Ivy's Nursery

I finally took some pictures of Ivy's nursery! I had so much fun putting this room together for my baby girl.



I really love the rug!  It adds so much to the room, from Rugs USA.






I go the idea for the flower balls in the mobile on Pinterest - here. The metal birds I already had. They are from Alice Lane in Orem, Utah.





Two things on the shelf are from my own childhood. I framed a page from one of my favorite children's books, The Fat Cat. And the alphabet box used to be in my nursery as a baby.


Sources:

Crib and glider - WalMart
Curtains and dresser - Ikea (but I got the dresser on Craiglist for a great deal)
Rug - Rugs USA
Crib sheet, crib skirt, Ottoman, lamp - Target
Artwork above dresser - Cost Plus World Market
Artwork above crib - Urban Outfitters

Bedroom Room Board

Here's a room board I recently completed for a client. She already had the headboard and bedding so I knew I needed to work in navy, and this artwork did just the trick! It had navy plus all the fun orange, yellow, turquoise, and green that I used for the rest of the accessories.

AZ Magazine - Melissa's House

AZ Magazine recently featured our work at Melissa's house in an article they did about budget decorating. Once I get my copy in the mail, I will scan and post the full size article so the text is readable. I thought the pictures turned out great, and Melissa looks so cute!





UPDATE: Click the below images to enlarge and read full text of article.



I've been pretty MIA lately - very busy being fat and pregnant and making my husband rub my feet. But don't lose hope on me yet, I've got a few posts planned for the next week or so. I'm trying to be a good little blogger again!

A little progress

Slowly but surely making some progress in the nursery. So far we have:

- Emptied the room and closet, no easy task since this was formerly our office.
- Touched up paint
- Painted closet and installed closet system
- Bought a dresser ($80 bucks on Craigslist!)
- Placed rug in room
- Ordered and framed first piece of artwork

Here's how it looks now compliments of a poor quality phone camera. Even though we've done a lot of work, it still looks pretty sad and empy. But I'm loving the rug!!



My next steps are:

- Order the crib
- Decide on hardware for dresser drawers
- Decide on a glider
- Continue hunt for curtains or fabric for DIY curtains

I also picked up this print that I hope to work into the room as well. It is "Collective" by Jodi Fuchs.

Nursery Ideas

Baby #1 is on the way! I'm 22 weeks along and ever since we found out we're having a baby girl the wheels have been turning for how to decorate the nursery. Here are my initial ideas, but I have a feeling I'm going to be changing my mind on a few things. I just want it cheery, but soothing, neat, and modern. Lots of colors and not TOO much pink.



I already ordered the rug from Rugs USA during their 4th of July 40% off sale. Can't wait for it to get here!

Copycat Project : DIY Cloud Art

I knew when I saw this project featured on A Cup of Jo, I had to try it out.





Amber from Amber Interiors took a photo of clouds, blew it up, and framed it in an IKEA frame. Genius.

I used a photo I had taken a long time ago, and simply cropped it so only the sky was in the frame. Then I tweaked it a bit to get the turquoise color I was going for. Here is my version hanging in my bedroom.





Such a fast, easy, and cheap project!

Before and After - Alex's Room

Recently, my mom and I helped with my little cousin Alex's room. He is 15 and needed something a little more grown up. He's also a huge fan of University of Utah sports - so he requested the room be themed around that; including a red wall! I'm usually not a fan of red walls, but I think for Alex's room it worked. It's a fun addition to this teenage boy room.

Here's the original room board I put together. We veered a little from this plan, which usually happens, but it gave us a good blueprint.


We did this whole room for under $300. My Aunt Chris did most the work - removing wallpaper, painting the room, and painting the furniture. Once she had everything prepped, we spent a full Saturday finishing the room. The morning was spent at IKEA picking up the last essentials, and the rest of the day we organized and rearranged, hung artwork, and begrudgingly put together our IKEA purchases.

BEFORE


AFTER


BEFORE - Desk


AFTER - Desk

Before Alex's desk held his TV for videogames, and there wasn't a lot of surface left for anything else. Chris painted the desk drawers, and we cleared it off so he can use it for homework now.

