Simple & Affordable Nursery Art!

I just have to say, if you think you can't decorate a nursery or child's room (or your own room, for that matter) on a very strict budget, you are mistaken! I am having so much fun coming up with ideas and utilizing all my bargainista know-how to make BG's room a special place. It is turning out so much cuter than some room-in-a-bag you find at the baby store, and so much cheaper! And there's so much more thought and love behind it.

Ok, moving on to the reason for this post. Yesterday and today, I made some adorable art for BG's room - eleven pieces to hang up, in all - and only spent $11.65!

The first piece is a framed picture that Hubs and I found online and printed out on photo paper in a 5x7. I believe it's from an old Christmas card. I found a pretty black wooden frame at the dollar store, and voila! It's going to hang right next to the 12x12 framed name art I made (see last post).


The idea for this piece of art came about last week, when we finalized our choice of BG's middle name. We chose Liviya, which means "brave lioness," and then realized that, when paired with our last name which means "lamb," it alludes to the scripture describing the peace Christ will bring to the earth ('when lion and lamb will dwell together,' 'Lion of Judah/Lamb of God,' etc.). Hubs and I had an "ah-ha!" moment and decided we needed to find and frame a picture of a lion and lamb for BG's room, as a representation of two of her names.

The other ten pieces of art are from one of my all time favorite children's books: Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit. This idea is a spin-off of my original nursery concept to frame prints from Arnold Lobel's Frog & Toad books. I decided that with the garden theme that BG's room is taking on, Peter Rabbit would fit better. I scooped up a copy of the book at Goodwill the other day for 65 cents (score!) and, while this was totally against my book-loving nature, and it pained me, I cut out the pages of beautiful, classic artwork and trimmed them into 3.5x5 inch pieces to frame. (I justified this major book faux pas by reminding myself that I already own three copies of Peter Rabbit in various forms, and there were a handful of other copies on the shelf at Goodwill as well.) Then I headed to the dollar store for frames. They have some really nice new ones in stock, and I got ten distressed gold frames that are going to look darling on her wall. I cut carefully, dusted the glass delicately, framed precisely, and I'm done! Here are two photos of what I did - they are terrible quality, but my camera is terrible (we are begging for a new one on our baby registry):




I haven't decided if I'm going to hang them in two rows of five, or take one away and do three rows of three. I can't wait to hang them up, they turned out even better than I hoped! And the gold color looks awesome with the cream and green walls in BG's room.
Another project down, many more to go...