DIY FABRIC-COVERED CUBBY BOXES

I'll be doing a few nursery DIY posts here because my baby's nursery is being featured on Apartment Therapy soon!  I want to share all these DIY tutorials with you now, so that when you see the final room reveal you'll have the low-down on everything.

One of the many DIY projects I did in my son's nursery was 10 of these customized fabric-covered toy storage boxes for the Ikea Expedit bookshelf we already had.  

I came up with the idea because I just wasn't that into any of the store-bought options I found, and I loved the idea of being able to tie in the key prints, colors and fabrics that totally set the tone for his timeless and classic "Little Explorer" nursery.
Two of the fabrics I chose are quilting fabrics from this collection called Circa 1934 by Moda.  The collection has a bunch of vintage-inspired patterns and I absolutely loved the old typewriter keys and cool classic numbers...perfect for a kid's room where he'll eventually be learning to count and read, right? 







To break up all the pattern I decided to also use some simple burlap accented with this jute webbing.  It comes in various widths and colors and it's a great trim...





I LOVE how all these fabrics look together and set a classic vintage tone for the room!  Here's a glimpse of them with some of the other fabrics I knew I wanted to use....

For my project I used Ikea Prant wood boxes because the natural materials and the durability of the wood appealed to me (I try hard to keep plastic to a minimum in our lives).  Sadly they've apparently been discontinued (or at least I can't find them on the website), but I bet you could make it work with either this or this. 
MATERIALS
-Any smooth surface storage box that fits your shelving.
-Fabric
-Decoupage gel like Mod Podge or my trusty Liquitex Matte Gel 
-Scissors
-Iron STEP 1 
-Cut two pieces of fabric for each box.  
-One will be about two inches wider than the front face of the box, and taller than the box by about six inches so you have enough fabric to fold over the top and bottom edges like this:

-The other piece you cut will be long enough to cover the remaining 3 sides of the box, plus the same margins for wrapping that you left on the first piece.
STEP 2 
Fold over all edges about 1/2" and iron (you can also skip this step if you aren't concerned about about a super "clean" fabric edges...the decoupage gel once it dries does a pretty good job of sealing all edges and keeping it from fraying.)
STEP 3 
"Glue" the fabric to one end of the box by brushing the sticky gel on the box surface and smoothing the fabric onto it, wrapping all edges like so:  

STEP 4
"Glue" your second fabric panel to the other 3 sides and slightly overlap the first fabric panel on the box like so...you can just barely see here where the fabrics overlap here on either edge: 

STEP 5
Brush the entire thing with decoupage gel.  The gel dries completely clear and as it does the fabric will tighten up and harden a bit, creating a fairly impermeable, rip-proof, stain-proof surface.  It kind of feels like you laminated the fabric and made it super durable.  
Last, I added the jute webbing trim to the burlap boxes with some Magna Tac fabric glue.  I love that touch!

These cubby boxes have held up really well for us for the past year and a half!  Benicio is now at the age where he can pull them off the shelf and get into them all on his own...I love having this much storage to coral all his little things and keep them put away when need be, and that he also has easy such access to his toys when he wants them.

DIY NAUTICAL BRASS CEILING LIGHT

When I decorated my baby boy's nursery I went with a tiny gentleman/world traveler vibe, and it definitely has some nautical elements to it.  One of these is the "brass" ship light I hung in the center of the room.  It's actually this $30 Ikea light.  My favorite part of this 2-tone fixture was the exposed brass butterfly nuts.



Which got me thinking how much I would like this fixture if it were in a brass finish all over (as I do with most things, let's be honest), especially with the other brass elements I was using in his room like this adorable vintage truck I found while out antiquing...

ROSA BELTRAN DESIGN

So a bit of spray paint (I like either Rustoleum "Brass" or Montana brand gold spray paint) and an edison bulb later and this is what we had...

ROSA BELTRAN DESIGN

ROSA BELTRAN DESIGN

This light gives you the option of either hanging it semi-flush to the ceiling like I did (a good option for standard 8' ceilings.)

OR pendant-style with the long cord intact like this...

LOST & FAWNED

OR hanging it with a swagged cord like this look.  I especially like the jute twine wrapped around the black cord here.  This swag style would work well with slightly higher ceilings than I was working with...

THE LETTERED COTTAGE BLOG

Notice that they also frosted the glass bulb cover?  Check out the whole tutorial here.

And that's what you can do with a $30 light!  Not bad at all, I think. P.S.  In case you're curious, here is the tutorial for the giant elephant wall mural art, and here is the tutorial for the vintage arm chair turned nursery rocker.