We purchased a $12 Ikea LACK table to provide a new spot for his TV. We also put a bin underneath to hold all his videogame systems.


BEFORE - Closet


AFTER - Closet

Alex purged a lot of his clothes he no longer wears, and we brought in a shoe organizer, a drawer system, and some bins. Much better!


We added a shelf above his bed for all his trophies.

We placed a chair here as a place for him to sit to play his videogames. For the University of Utah artwall, we found all the images online and printed them on a color printer. The frames are old ones that we painted black.




So there you go, a teenage boy room on an extreme budget!

Melissa's House

Hey remember when I used to post on this blog? Yeah me too. Well I decided to dust off my blogger dashboard today and show you these before and afters from my friend and client, Melissa. I've posted about the progress at her house a couple times, including the last post about the art I made for her kitchen. Today I'm showing you the pictures from her family room. This room is huge! We worked on it for a few months, and it's about 99% done now. She just has a few more pillows to add, her mom is making the covers for her and they're not quite done. But as you will see, it has come a long way.

Here's how it looked when they moved in, lots of red, lots of floral curtains.


And here's how it looks now, from the same angle.


View from the fireplace.




We stayed budget friendly by incorporating a lot of things that Melissa already owned like her apothecary jars and candle holders.










Picture of Melissa's parents, along with a bowl full of ceramic number balls representing Melissa's wedding date and state she was marrried, AZ of course. This moss bowl was probably one of my favorite finds for her room, it's from Home Goods.




Love it! Some of these pictures are by me, some by Melissa. Thanks Melissa!

DIY Art for the Kitchen

I helped a client with the space above her kitchen cabinets over the weekend. This is a tricky space, and brings visions of dusty fake ivy plants to many of us I am sure. We wanted to avoid that.

Here is the end result.


This particular kitchen has quite a bit of height above the cabinets so I wanted to put some artwork up there. I wanted something graphic and modern that would bring in some color; so I came up with this "EAT" sign. This is a quick and cheap project and I loved how it turned out.

Start with a piece of plywood. You can pick it up at Home Depot or Lowes, and they'll cut it to any size you want. This one is about 20x35 and I had it left over from another project.


You'll also need to print out whatever image you want to transfer onto the plywood. I typed "EAT" in a Word document in font size 600; each letter took up a full page. The font is "Fiesta" and you can download it free here. I also printed out the fork and spoon image which you can download here.

Next prime your plywood with white paint primer using a roller. This step isn't completely necessary, but I did it to make sure my green paint would be saturated enough.


Confession: I was going to have a nice styled picture for each of the remaining steps like a good blogger - but I ended up frantically finishing it at about 11:00 at night with no time or patience for pictures. This is how I do most of my projects. Whoops.

After your primer dries, apply two coates with a roller of your desired color. I used Olive Marinade by Valspar.

Allow paint to dry. Then, using graphite paper - trace your printed image onto the wood with a pencil. Lay the graphite paper, graphite side down, on the wood. Line up your printed images and place over the graphite paper. Trace the outline of each letter, and the fork and spoon, with a pencil.


Finally, fill in your traced outline with a paint pen. This is the easiest part. I'm not too steady with a paint brush, and so paint pens to the rescue. I picked mine up at Michael's.


And you're done! Really cheap, pretty easy.

Pillow Combo

So excited for this pillow combo I put together for our client Melissa's room. The green pillow cover is from Ikea (only $6.00!). The gray pillow will be made with Chipper fabric which seems to be popping up everywhere lately. I found it a few weeks ago at Home Fabrics (if you're local it's on Stapley and Baseline) for only $6 bucks a yard. You can also get it online here for $9.99 a yard. The blue pillow is from Cost Plus World Market ($19.99).

Melissa found the green damask fabric that we're going to use for her window seat. This room is almost done and it's looking so great! Can't wait to show it to you.



Here are some examples of the chipper fabric in action.


Caitlin Wilson Design




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