Isabel's Nursery Part 2 - Getting started
After taking some time away due to a busy work schedule, I've come back around to the next step in our project. With the concept now established, the room cleared of junk and the inspiration in place, we added something new to the mix: a bassinet.
Pink, fluffy, your basic fru-fru. With lights and music and...a vibrator? Yeah, it vibrates. Loudly. That'll need some adjusting...
It's cute, though, especially with the Hello Kitty pillow we bought. This of course, won't stay in this room. We just keep it here to keep Robbie from using it as some sort of raisin/Cheerio/sippy-cup storage unit.
Gather the elements
Looking over the calendar, I noticed that at least half of the artwork was seasonal in some way or another. Not much generic stuff to work with, but I found enough get me going. I had originally planned to just sketch the art ON THE WALL, and go back with paint and finalize it. As it turns out, that would've been the worst approach ever.
Instead, I decided to scan in some art from the calendar that I thought would be appropriate for a girl's nursery. Some cute faces, flowers, stars, balloons, birds and bunnies. You know, GIRL stuff.
Once I had everything scanned in, I took it into Photoshop and made different sizes of everything and laid them out in a sort of sticker sheet arrangement. Since I've never done anything like this before, I didn't know what kind of scale I'd be working with, so I guessed. I copied and pasted and fit them onto letter-sized pages, which would then be printed out on a simple black and white printer.
Mock it up
Once I had several copies printed, I grabbed some scissors, some tape and headed over to the room. This is where it got fun--where I actually started to feel like I was doing something. I like working with my hands and that good old feeling of cutting shapes out of paper... Well, let's just say that adults don't get much of a chance to do that.
So yeah, I cut out all of the shapes. No need to be perfect. This is just a starting point.
With everything cut out, I did a quick count and figured I'd have enough to evenly cover all four walls. At least it seemed that way.
Then it's a matter of adding some scotch (or magic, if you don't drink...hahaha) tape to the back and sticking them to walls. Easy.
There's something slightly exhilirating about sticking things to walls. As children, we're all taught not to write on, scratch, bump into or knock anything down from walls. So it's kind of weird that the walls in our house are all spotless (because we don't know what to put on them yet) and now suddenly, I'm sticking kitty heads and flowers to them. How is this possible? Oh yeah, I OWN the house.
Arrange it
After getting everything on the walls, I started playing around with the positions, trying to even them out. Then I realized that I didn't have enough. Some areas looked pretty sparse. So I went back and printed out some more, cut them out and added them.
That was better, but then Carol had a few other pieces of art that she wanted. Scan, print, cut. It started to fill out. This last photo doesn't quite do it justice because you can't see the whole room and we added a bit more after it was taken, but with the furniture in place and the addition of color, I think it's going to turn out cute.
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