Baby Cushing’s Nursery

Description

We wished to blend our easy modern style with an eclectic, vintage twist when designing our baby's nursery.  What we arrived at was an assemblage of vintage and modern elements with lots of personalized touches and family mementos, including hand-made knit blankets, hand-painted birch trees and stripes on walls, vintage furniture, and a "family tree" comprised of old photos of relatives as children. 

Design Inspiration

The end goal was to create a bright, inspiring, and whimsical nursery for our baby boy.  While my husband's and my style centers around the modern-meets-vintage we sought to bring in personal touches from old family photographs of our relatives as children to hand-knit blankets and my very own baby rattle.  What assembled was an easy, comfortable nursery with both nods to our baby's past and hopes for his future.

Decorating Style

I love to balance a neutral palate with warm, bright accents.  Using major pieces in neutral colors to ground the design, I like to then add color and texture to a room with found objects, modern accents, and unique artwork to give the space a one-of-a-kind feel.

Project Details

Wall art (trees and stripes) - handpainted

Crib and Changer - Babyletto Hudson line

Antique dresser - flea market

Antique rocking horse - flea market

Sheets and linens - Land of Nod "Not a Peep" bedding

Bookshelves - IKEA, Expedit

"The Kraken" wall print - Fab.com

Cross-stitched "Woot!" - handmade

Felted wool sheep mobile - handmade

Baby blocks - handmade

Rocking chair - Nurseryworks Sleepytime Rocker

Knit Pouf - CB2

Rug - Carpet tiles from InterfaceFlor

Knit owl - handmade

Lamp - CB2

Wire baskets - Pottery Barn

Curtains - IKEA

 

Favorite Items

Other than all the old family photographs and handmade things that I made and came from family members, my favorite item is the vintage rocking horse.  I found this tucked away at a flea market and was one of the first things I bought for the room.  It's been a constant inspiration for how I wanted the room to feel for my baby.

 

Advice

There were a lot of lessons learned on this project.

1)  Turn your wall into artwork!  After doing it myself, I highly recommend against hand-painting your own wall art since this is extremely time consuming and prone to mess-ups.  Decals are definitely a better way to go and you have so many options to match whatever scheme you may be trying to attempt.

2)  Make your own carpet!  We have pets and always feared investing in an expensive carpet for our nursery since it would just get messy from both baby and pet exposure!  So we ordered six individual tiles from a carpet manufacturer and taped them together on the back.  This way you can customize your carpet to match the palate you're looking for, and not spend a lot of money on something you may have to toss sooner than your other decor.

3)  Go to flea markets!  You'll find some of your best stuff there at great prices, especially if you're willing to throw in a little elbow grease to get things looking fresh again.

4)  Ask your family to go on a scavenger hunt!  One of the best things I did was request my family look through their photographs for photos of themselves and other family members "being kids".  We found some really amazing pictures and rekindled some great memories in the process of creating our baby's Family Tree.