Samantha Harris 2nd’ Daughter’s Nursery

Here’s a few tips to re-create the same look in the nursery on a budget!

1. Create your own masterpiece – these days wall art for the nursery can take up a huge chunk of your design budget! Don’t feel the pressure to purchase an original, and instead… try to create your own masterpiece. Not only will you have fun doing the art product, but you don’t have to be an artist to make it look good. For example, in Samantha’s nursery, to create the scalloped edges along the ceiling we made a stencil using poster board, scissors, and colored pencils. First trace out a circle on poster, and cut it in half. (HINT: find something like a lid to tupperwear to trace around if you don’t have a protractor near by.) Then using colored pencils, in our case we alternated pink & blue, trace around the stencil moving it from one to the next. Then just paint between the lines – the colored pencil will serve as a guide as to what color to paint, and it will blend in more seamlessly.
2. Curtains – Looking for that custom curtain look? The panels that Little Crown Interiors designed for Samantha using a beautiful chocolate brown fabric, trimmed in the Rose Dot Fabric to coordinate with the bedding, and lined so that it could black out the room during nap time were stunning and helped finish off the room. But don’t get your checkbook out just yet! A quick and each (and cheap!) way to reproduce the same look is to head on over to your local Target or Linen store… purchase pre-made curtain panels (Target has a beautiful chocolate brown faux-silk for $19.99), and then but out your sewing needle and attach a contrasting fabric to the bottom of the panel. Not only will that help elongate the panels, making them look more custom, but it will also add a pop of color or print to the nursery!
3. What’s old is new again! Don’t feel like you have to purchase new nursery furniture with each baby! In fact, Samantha’s nursery furniture was a pass me down from her first daughters room! New bedding, and a fresh design will make it look like a brand new nursery – without the hefty price tag of new furniture. And don’t be afraid to change it up a bit – we took off the original knobs on the dresser and replaced them with hand painted ones that coordinated with the nursery! We also painted polka dots on the sides of the book case to add a little whimsical design to it. It turned out just precious!
4. Transforming a nursery into a Big Girl Room – it’s very important to think a little down the road when designing your nursery – it can save you BIG BUCKS later on! Something you don’t realize as you are picking out your favorite crib is that it’s got a very short “sleep life” – two years down the road, your little stinker will be attempting to climb out and will be ready for a bigger bed! But that shouldn’t mean you have to re-design their entire room. Samantha’s older daughter had a beautiful pink & brown nursery, designed entirely around our Classic Collection. When Josselyn was ready for her big girl bed, the only item Samantha had to purchase (décor wise) was the coordinating big kid bedding! All the major décor pieces, curtains, frames, wall art, rugs, etc still matched perfectly with the “older” verison of her bedding! Helping get a little more out of her investment into the nursery, and keeping the same style & design as the nursery she fell in love with. So, in summary: try to pick core design pieces that will grow with the toddler, and pick a color scheme that you will be able to expand on later on.