If you know me, you know I’m a crafter... So when it came to
Baby B’s nursery, I was in full crafter mode. Rob referred to the nursery as my
“sweat shop” for the past few months. For anyone that loves to craft, I’ll break down how I did
everything with some lesions learned. The room we used for our nursery was our
guest room, which we had already painted yellow. I didn’t want to repaint, so I
decided to go with a bumblebee theme - unisex and yellow. I was inspired by this pin in my
search for design ideas. I bought my core fabrics from fabric.com, and made
most everything from these patterns.
First thing we bought was the dresser and glider. Both were
a steal on craigslist. The dresser came with this great hutch, which we’ll save
for when Baby B gets older. I put Rob to work sanding and repainting both of
them in a dark brown/black. I was inspired to paint the inside of the drawers
yellow when I saw this pin.
I think it turned out pretty well, and I even found some cute hexagon-shaped
pulls at Home Depot. The top drawer
is now full of diapers and wipes :)
 |
| Putting Dad to work |
 |
| Ready for dirty diapers |
The glider was originally white with red cushions. I recovered the cushions using this tutorial. Definitely took some trial and error! In the end, I decided to add the tufted buttons to make the yellow pop. The “bee happy” pillow was kind of one of those last–minute ideas I had due to the fact that I had tons of extra fabric! I stenciled out the letters on felt and sewed it down.
Next up was the crib bedding. I used this tutorial to make
the crib skirt. For the crib bumpers, I bought a used bumper set on ebay for
$4, and recovered it with a little inspiration from this tutorial. Lesson learned here: Next time, I will just buy foam
pieces and recover. Recovering the old bumper made them a little too
collapsible, so I had to make the ties super tight to make sure they stayed up.
The baby mobile was an adventure! I debated buying one versus
trying to make. But I just couldn’t find anything that I liked online, so I
figured I’d try and DIY. I used a wooden knitting ring for the main piece and
wrapped it in jute twine. For the center, I wanted something that looked like a
honeycomb, so I bought a party ball from a paper website and cut it into a
honeycomb shape. The felt flowers
and bees were inspired by some of the mobiles I found online. Something new I
learned {a great crafter tip} is the blanket stitch, which is used to line the
felt bees.
 |
| Bumblebee Mobile |
The next project was converting our Ikea bookshelf from
office to baby! I basically got everything from Ikea. The bottom row of baskets
were also from Ikea, and I covered them in fabrics. The canvas art was simple,
but took a lot of time. I used painters tape to line a hexagon pattern and
painted the yellow background first. For the bee stencil, I used this free
download and printed it on cardstock. I then cut it out with an X-acto blade
{took forever – three episodes of Game of Thrones to be exact!}. They turned
out great, so totally worth the time!
For the changing station, I bought these Ikea frames and
wrote out the nursery song "I’m Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee” on the frame matting.
Then I simply framed different colored fabrics. For the changing pad cover, I used this tutorial and a
canvas fabric that will hopefully wipe clean easy!
The glass containers are
filled with honeycomb sticks I ordered on Etsy. One trick when you need to fill
a glass bowl: use another smaller glass bowl inside flipped upside down to fill
space. For the honeycomb pieces, I had one of those
“Pinterest Fail” moments – ha ha! I wanted something that looked like
honeycomb, but I couldn’t find anything online expect these expensive soaps andcandles on Etsy. So I thought, “I can make soap, right? How hard can it be?” I
used this tutorial {using bubble wrap to shape the soap}, but on my first go
round, I didn’t secure my bubble wrap and it floated up into the soap – what a
disaster! Round two, I got the hang of it and they turned out well!
 |
| Honeycombs and Honey sticks |
 |
| Pinterest FAIL |
The curtains and cornice were made using this tutorial. It was seriously the easiest project of
the whole nursery, and it’s a great way to get something that looks
professionally made, but actually costs like $20. I had the fabric monogrammed by
my go-to guy in Dallas {Twin Bows Embroidery}. If you haven’t figured it out
yet, we finally came up with a name {spoiler alert!}.
 |
| Window cornice |
We put a couch in the nursery, because we still wanted to be
able to use it as a {sort of} guest room. The couch pulls out to a full size
bed. I had the chevron pillows monogrammed to match the curtain cornice. The
wall art above was a hodge podge of stuff I had lying around that I just
painted. The frames were $1 at Michaels that I covered with fabric and used
leftover crib ties to join together. Eventually I’ll replace the photos in the
black frames with the newborn session pics.
Well that’s everything! I think for anyone on a budget, who
loves to craft, a DIY nursery is the way to go. You can tailor everything to
exactly what you want, instead of having to rely on what’s for sale in the big
box stores. Don’t be frustrated if you have some “do-over’s” – I know I had
plenty!
