The New Nursery Mural

Remember how the nursery used to be covered with the flower fairy mural? (If not, you can see them here and here.) Well, since we are having a boy this time, we really needed to change that! My inspiration was a painting and poem by one of my favorite artists, Greg Olsen, called Airship Adventures:

"All aboard the kitchen table for a journey to the sky!
It's now our magic airship, and it can really fly!
Off on new adventures, above the clouds we go,
Sailing on imagination's breeze, we leave the earth below.
For fun we like to parachute and quietly float down,
And have our vessel pick us up before we hit the ground.
Up here there are no limits to the sights that one can see,
And we think that we could sail forever into eternity.
Then comes the call that sends us home as fast as we are able,
It's dinner time, and Mother says we have to set the table."

So, the new nursery is based on vintage airplanes:







And close ups of the airplanes:




And my favorite:


I was able to keep the clouds from the previous mural, and it didn't take nearly as much time. Which was really good, since painting with a 2 yr old wanting to help presented a challenge!

My mom has finished quilting his baby quilt, done in reproduction vintage fabrics from the 30's. She'll be bringing it out when my parents come see the baby and his blessing. I'm excited to see it!

Painting Clouds

When I painted my daughter's nursery, I had wanted to do a room with clouds for years. Most of the ones I had seen were done with white paint sponged over a blue back ground. I wanted something that was more subtle and with greater depth to it, so this is what I did instead:

Nursery Clouds

My clouds are not actually white at all. They are the background blue color of the walls. Here are the steps:

1. Paint the entire surface a background of light blue and let dry. I used Walmart's Bonnet Blue.

2. Mix Folk Art Ultramarine Blue with some of the Bonnet Blue to deepen it's tone. Then mix the result with 4 parts of glaze. Add about 10% of water.

3. Right before you glaze a wall, prep the wall surface by spraying it with a solution of half water and half glaze mixed in a spray bottle. You want it to stay moist as you work. You also only want to do one wall at a time. If it is a big wall, you might even want a helper.

4. Decide your approximate horizon line. I recommend either 1/3 or 2/3 down from the top of your mural. Also, decide where the light source is coming from.

5. Starting at the top of the wall, apply the blue glaze in horizontal strokes, across the entire surface of the wall, lightening as you get closer to your horizon line. (The sky is a lighter shade of blue near the horizon than it is high in the sky.) I applied the glaze with a brush, but I wonder if a small roller would make a more even application.

6. While the glaze is still wet, use a damp sea sponge to pull off the glaze in cloud shapes. Use a dry softening brush to soften edges with gentle horizontal strokes. You can mist with the "water and glaze only" solution if it seems to be getting dry, but go easy or you'll start to get drips.

6. Let dry. You can come back and lightly sponge with white, gray or even pink or lavender acrylic paint to add further definition and color to your clouds if you'd like. I didn't.

Tips about cloud formation:

-Things that are further away appear smaller. The size of the clouds should get smaller as you near your horizon line.
-Things that are closer are more distinct. The clouds near the top of your wall should have more distinct edges.
-Traditional clouds have billowy tops and flatter bottoms. Think of 3 dimensional clumps of puffs as you work so they don't appear flattened on the wall. Also, be sure to vary your cloud shapes.
- Pull off more paint where the light would be reflecting off the cloud's top, and less paint off the shadowy undersides.
-Check out the sky and study the clouds for a few days before you start.

Columbine Fairy

Iris Fairy

The leaves and flowers I did using Donna Dewberry's One Stroke Techniques, although I had to make up some of the flowers since I didn't have her examples of most of them. Since it was January when I did it, I studied pictures in garden catalogs instead of the actual flowers. I think I would have done some of them differently if I'd had actual examples to work from. For the fairies, I printed off images from the internet and used carbon paper to transfer their outlines to the wall. I then used acrylic paints to paint them. It took me a while since I would only paint one type of flower or one fairy each day. I just kept my paint palates in plastic bags on top of the fridge, so they wouldn't dry out. My older girls have been after me to do something in their room ever since. I finally have a plan, but I may not get to it till school restarts in the fall. It is a lot of work, but really fun!

Flower Fairy Nursery

Elsie's Nursery

I love when people put photos of things they have created on their blogs, so I thought I would put something I created on mine.

Another Angle

I finally got to have my first nursery with our fourth baby. We just never had the space for one with the first three. Since this may be my one and only nursery, I really had fun with it. My inspiration was Cicely Mary Barker's flower fairies, specifically, the forget me knot baby fairy:

Where do fairy babies lie
Till they're old enough to fly?
Here's a likely place, I think,
'Mid these flowers blue and pink,
(Pink for girls and blue for boys:
Pretty things for baby's toys!)
Let us peep now, gently. Why,
Fairy baby, here you lie!

Kicking there with no one by,
Baby dear, how good you lie!
All alone, but, you're not-
You could never be forgot!
O, how glad I am I've found you,
With forget-me-nots around you,
Blue-the color of the sky!
Fairy baby, hushaby!

Blue Bells Fairy

I had always wanted to try my hand at mural art, so I painted the walls with clouds, added a six different varieties of flowers in shades of blue and purple, and finally, hid versions of the Barker fairies among the flowers. Because I love gardening, I tried to recreate actual types of flowers so I could teach my daughter to identify their names: Lavendar, Lilac, Columbine, Sweet Pea, Blue Bells, and Iris. My Mom made a beautiful quilt and pillow (with fabric provided by my MIL from her quilt shop) and crocheted a cozy afghan for my rocking chair. We used a vintage white dresser we already had and bought our first crib, an inexpensive Jenny Lind style. I love the way the room feels and my toddler's surprise when she discovers one of the fairies. Now, I just need to get around to decorating the rest of the house...

Lilac Fairy

Sweet Peas Fairies

I wanted the clouds to be very soft and subtle, more so than just sponging white paint on a blue background creates. If anyone wants to know how to do them, let me know and I will post instructions!