DIY GIANT WALL MURAL

I'm a big fan of wall art in the correct dimensions and the right proportions for a space.  I think it's one of the primary hallmarks of a thoughtfully decorated home.  And it's not really about how much the art cost...it's often more an issue of framing and hanging.  Something as simple as a map or literally just sheets of colored paper can look fantastic if the presentation is right...

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And there's nothing worse than a big wall with small chintzy-looking little frames stuck up there.   Case in point:

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OK that might be an extreme example, but even with the whole gallery wall craze, I really can't stand when little 4x6 and 5x7 frames are thrown in.  This is obviously an intentionally decorated space and some might like it just fine, but those little frames are just not my thang...

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I much prefer the look of a gallery wall using larger frames, and I especially like to use wide matts within the frames....all the white space really helps keep the wall from looking cluttered and gives the art room to breathe...

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Better right?  I tend to think that no frame smaller than 8x10 belongs up on the wall...with rare exceptions.  For instance sometimes you can group multiple small frames together to have the same impact as one larger frame...but you must only use this trick sparingly!

LITTLE GREEN NOTEBOOK

But I'm off on a gallery wall tangent when what I really came here to write about today is the huge DIY wall mural I made in my son's nursery.  

ROSA BELTRAN DESIGN (photo Bethany Nauert)

Sometimes a really large scale piece of wall art is what's called for in a room.  I wrote all about one way of doing this affordably with stock photography here.  
For the nursery, I started with the same premise by finding a free online image of an antique engraving with a mama and baby elephant.  I loved the sweet subject matter, and it worked right in with the classic elements and "tiny explorer" theme I have going on in the nursery.  
I knew I wanted a really large piece on that wall above the sofa, so I took the digital image to the print desk at Office Max and for about $7 they blew it up to 36"x48" and printed it out for me.  36 inches tall is the maximum size that those large plotter printers can do...but you can have any length you want because they're printed on a continuous roll of paper. It's super cheap because it's just basic xerox quality and it's only available in black and white.  
I actually wanted mine with warmer sepia tones, so I made a lightly tinted "wash" with just a squirt and brown acrylic art paint diluted with lots of water that I brushed on top of the image.  The paper got a little wet and wrinkly, but as it dried it took on an aged, antiqued look that I liked a lot.

We nailed some basic stick molding to the wall and painted it white to create a giant frame...no glass needed since this would be a collage adhered directly to the wall.  I made the framed area larger than the printed image so that I could surround it with a map border...essentially creating matting for the picture with a collage of maps and making the whole thing even larger than the max size printed image.  I cut up some old maps I had on-hand, and also used a couple of these $5 decorative paper maps found in specialty paper and art stores.

Once I had the layout I wanted, I used Liquitex Matte Gel medium to stick it all up and decoupage the entire collage to the wall.  Liquitex mediums work the same as Modge Podge...it's just more cost effective if you need a large quantity to buy the big tub of Liquitex from the art store. 


And this is the end result.  I love it, but more importantly my baby boy loves it...kids are SO into baby animals!

  There you have it....enormous, high impact wall art for under $30.

OMBRE DRAWERS AND OTHER PAINTED DRESSERS

While I'm on the topic (in my previous post) of ombre sofas, let me tell you about how fun I think ombre-painted dressers are, especially for a child's room or any space you're looking to enliven with a little tongue-in-cheek fun.

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(By the way, there's another dipped chair, a trend I wrote about here.)

Talk about an easy and high-impact DIY!  You'd need so little of each color that you could totally get away with buying just the small paint sample jars rather than full quarts.  I think I like it best when it's done on drawers that stack right on top of one another with no spacing in between, like so...

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This is pretty cute with the nautical colors and rope pulls.  Little sailor's room, anyone?

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For a different nautical vibe, scalloped ombre waves...

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And the perfect pink counterparts.  I love these salmon-y pinks mixed with the kelly green...

PROJECT NURSERY

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Or you can get your ombre on in a more subtle way... 

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I can see any number of inexpensive Ikea dressers lending themselves perfectly to this project, not to mention the multitude of thrift store dressers in America just dying for an ombre paint job!

I definitely see an ombre dresser project in my future, probably in a nursery or little kid's room, which are some of my favorite spaces to design because you get to let your hair down and be a bit cheeky and irreverent.   

And because Pinterest is the bottomless rabbit hole that it is, one image leading to another, and another...here's a great kid's room I just came upon.  Love the herringbone pattern!

DESIGN SPONGE

My parting shot is this art deco green chevron chest with the rounded corners by Nick Olsen from the pages of House Beautiful.  I like it.  A lot.

NICK OLSEN / HOUSE BEAUTIFUL

NICK OLSEN / HOUSE BEAUTIFUL