge everything out. I used a brush from my kids' watercolors (we have plenty of extras from used-up paint sets), and cut it down by half or more so the bristles would be firm--before I did this, I found that some of the bristles went rogue and gave a sloppy line. I was able to adjust the level of detail to the edges in this step for the best effect.



And voila, Australia and assorted Pacific islands.

So there you have it. As with so many things, the better prepared you are, the easier the project will be.

Oliver's grandma is finishing up one final sewing project for the room and bringing it up next weekend, so I should be able to share the final "after" next week. It's looking good, and we're excited!

A sneak preview....

We decided to go with a map treatment in Oliver's nursery. I just finished yesterday and my 4 year old said "ohhhhh....awesome."

Here's a sneak peek ....


(finished in the evening--bad lighting!)

Can't wait to finish up in there.

Art you can make: cut-paper animals

Okay, I know I'm getting a little out of hand with the cut-paper art project (and I have another one or two--maybe three--up my sleeve), but I did a little experiment over the weekend and it turned out well enough to share.

One of the pictures we ordered for Oliver's nursery is smaller than we expected, and Oliver's dad liked the idea of pairing it with another small piece--he was thinking of an owl. Now, with the recent owl trend there are PLENTY of prints out there, some as cheap as ten bucks, so not exactly a budget buster. But something about an owl's feather markings and expression kind of made me think of wood-cut block prints, which kind of made me think of the whole paper cut thing that I recently mastered. I had some green cardstock, an exacto, and a piece of cardboard, so as long as I could find an hour, why not give it a try?

(As an aside, my first major art project as a kid was a papier-mache snowy owl, probably in third grade. I was so proud of that thing--I may have even entered it for a ribbon in the Dakota County Fair--so maybe there's something nostalgic at work here.)

Anyway, I found some pictures of owls on line and printed them out the size I wanted the final product to be. Then I used the same technique that I used for the botanicals in the girls room, tracing the image and then stapling the tracing paper to the cardstock around the outside of the drawing. I used an exacto knife to cut out all the interior detail first, then cut out the shape and spray mounted it to some heavy white watercolor paper. I then cut some pieces from the green carstock to fill in some negative space--the iris in the left eye and some little feather ripples in the belly--with a scissors and spray mounted them on. The hardest part was probably getting the spray mount off my thumbnails.



Anyway, here he is. I keep thinking of him as Oscar the Owl. I should mention that I used a cardstock with a bit of sheen, which is not coming through in this scan. The owl is also a pretty green. The paper is 8x10, to give you a sense of scale.

And here he is in a simple white frame from Target.



It remains to be seen if he will find his way into the finished room--this is a serious little fellow, perhaps TOO serious for the room--but I really kind of like him.

I wonder: what other animals would make good cut-paper portraits?

Oliver's Nursery: The Alcove

I met with Oliver's mom this morning to move forward on his nursery. We're all systems go, with one big change: out of safety concerns, we will be nixing the striped tenting plan for the crib alcove and returning to the original idea to do some kind of map treatment. Here's the alcove again.


The alcove, while not huge, is bigger than the largest non-custom world map murals out there, which clock in at 13' wide by 8'8" tall, so we won't be able to simply wallpaper the space with a pre-existing mural. While I did find a place that could custom print a vinyl, pasteable world map for me, my required dimensions would result in a pricetag of a whopping $1500, and since that's about 3 times the budget for the ENTIRE ROOM, we'll be taking a pass.

After a little research, I presented two options, each with variations.

1. Wallpaper.
To treat the alcove to an all-over effect, we could use this wallpaper of nautical charts, and go ahead and hang it like any old wallpaper.


Or we could pick up a slew of vintage maps and paper the walls in a random, overlapping pattern, like these creative folks did.

[Source]

[Belle Decor via Garden and Gun]

I think the overall effect would be an alcove that felt like it had a sort of color wash from afar, with all the delicate details showing up when you came close up. Lovely.

2. Giant continents.
The other option as I see it is to create overscale continents, with the Americas on the left wall, Africa on the back wall, and Europe and Asia on the right wall. The overall effect would be more graphic and punchy than the wallpaper plan.

I see three possible looks.

- we could use a topographical map and blow up each continent, print it and decoupage to the wall. I would make a mock-up of what I'm thinking in photoshop, but the hubs is just teaching me how to use it, and so far I've learned to cut items out and build layers, so there's a LONG way to go! Just use your imagination....

- we could create a map "silhouette" with custom vinyl decals or paint, for an effect kind of like this turquoise tapestry from Urban Outfitters or this Orange World poster from allposters.com.  (Click here for allposters deals.)





Or we could cut them out of vintage wallpaper, like those cool animal decals.


- or we could go kind of old school and just paint our own custom mural. (Note to self: find a picture of Mom's murals, either from the California house int he 70s or from my brother's Sesame Street bedroom, for a Flashback Friday).

For this, I like the kid-friendly aesthetic and color palette of something along these lines.

I'm super excited to tackle any of these projects, and can't wait to see what Oliver's parents choose.

Do you have a favorite? I'm so torn!

Oliver's Nursery

I'm doing a nursery! So excited. Here's the before:

The space is under the eaves of a charming tudor, presenting some challenges/opportunities in all those angled walls. Originally, I was thinking we would do a map treatment on the big angled wall when you enter the room (to the left of the crib in the last photo above), kind of like this.

[via House Beautiful, 2006]

But coming into the space again, I was struck by the crib nook,

and now we're thinking about tenting it.

[Tobi Fairley]

[via Material Girls Blog]

[via The Captive Reader]

So cute, right?
Maybe awning stripes?

[fabric from Ikea]

We are keeping the green paint and roman blinds, and originally thought about bringing in navy as an accent, though Oliver's mom is thinking it might be too dark, and found this inspiration room, from the HGTV 2010 green home, to offer an alternative palette.



Well, you know I never say no to orange.

I'm thinking about vintage school posters for art

[available at Hunt and Gather]

Or maybe some typography

[Ikea]

Some great storage, a sweet spot to sit, a lamp or two. The creative juices are flowing. Stay tuned!