Thursday, October 25, 2012

One more baby room blog

So here I sit, a day after my due date, nursery ready, bags packed, maternity leave started, and no baby yet. He is stubborn, but I know he comes by that honestly. I thought I would share one last project with you that we completed for Baby Z's nursery. Back in July, we took an old wooden trunk and turned it into a toy chest for the little man. For now, it is just a storage chest for things that we aren't ready to use, but it is something that can grow with him and eventually will be overflowing with Legos and Hot Wheels.

I borrowed from 2 different ideas on Pinterest to come up with the best way to cover the trunk. I knew I didn't want to sand it and then paint it, so we used this little miracle to prime it.

2 coats of this and we were ready to paint. 
We are using bright, primary colors in Z's room, so red was the only option for me! The red went on so perfectly over the top of the primer. 2 coats later, the trunk looked gorgeous.

Then I wanted to put the word "Play" on top. This is where the second Pinterest post came in super handy. I followed a pin and read on someone's blog that I could print out a paper with the word on it, and then trace along the lines of the words. Then when you take off the paper, you have an outline on the wood to fill in with paint. It worked remarkably well!



First, I centered this. Traced the outline with a pen, then removed the paper. 
This is what it looked like after being painted. 
And a view of the entire top of the chest.
After I was finished with this, I used some wooden stars as stencils and added some blue stars to the top.
Turned out super cute! 
Right before I finished this project, I noticed that the inside of the lid was messy from the primer and paint. I didn't want to paint the entire inside, so to make up for that, I mod podged some star paper to the inside of the trunk lid.
Ta Da!
So, now it is ready! And it's filled to the brim with all sorts of baby goodies, just waiting for this little man to arrive!

Monday, October 8, 2012

Baby Room Paintings

My husband and I struggled for a while to come up with a theme for the baby's room that we could agree on, but when we finally decided on sports, I couldn't have been happier. I love sports, especially football, so I was pretty excited to get to work on this room!

After looking at lots of decorations, I decided that I didn't want to use any vintage sports things in the baby's room. I am a more modern girl, so I was on the look out for something different. I wanted to put some art on the walls that would add some color and look modern and would match the other things we wanted to put in his room. When I couldn't find anything that I loved, I suddenly had a thought...I could make something! Now I am not an artist by any stretch of the imagination, but I can come up with really good ideas sometimes. We were actually at the beach when I thought this one up and I sketched out my idea to show my husband.

Looks pretty rough, but the idea is there. 4 sports balls on square canvas. 
After getting the ok from my husband, I started looking for supplies. I didn't need too much, since the colors were pretty simple. I purchased 4 square canvases from Hobby Lobby that were 14"x14" and some acrylic paints and a simple set of brushes. Then the taping began!

The football was the easiest! Taped it and painted it brown:) 
The basketball was taped in a giant X from corner to corner and it was pretty simple as well.
The only difficult part on this one was finding a way to make the curved lines. I used a big bowl as a template and then my friend Karen filled in the line.

Baseball was easy too. Same big bowl to make the lines. 
Then filled in the stitches with more red paint. 
The soccer ball was the absolute hardest one to do. If you have ever tried to draw one, you know how tricky it is. It seems easy, but the design is black pentagons with white hexagons and it really only works on a sphere. So putting it on a flat square canvas was really tricky! We tried to simply sketch it on first and it was hideous. Then we Googled images of a soccer ball to use as a template, but even it wasn't correct and the pattern was too small. Finally, after much drawing and erasing and measuring, we came up with something usable. It isn't perfect and I can see every error, but when you look at it, it looks like a soccer ball.

Finally finished! If you look carefully, the middle black piece is a hexagon, not a pentagon, but  it was the best we could do!
Here is the finished product:
Not too shabby!
And here is what it looks like all hung perfectly above Baby Z's dresser:
Crooked pic, but you get the idea:) 
And finally, what it looked like a few days ago when we finished putting things away in his room:
TA DA! 
I am super excited at how this one turned out! And if I ever need to recreate this, there may only be 3 balls. Or the soccer ball can be a volleyball or a bowling ball. Anything is better than that soccer ball!