Wall Art for a little boy's nursery

Oops, over a week has passed without posting a thing on my blog! I suppose I could say, life happened ~smile~
I have been enjoying our little boy a lot, getting to know him, which is so wonderful. His big sister is very loving towards him, I love how she has totally accepted him as part of our family! Since I am recovering well, I can spend more and more time out of bed and around our house. And that feels great!

I wanted to share a great and easy make with you today, the wall art I made for the nursery. Here goes!

So with the nursery almost turned around from a girly girl nursery to a baby boy one, I wanted to add some final touches to complete the look.

I wanted to make some wall art, using a blank canvas, some fabric and flock foil (grey and navy). I ordered the flocking material here and two days later it arrived in the mail, yay for fast deliveries! 

Since the birth announcement card had elephants on them, I wanted to include them in the nursery as well. A couple of weeks before J was born, I bought a lovely blackboard garland at Leen Bakker, shaped like elephants.

I used one of the elephants to outline the shape and cut out the pattern.

Then I placed the pattern on the flock material and using scissors, I cut out the elephants, one in grey and one in navy.

Then, using my iron and two pieces of fabric cut to fit the canvasses I wanted to use, I ironed the flock elephant onto the fabric. The grey elephant was ironed onto plain white fabric, and the navy elephant was combined with a grey and white gingham fabric. Make sure you use a tea towel between the flock and the iron when ironing the flock onto the fabric of your choice.

I let the fabric cool for about 15 minutes, before stapling them onto the canvasses. Finally I placed the canvasses onto the console in the nursery, where they will sit temporarily until I decide how and where to hang them on the grey wall ~smile~

This make was a lot of fun to do and not hard at all. Everyone can do this, so why don’t you give it a try. I would love to hear about your flocking projects!

Love,

Maartje

Makes by Maartje: Crafting a memo board

Mid February my maternity leave started and I wanted to spend the days my daughter is at the daycare, with an updo of the nursery. That meant three days a week of me-time, for a period of three weeks, giving me a chance to craft up a storm here ~smile~.

One of the things I really wanted to do was to decorate the wall of the nursery with a memo board. A friend of ours gave us one she made herself when our daughter was born and I really liked the look of it. Especially when we got to hang her drawings and birthday cards on it. But to have a pink memo board hang on the wall of a baby boy nursery, well, that's not quite what I had in mind hahaha!

I looked up various tutorials and thought, hey, I can do that! And using a painter's canvas instead of a panel of mdf, made it a lot less heavy to hang on the wall. So this would be one of my projects for the nursery.

At one of the local fabric stores, I found the coolest fabrics, canvas with postal bag print on it. I thought it would just be great for our son's nursery.

The color scheme I had in mind for the room was navy blue, gray and white. And the color of the fabric, a burlap type beige with the Dutch flag on it, would be great for this boy's room.

So I decided to buy a panel of the fabric and got some padding as well. Then I went to Action, which is a discount shop with fabulous stuff for creating and crafting. There I bought a painter's canvas measuring 60 x 80 cm, for only 3,99, so I was very happy about that!

At home, I covered the panel with fiberfill and then fitted the fabric around it. Using a staple gun, I attached both layers to the canvas. Then I left it alone for a couple of days, because I was searching the web for some nice ribbons to use for the memo board. Online I came across the website of Marieke which is filled with all kinds of cute fabrics and haberdashery. I ordered three different kinds of ribbons, one of which could be used on both sides. When they arrived a couple of days later, I made an outline of all of the ribbons and using the same staple gun, attached them to the board. Finally I used several wooden buttons to secure the ribbons to each other and to the canvas, allowing me to put different cards and decorations to it, without losing grip.

I have to say, I am very happy with the end result. And having some of the postal bag fabric left, I want to make a pillow to put in the white chair in the nursery. But that will be another post, probably in a couple of days ;-).

Would love to hear your adventures in these types of crafts. Thanx for visiting my blog today! I am looking forward to seeing you again soon!

Xoxo,

Maartje