Nursery for two! Decorating for a boy and a girl - Part 3

As part of the room "makeover", one of the first things we did was get rid of old mismatched furniture (well, hid one in the wardrobe and put the broken one to local recycling!).  We bought a new cabinet from Argos, to match the chest of drawers, to store their books and what had been in the old bedside cabinets.  

It's amazing how much surface space it cleared up! The books were just piled up because we had nowhere to put them, and DJ couldn't reach them... :(

Kids Scandinavia 4 Cube Storage Unit

When it arrived, I thought I'd save Mr P. a job, as he's always so busy on Saturdays, and decided to put it together myself.  I rather enjoy building the old flatpack furniture haha!  However, I did not quite bargain for a cheeky little 18 month old in the process...  Whilst EJ was asleep we put it together, and remarkably all was going rather well (considering a little boy's liking for wood and tools...) until I had to put the top on.  

  I just managed to align the dowels and screws on one side, I moved to the other side to align that - and DJ goes and pulls the first side to "help" thus undoing my good work!  Cue exasperated but rather amused mother, haha!  I tried again to no avail, nearly lined up... and then pop! DJ was at it again.  At this point I plonked him in his cot so he could watch but not touch haha!  Otherwise I honestly think I'd still be at it ;)

Anyway, Mr. P. was very happy and proceeded to beeswax it at the next opportunity (the furniture is unfinished on arrival).  We then covered the rather dull chipbboard shelf backing with a lovely bright starry fabric with some PVA spread over the surface as evenly and relatively thinly as possible before it was pinned in place.  And voila!  Much better! :)  Now he can reach his books, he loves reading them and even tries to read them to his wee sister sometimes!
  Next post on this will be on EJ's side which is as yet very blank...:(  I have ideas and the materials but it needs done! :)

Kathelle x

Nursery for two! Decorating for a boy and a girl - Part 2 - DJ's side (Magazine Collage Tutorial)

DJ's side of the room really suits him now.  We put up Mr P.'s tool clock and two collage canvases which we made ourselves.  (I know it looks a wee bit bare at the bottom but it is deliberate so that he can't touch them!)

The first canvas has quite a story to it.  Mr P. loves his Land Rovers.  He used to have heaps of magazines, but one day decided to have a clear out.  At this point we were just going out, so he showed me his favourites he'd saved that Saturday morning when I went over to visit.  We eventually came up with the idea of making a collage on a canvas with them - rather than keeping them hidden in a folder or drawer.  Anyway, off we went for a spin to Haddo House, came back with a sparkly ring ;) and Hobbycraft was first on our list of places to go, haha!  With the canvas bought, we finished the collage that evening - so it's quite special to us both :) 

It's quite a deep canvas, so we found as many landscape images as we could in the magazines, cut them out and arranged them on the canvas so that there was enough to completely cover the sides - we probably had about 10 magazines to work with so there was plenty choice!  Some of Mr P.'s favourites were very carefully cut out to go over the landscapes to blend it together as one image.  For example, the one in the bottom right corner looks as if it's coming out of that valley, and the top right corner looks like it's going along that road, whereas it was actually us that put them there as a wee story :)  And to finish it off, we put a little Land Rover badge  in the top left corner :)  So after 3 years in 3 sitting rooms it moved into DJ's room, passed on to him!

To keep the Land Rovers company, and as this wee boy is fond of any vehicle that has wheels and an engine, we made a similar one with tractors!  Rather appropriate for here as a farming community, and this time it was DJs Great Auntie and Uncle who donated the magazines :)

This one took us much longer than the Land Rover one as we had less to work with (just 2 magazines) and the canvas size and shape proved a bit more complicated to fill nicely.  After many weeks of being hidden under the blanket box, on the table and in the wardrobe it was completed!

This one was done in a similar way with finding landscape photos (very few and far between!) to cover the blank bits and edges and carefully arranged it all so it looked good.  Below you can see the tractor has been carefully cut out around the front wheel and nose and then the trees in the background were cut to mimic those in the landscape photo!  This was Mr P.'s creativity :)  After it as finished and stuck down we went over it with  a few coats of PVA, but it went a bit wrinkly :(  We used spray mount for the LR one, then PVA coats and it definitely worked better than using PVA the whole way through.  We put a logo from the obliging magazine in the bottom left corner to finish, and DJ loves it!

It's a great way to re-use magazines - I'd love to do one with flowers from gardening magazines or castles and stately comes from National Trust magazines... Many posibilities and it cheers up a room in a personal way without costing much. :) If you have the magazines in and gathering dust that is, they can be so expensive! 

I'd love to see if any of you give it a try or if you've done anything similar!  DJ loves it and makes grunty engines noises when he sees them haha! :D

Kathelle x

Nursery for two! Decorating for a boy and a girl - Part 1

Since vast amounts of space and rooms are unavailable to us at present, DJ and EJ are sharing a room.  They are quite happy with this arrangement going by late night chats (ie down at 7.30 and still gabbling an hour later, haha! :o )  and they sleep well.  Other than sometimes waking up 2 hours earlier than they used to... but they enjoy each others company :)  So the big (ish) question was, how were we going to decorate the room to suit them both? 

Very quick back story - we'd been renting our house, got the offer to buy it and it has been ours since March.  The whole house was magnolia other than the kitchen and our bedroom wall as it is fairly new.  As we'd been renting we hadn't ever properly decorated DJ's room, just a few things on the wall.  All in all it's pretty much a blank canvas!

We decided to paint the walls a very light blue as it is obviously suitable for a boy and it would also go with EJ's pink things.  The room has been split up into three zones if you like (architecture brain :p) one side each that will be purely individual beside their cots and the back wall where the toybox is, was to be shared.

While we were away at Easter time, Mr P got cracking with the painting! We got some really cute woodland stickers from Mothercare and put them in on the wall beside the pirate chest toybox that Mr P made himself.  The room doesn't have a theme as such, just things we liked and thought they'd like.  DJ was wandering around the shop with the box of stickers so we gathered he liked them haha!

Next week it'll be about DJ's side of the room... :)

Kathelle x