Emma’s DIY nursery

Description

a yellow and aqua girl's nursery, filled with handmade, DIY, and personalized touches

Design Inspiration

I saw a great yellow and aqua nursery on Flickr when I started researching nursery designs and fell in love with the color combination.  The fabrics I found, as well as the vintage looking drawer pulls from Anthropologie inspired the rest of the design.

Decorating Style

For the nursery we wanted a balanced mix of classic and modern elements, cheery colors, and personal touches

Project Details

Our design plan for Emma's room came together pretty quickly after we found out we were having a girl. We wanted her room to feel sweet and personal without being overly girly. I put together a budget worksheet to see if we could really have the nursery of our (okay, my) dreams on a $1500 budget. Thankfully, with a good amount of DIYing and a bit of repurposing, it was actually possible!

Here’s the breakdown of what we DIY’d:

• Painting the walls, ceiling, trim, Poang, bookshelves, and built-ins
• Fabric covered 7″ cornice for the window
• Crib skirt
• Bunting
• Crib/play quilt (Amy Butler pattern from Little Stitches for Little Ones)
• Gum Drop Ottoman (Amy Butler pattern)
• Monogrammed throw pillow with ric-rac trim
• Paper circles mobile
• Bird mobile
• Song lyric art prints
• Laundry bag

All that hard work paid off because we ended up coming in under budget at $1302.24! The biggest expenses in the room were the Naturepedic organic crib mattress ($259), the Ikea Hemnes dresser ($199), the DaVinci Rivington crib (on sale for $191.99), the Elfa stacking drawers for the closet ($99), and the Naturepedic organic changing pad ($89.10). Together, those purchases made up almost 2/3 of our whole budget. We could have cut corners a bit by not going organic for the mattress and changing pad, but raising Emma in an eco-conscious way is very important to us, so we were willing to invest a little more for those things.

Favorite Items

That's tough... probably the mobiles.

Advice

Scour blogs, Tumblr, Pinterest, fabric shops, etc. for inspiration and tutorials. There are so many great DIY projects that not only save you money, but help to create a much more personal look.  You can read more about how everything came together, including a few tutorials and pattern reviews, on my blog: Made by Bird