DIY Nursery Decoration

This DIY nursery decoration is simple, easy and adorable! Decorate your baby’s room with a collection of them or make one or two to add some fun to a small space.

When I was pregnant with Ryan, I ended up taking an early maternity leave and quickly got bored watching daytime TV, looking at registries, and lurking on The Bump boards. So I started making things because that’s what I do when I have nothing to do. I made a cute set of little prints for what I envisioned to be Ryan’s nursery and planned to frame and hang them lovingly above his crib in his nursery because that’s what you do when you’re an expecting mom.

Fast forward today: I never made that beautiful nursery of my dreams before Ryan was born because we started the process of buying a house right before he was born. He lived in our room in a Pack n’ Play while we lived at my MIL’s until we moved into our house 5 weeks after he was born. I never got around to decorating his room, much less framing and hanging a single nursery decoration I made, and at some point, I gave up and just taped them to the wall, where they sat bright and happy for months.

That is until Ryan climbed on top of a box that was temporarily in his room and promptly tore one of them. Such is life with toddlers.

Since you all seemed to love my Teach Yourself How to Hand Letter post, (it’s my most popular post on the blog!) I  thought this presented me with the perfect opportunity to re-do this print and document it for you all! This DIY nursery decoration is so easy and looks so cute. Plus, there are infinite possibilities for what you can do with this method! So let’s get to it.

DIY Nursery Decoration

First, decide the animal you’d like on your print. I wanted my words and animals to kind of match, so for this example, I’m showing you a giraffe. Obviously, you don’t need to do an animal – like I said, the possibilities are endless! to get your silhouette, just Google “Giraffe Silhouette” and go to images. a bunch will show up, so choose which works for you and your project. Save and print the silhouette in the size you want.*

Choose what you’d like the silhouette to look like. I chose this fun yellow scrapbooking paper. Flip it over and glue the silhouette to the back of the scrapbook paper. Remember that the end result will be reversed, so if you need/want a certain orientation, you can either print it in mirror image or cut the shape out and trace it upside down.

Choose your wording. I chose “Stand Tall” for the giraffe print. Do some searching, think it out, and come to a decision. Then decide on the type of font and layout you want. I like to peruse Pinterest and Etsy for inspiration on things like this. As for fonts, I use dafont.com to find funky fonts to use. I could spend days on that site. I’m aslo working on a post for creating your own font/alphabet to use for inspiration, which was helpful for me in this case. Keep an eye open for that! Once you’ve decided, sketch out your design on scrap paper.

Take your paper and place your new silhouette onto it, tracing the edge loosely so you know where your words shouldn’t go. I don’t recommend glueing it yet since if you mess up (like I did, no shame.) you’ll have to start 100% over. Now start to sketch out your words with a pencil lightly until you have it looking just right. I highly recommend using my hand lettering tutorial to help you out here!

Go over it with pen or marker. I used black because I like the look of black lettering, but you can also use coloured pencils or markers here if you wish. Erase all of your pencil marks and glue your animal to your paper, and then make adjustments as necessary. Let dry and you’re done! Like I said, super easy, super simple and super cute!

*Please note: for this, I used 8.5 x 11 cardstock. But keep in mind that frames for this size are a lot less common. You can use any size for this, though.

So have you tried hand lettering yet? Are you convinced to give it a try? Have you ever made a decoration for your home? Let me know in the comments!

If you liked this post, you may also like these!

Teach Yourself How to Hand Letter

 

15 DIY Gifts for Grandparents

Create a Nursery in Your Bedroom