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

Reupholstering a roman blind

Hello again,

Has spring sprung where you are? Here, 15 days after Joppe was born, it is still very chilly. With a fierce wind blowing from the East, I have not taken our little boy outside yet. Hoping it will get better next week... 

On the upside, it gives me some time to catch up on blogging. I still promised you a post on the reupholstering of the roman blind, so here goes...

So, before Joppe was born, I wanted to make sure the nursery was suitable for the arrival of a little boy. Therefore I wanted to redo the roman blind, which was in the room. It was fuchsia pink and at first I decided to dye it a lovely navy blue, but unfortunately, as it was 100% polyester, the dye did not take at all.

So I had to think of something else to do. As the lampshade in the nursery was a navy and white-checkered fabric, I went to my favorite fabric shop and bought a few meters of matching fabric. Using fabric glue and my sewing machine, I reupholstered the roman blind.

The curtain has four stiffeners at the back of the curtain, so folding over the fabric where the tunneling is and using the fabric glue, was not an option. I cut into the fabric and sewed the seams.

Then I folded the fabric around the original curtain and using glue, I attached the seams to the back of the blind. That way I could secure the fabric before stitching it with my sewing machine. Using my crochet hook, I stuffed the fabric into the tunnels.

Then I turned curtain with the back facing forward and using the original stitching, I sewed the curtain so the horizontal panels were visible. If I did not do that, the fabric would look very weird when I would hang it back up in front of the window. It was a tricky job, because I was sewing with the back of the curtain facing up and it was 120 cm of straight sewing, it was quite hard to keep it straight. In the end, I am very happy with the result, even though the stitches are not perfectly straight.

And when hanging them, the nursery immediately turned into a boy’s room!

Have you ever done anything like this? Would love to hear from you!

Thanx for stopping by today!

Xoxo,

Maartje

One week ago...

... our son Joppe Wisse Maes was born! This past March 11 was the coldest since 1928! Today he is one week old already and doing very well!

Cannot help but want to show you a lovely picture my sister-in-law Anique made over the weekend of our two precious children. I am so grateful for these two little ones (as is the husband of course ~smile~)

I will pick up where I left off blogging last week in the next few days! I still want to share with you how I reupholstered the fuchsia pink roman blind in the nursery and I also made some wall art using flock foil.

Looking forward to hearing from you, wishing you a lovely week!

Xoxo Maartje

Makes by Maartje: A Playpen Mat

Hello!

So lovely of you to come and visit my blog (again)! Today is all about the playpen mat I made for our son to be! As I am not experienced at all in writing tutorials, I hope you can understand my describing the different steps I took to make this Make! Hope you enjoy it and would love to hear from you.

So with our second child on the way and the creative spark that is slowly but surely bursting into a flame, I decided I wanted to make our son a playpen mat. My mother-in-law made one for our daughter two years ago, but this time I wanted to give it a go myself.

Our playpen measures 80 x 100 cm. With our daughter having hit her head a few times when she was tiny, I wanted to make one approximately 100 x 120 cm.

So I came up with the idea of using three different kinds of fabric. The color scheme for the nursery is navy, gray and white. Even though the playpen is in our living room, I decided to go with the same colors for the mat.

I bought four kinds of cotton fabric in various blues and prints. A navy one with small white dots, navy with small white stars, a patchwork fabric with stars and stripes, also in navy and white and last but not least, a Delft Blue like fabric with old fashioned mills, wooden shoes and tulips on them. But when laying out the design, I decided to not use the Delft Blue one as it did not complement the color pallet or style. That one will be used for another one of my Makes ~smile~

I cut two types of fabric into four rectangles and sewed them together. Nothing fancy, just straight forward sewing. I did hem the fabric as in my experience, babies do drool and puke on these mats from time to time. By hemming the fabric, it will surely survive our laundry machine ~smile~. After sewing, I ironed out the edges, giving it a straight and nice look. It also allowed me to iron out some creases in the fabric.

So the four blocks are the base of the mat. With the navy and white stars fabric, I made a border. Since my mat was a bit bigger than the base of the playpen, I wanted to use that same fabric as backing of the mat.

Before cutting and measuring the backing, I cut the edges. My mother-in-law helped me so I cut all of the fabric as economically as possible ~smile~.

For padding the playpen mat, I used a fairly thick duvet from my favorite Swedish shop, Ikea! I cut it into the right size, after I sewed the edges to the four rectangles.

Then I put the large panel of fabric on the floor, with the rest of the white star fabric underneath. Then I cut out the backing, remembering from one of the tutorials I read, to add 2 centimeters on each side, allowing the lining to have enough room as it was so thick.

With the right sides of the fabric on top of each other, I pinned them together without the lining in between. That way sewing them on my machine would be much easier. I also measured the playpen, to check where I needed to attach the ribbons I wanted to use, to secure the mat to the bars of the playpen. Then I pinned on the ribbons and started sewing it all together. I left an opening as if I was making a proper duvet cover, to be able to put the lining inside. Then finally I cut the lining to size and sewed the opening shut.

Only thing I have to do now, is to sew the rectangles, the lining and the back of the mat together, to prevent the lining from shifting. But that will be done over the weekend, and I will have to do that manually, as the total package will not fit my machine without wrinkling all of it. And I would hate for that to happen of course!

Pictures of the final result will be posted later on. 
My next Make will be a flag garland from the leftover fabrics. I will post that in a couple of days. So until then, thanx for joining me today!

Xoxo,

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