Baby P's Nursery Artwork

Hello! I have been on a bit of a hiatus for the past few months thanks to a crazy time at work and preparing for the arrival of Baby P. Well we welcomed him on May 19, so now that we've gotten into a bit of a routine I'm going to try to start blogging regularly (try being the operative word). In figuring out the theme/design of his nursery, I didn't have a lot of luck with the bedding sets we saw in stores, so I turned to Etsy, since I knew that site wouldn't let me down - and it sure didn't! I found a lady who offers custom nursery bedding in a TON of different fabric designs and every color imaginable (check her out  here - Miss Polly's Piece Goods) so I knew she could make the color scheme I wanted (navy, aqua, white, and gray) happen with the bedding.

I knew I wanted to add a DIY element to the nursery so I of course turned to Pinterest for inspiration and found this blog.

For this project I needed:
- 4 12"x 12" canvases - purchased at Michael's on a crazy good sale so got all 4 for about $6!
- 4 1/2 yards of fabric - purchased on sale at Joann's during one of their 50% off fabric sales so the fabric was about $5-$6
- glue gun
- small wooden letters for the monogram
-letter stencils
-acrylic paint

The canvases with the fabrics I chose. I also included yellow to give another pop of color beyond the navy and aqua that would match the bedding.

I started by cutting the fabric to be slightly larger than the canvases- a couple inches extra on each side to give myself enough fabric to fold over and glue on the back. Then I began glueing each side, folding the corners like a present so they'd look clean from the front side.

Front view of the finished product

The finished product from the back

This process was repeated for all 4 canvases and for the two navy canvases, that is all I did. To add a bit more pop to the artwork, the aqua canvas got little man's monogram and the yellow canvas got a saying I kept seeing in nursery artwork.

The monogram was done by purchasing 5" wooden letters from Michaels (I think they were about $1 each) and painting them since they were unfinished wood. I had to sand the letters a bit (using a pretty fine grit sandpaper to get a really smooth finish) then I painted them white with acrylic paint so they would stand out against the fabric.

Almost finished!

For the yellow canvas, I wanted to include the phrase "Dream Big Little One" but since I'm not good at freehand drawing lettering, I reused the 2" stencils I bought a couple years ago to use for a banner I created for our engagement pictures.

I got a navy acrylic paint so the lettering would pop, yet still go with the color scheme.

It took QUITE a while to do the lettering in pencil, then trace in paint and finally fill in, but I was really happy with the final product:

Once all 4 were finished, we were ready to hang. I just got command strips since I didn't want to put a bunch of holes in the wall to hang these (plus they are so lightweight nails weren't really necessary to hang them anyway).

Here are the canvases hanging in the nursery above the dresser/changing table. I was really happy with this little DIY project I took on for little man's nursery!

Pictures of the whole nursery coming soon!

Until next time, 

CZP