Nursery New

Although this is Baby #3 for us, this is the first time we have been able to decorate a nursery knowing that we are staying in the same place for longer than a few months after the babies arrival. We did know when we started renovating that we were expecting another baby and so we planned out the nursery and painted it natural white with a feature wall of Periglacial Blue.

It was a nice color, but the longer we lived with it (mainly as a storage room over the last few months) the more it seemed a bit washed out and depressing, looking more and more grey. So on the wet Australia Day weekend, at 7 months pregnant, we repainted the nursery. I had started washing all my baby linen and discovered that due to never knowing the gender of our babies, we had bought orange nursery bedding. So was born the colour of the new nursery - Tangella.

Vibrant, rich and stimulating. We painted the blue wall white, and decided to paint the orange wall behind where the cot would be. The addition of the Walltat we were given after baby #2 arrived and the nursery was beginning to look much brighter and happier. It was especially cute that our number 2 baby was helping us put the Walltat up since it was originally gifted to him by his aunt after he was born.

We finally had wardrobes installed a couple of weeks ago after over 5 months of living out of packing boxes and clothes racks. What a difference wardrobes have made for me!! We also had a bookcase built in the nursery at the same time due to a strange design feature in the shape of the room. It was perfect except for the hundreds of holes up and down the panels to make the shelving adjustable. It really ruined the aesthetics of this feature in the nursery. My Sister-in-law and my Dad both suggested covering the panels with either paper or contact to cover the holes. After some hunting around specialty paper shops and scrap booking materials, we settled on an adorable, but fairly neutral paper with just a hint of orange to tie it into our nursery theme. I was planning to glue the paper to the bookcase, but I decided that would be difficult to remove at a later date when the baby grows up, or if we switch the boys rooms around and need a decor change. I sticky taped the A4 sheets of paper together on the reverse side to form a long panel, and trimmed the edges to the correct width (since nothing in our house appears to be straight or square this was a little challenging). I used a couple of 3M poster strips at the top of the panel and just insert the shelf tacks through the paper to keep it taught. It worked a treat.

Now it was time for some nursery art inspiration (thank you Pinterest once again). I love all the alphabet and number nursery art, but not necessarily the price tag. So I created my own in Pages using colours that tied into our orange-white-chocolate theme that was emerging in the nursery. I already had some chocolate frames I had previously used in the boys playroom which needed to be put to good use. I am pretty happy with the result and the printing at Officeworks cost me 75c for each art work. Bargin! The frames look lovely on the new bookcase.

Whilst I was gaining inspiration for the alphabet and number art I came across the idea/pin of using animal silhouettes for nursery art. I really liked this idea, especially as the paper lining the bookcase was animal themed with elephants, giraffes, bears and rabbits. After gathering a large number of silhouettes of different animals - giraffes, elephants and owls - we decided on baby elephants for the nursery. My favourite animal! I traced the silhouettes onto scrapbook paper and cut out the shapes before pasting this onto left over paper from the bookcase lining. This really ties the nursery colours and prints together.

These two artworks ended up being a little more expensive than the alphabet and number prints - $1.10 for each of the background prints and the scrapbook paper came in a book of about 50 papers for $6.00. So these cost about $1.11 each to make, plus a little glue. I'm still counting that as a bargin!

With all the baby clothes and linens washed and folded into the new wardrobe and after assembling the bassinet with the help of the two big brothers we are all just waiting for Number 3 to arrive now.