Beauty and function

Continuation with 7 things that I made for my daughter's toddler room...
My little one still has very little hair, guess that's par for the course when it's light and fine. I'm still waiting for the baby hair to grow in underneath so I'm keeping the rest of it trimmed short as I'm not a fan of the mullet look.

This project is some homemade artwork that also acts as a hair clip holder. If you wanted to make something similar for your room here's what you would need.

- canvas picture (stretched canvas over wooden frame) just a few bucks at Michael's
- scrapbook paper of your choice
- craft paint or whatever else you may have handy
- embellishments
- ModgePodge or similar glue
- 5" or so of nice ribbon
- staple gun and staples

I took the canvas and painted a light blue as the background colour. I then cut out shapes from the scrapbook paper, I decided to go with simple shapes as I'm not a very creative scrapbook. If anyone has a fancy scrapbook cutter you could make some really wonderful scenes! I used the ModgePodge to stick the cutouts on the canvas and added my stickers(embellishments). Finally I turned the canvas over and stapled the ribbon to the wood frame to hang down.



That's it. I'm sure people can think of so many creative ways to make even nicer pictures than I did. I may change up the scene once in a while when I'm feeling creative, and have time ( right..). If you have that you've made and would like to share please post it here!

An 'A' for effort

Last week I showed you a sneak peak of my daughters' new room and this week I want to dive into a couple of the things I used in the decor.

The handmade quilt and the wall decals




First the quilt. I have a complete new appreciation for all of you that quilt on a regular basis and do it well. This quilt is not going to win any awards but it was made with love, so that counts for something right? In my normal way of cutting corners where I could, here's where I did:

- squares were precut and purcahsed from The Fabric Square Shop in Amy Butler prints
-batting, well instead of using quilting batting I bought a double sized duvet from IKEA and used that. I saw a few benefits to this:

-I wouldn't have to be as careful with the actual quilting as the quilt should hold it's shape on it's own
-The price was right at only $7.99
-It is fully washable

It likely took me about a month off and on to get going on the quilt. Laying out the squares and peicing together. In the end some of the edges aren't quite square as I did the 'pattern' (if you can call it that) by hand. I used a pink cotton fabric for the backing and some nice blue bias tape for the binding. Viola. I like how it turned out and if I ever get up the courage to make another one I would like use the same type of materials again :)



Now for the wall decals. I used 3 different suppliers on used them in 3 areas of the room

1. beside her bed
2. above her bookshelf
3. on her dresser

I purchased the two wall decals from Etsy from Empressive Designs and Six under a tree. The 3rd set was purchaed from my local Michaels store.

In general I'd say these were easy to apply. One word of warning is to pay attention to decals that have lots of small peices that aren't joined. For example the little orange flowers on the custom peice were all induvidual petals they weren't joined, so getting them off the backing and onto the wall was a little more tedious then I would have liked. In all I still did all the decals in under 2 hours.

The decals on the dresser were an attempt to make it look less adult like and more kid like. Since they can be safely removed later we can always reuse the dresser if she outgrows it or we change it up when she's older too.






That's all for this week hope it gave someone a few ideas. Next week I'll give some details on the clip holder/wall art I made...stay tuned.

New room for a little/big girl -7 ideas for a toddler room

With baby #2 on the way I've been thinking and planning about moving my 2 year old into her new room. It was a big step as it was not just a move from a crib to a bed but also a whole new environment. New decor, furniture, different side of the house. I was nervous about how she'd take to it but so far all is well. She woke up a few times in the first week, likely wondering where the heck she was. Now two weeks in she's back to sleeping through the night. Yeah!

I had so many great ideas for her room but as always time and money play a factor. We pushed the move date back twice as we just didn't get around to things as planned but it's finally done and I wanted to share it with you.

Most furniture was bought from Ikea, bed, bookcase and dresser then I added my finishing touches. There are about 7 things that I made for the room that I'll share here over the next few weeks and hopefully it can provide some inspiration for others.




-Quilt - my first attempt at one. It won't win any awards but she loves it
-Hair clip holder/picture
-Wall decals
-Butterfly bouquet
-Curtains
-Bird accessory holder
-Decorative pillows

Stay tuned for more details on a couple of these items each week with some tips and tricks.

BTW the great dress my daughter is wearing is from a local mom to me, her store is Blue Calla, you should check her out!