Made With Love: Modern Boys Nursery

Isn't this such a fun, welcoming nursery? Sara Murphy created this whimsical nursery for her baby boy. This room was made with a lot of love - mom, dad and both grandmas made this room very special!!

What gave you the idea for the room? Anything special that inspired you? 

When designing my nursery, I decided I wanted non-traditional colors and a theme that was not widely used in nurseries. After looking at tons of different bedding, I was thumbing through an IKEA catalog and came across a fabric that I thought could be a cute start to my nursery. The fabric that became my starting point was white with bright green and black outlined unique looking birds and leaves. My mom is a mural artist, so knowing that the fabric was very unique...I was confident that she could paint something for me to pull the theme all together.

What is the wall paint color? Any do-it-yourself projects? 

 

The wall paint color was a Behr- Happy Camper Green. We painted 3 walls with the green color, and left one bright white with hand painted black polka dots. In addition to the unique colors, I wanted to have my mom paint something special for my son on the wall. I really wanted her to paint a tree to tie in the birds on the fabric, but had a tough time thinking of how to incorporate a tree using black, white and green. What we came up with was definitely not your typical whimsical tree, but seems to fit the style of the room quite well.  She also surprised me with three hand painted canvases that tied in all the typical things that are interesting to boys.

Please share any bedding, art, furniture finds? What's your favorite purchase?    Any interesting facts our readers would want to know? 

The bumper, dust ruffle and mobile was all sewed by my mother in-law, and the fitted polka dot sheet was bought from JC Penney's on-line. All the art work in the room, including the painted canvases was painted by my mother. Our dresser/ changing table was bought for $40 on craigslist. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into this piece. My husband stripped about 5 layers of paint off of it, sanded it, repainted it, and added new hardware. Many of the accessories, including the lamps, area rug and green boxes were purchased from IKEA. The rest of the accessories were either purchased at TJ Maxx, craft stores, or was stuff that I had on hand.

I cannot pinpoint a favorite purchase, since we were so blessed to have a talented set of grandmas that we were able to hand paint and hand sew the most important parts of the room-- which are the central focuses for the whole nursery.

Some interesting things to know about our nursery, is after we had the tree painted- leafy with red "berries"- there is a specie of tree called the Rowan, which is the name that we had picked out for our son.  Also, even though we wanted to provide the most special nursery for my son, we also wanted to accomplish that goal on a low budget. Through the many talented people in my family, and my eye for a bargain- we were able to outfit our entire nursery for under $300 (excluding the crib and glider).