Flashback Friday!

Each Friday I’m going to make a post about something I’ve made or done from a loooong time ago. I might even post pics of me as a child! Yay!

Without further adieu, may I present to you my nursery!

I painted and decorated this nursery for my firstborn in 2002. I kept the same theme and added pink when my daughter was born in 2004. The entire poem border is hand painted. Many have asked if I used a stencil – no, I free-handed the entire poem which reads:

Star Light Star Bright,
First star I see tonight
I wish I may, I wish I might
have this wish I wish tonight.

It took me about six weeks, but I could only paint a few hours a day while my son was napping in another room.

First I painted the entire room light blue. For the stars, moons, and words I used quart sized paints from Sherwin Williams and a small artists brush.

I worked out all the details on paper before I started. First, I measured each wall and added them all together. Then I added up the number of letters and spaces and commas and divided it by the number of inches in the room. After that I used a yard stick, tape measure, level, and painters tape to tape off the area I was going to paint – I made two parallel tape lines around the top of the room. After that I measured every increment that I’d previously figured out and put a small piece of tape to mark off each section.

After that I knew that every section was for one letter, space, or comma. Once the letters were done I free-handed the stars and moons. I didn’t use any pencil beforehand. I just drew with paint and if I messed up I covered it up with the light blue paint. While I worked it out on paper before hand I practiced several writing styles to decide what type of font I wanted to use.

All of my accessories I found on ebay, Target, IKEA, or discount stores. The crib and dresser were a gift from my parents.

My mom was going to throw this shelf away. I pulled it out of her trash can. It was dirty and broken. I removed the section under the shelf that had pegs on it, cleaned it up, painted it, and added wall hooks to the back of it. I found the cute star and moon pegs under it at Target.

When we moved from this house I was so sad to leave my custom paint border behind. Once the kids were both out of a crib, I sold all the star and moon accessories in a lot together on ebay.

So yes, believe it or not, in addition to everything else on this blog, I can also PAINT. 🙂