Nursery DIY on a Dime

Since we are living in a temporary rental home at the moment, we didn't have too much freedom as far as decorating our nursery. With it being our first child, of course I wanted to go all out. But the voice of reason, also known as Dan (my husband), said to be realistic with paint choices and decorations--he promised when we buy our own house I can let loose. Fortunately, before we moved in, a little girl had claimed that room as her own, and it was already painted a light shade of yellow with pink below the chair rail. We didn't care too much for the yellow, so we made it more neutral and went with a light tan...I think the color name was "coffee creamer" or something that sounded yummy at the time.

Here is where the fun part begins and my creative juices flow...of course being a newly married young couple with our first child on the way, our pocketbooks had no choice but to be tight. Hey, I'm always up for a challenge...I am a deal finder (thanks Mom, I will pass down the skill to my kids!) so most of the things I made by hand with recycled items believe it or not.

These decorative wall pieces started off as those old school hat boxes, with an ugly palm tree pattern on the outside. My mom was going to throw them out, but I took them thinking some day I might have use them...and that day came! I covered the lids with three different left over fabric swatches from the drapes and pillows in the room and spruced  them up a bit with ribbon, felt flower petals, and some bling (every girl needs a little sparkle in her life).

The lid on the bottom with the flower design was my favorite to create! All I did was cut out about 30-40 small petal-shaped ovals from a piece of pink felt, pinched them at the bottom with a little hot glue in between, and attached to the lid in a flower pattern. I fact, I liked it so much, I carried that idea over to one of the pillows on the twin bed in the room. (Let me just add real quick that having a twin bed in the nursery has been great for daytime napping for me and baby. I can be in there with her and allow some down time for myself.)

Instead of painting her name on the wall, we decided to use wooden letters on wooden plaques (from Michaels craft store, Hobby Lobby, or JoAnn's). I found some sparkly crystal dresser drawer knobs for $1 each, that we used to hang each letter from.

(Don't worry we don't let Leah sleep with the pillows/blankets/bears in the crib...I just put them in there to take the picture...SAFETY FIRST!)

The mobile was also a handmade bargain! I used two different sized sewing hoops and wrapped them each with ribbon. I had gotten the "nature ball accents pieces" (or whatever the heck you call them) on clearance at Target for like $3 and spray painted them to match the colors in the room. I used some fishing line my husband had in the garage to hang them at different levels...and of course, each piece is adorned with a tear-drop shaped sparkly crystal (75% off in the wedding section at Hobby Lobby...it was a whole strand of crystal garland that I just took apart...I still have tons of crystal pieces left over for future crafts yay). 

Dan and I had some maternity photos taken and wanted to dedicate them to our little girl by hanging some in her room. These are hanging over the twin bed. 

I found these letters with hooks in the dollar bin at the Michaels check out! I plan on hanging some of her headbands from them.

Here is a view of the nursery from the door. One of my favorite things in the room is the pink chandelier! This was a steal too! 50% off at Hobby Lobby!!! Sometimes thrift stores and consignment shops have old ones that you can spray paint and add shades/beading to your liking. We searched high and low all the shops here and couldn't find any so we settled for store bought....but we love it just the same.

I had so much fun getting the nursery ready for our baby girl!  Making the majority of the items makes this room more meaningful to us as a family. I hope some of the things I've shared got your creativity sparkling, and maybe I inspired some of you to go out and recreate your own things instead of dropping big bucks!

Happy Kraftin!