Nursery Projects - Part 1

The first project we started for the nursery, lo those many months ago, was this "easy" beautiful and affordable wall art project that I found online. It turned out to not be particularly easy or affordable, but did end up beautiful, I think.

Originally, I was going to cover the squares with scrapbook paper or pictures, but then found these neat ABC Flower Fairy cards at Land of Nod and decided to use my nine favorite cards instead. Chrissie and I started the project cutting the foam board to size and adhering white cardstock way back when the Vos were visiting in April. Several different types of adhesive,many pieces of cardstock, and one trip later, we decided that adhesive and the foam/cardstock combo was just not going to work or get the look we wanted. So, at her suggestion, I bought bleached muslin instead that we used to cover the squares. In the meantime, the cards arrived and I decided I didn't like the gold edging. However, once I cut it off the edges were ragged so I decided to frame each card with grosgrain ribbon, which then had to be located in the appropriate colors.

Finally, we had all the supplies and my Mom had cut the fabric to size. (Of course, I mis-estimated and she had to go buy more, but she loves the quilt shop so that was OK). Nine squares suddenly seemed like a lot to cover, but we got it done with lots of thumb tacks. I then added the white grosgrain to the edges of the squares tacking it down with pearl headed pins. Then, we adhered the flower cards and their respective ribbon edgings. This, of course, took several sessions.

Finally, Chrissie came to visit again, I finished the edges and we ready to hang them up. Brent helped with the orientation of various panels. Then, he and Chrissie proceeded to hang them all with wall adhesive, laser level, ladder and much cooperating. A few hours later, yes, another adhesive failure as all but two had fallen off. This time, Chrissie moved on to serious hanging strategy and each now is affixed with two nails. It has been more than a week and they are all still up. I've had to fix a couple ribbon adhesive issues too, but I think at long last it is up and beautiful. Thanks on this project go to Chrissie, Eric, Brent, Audra, Marilyn and my Mom all of which were very patient as I churned through various ideas, adhesives and failures. Thanks!

If you want information about the supplies or any more information on how to do a project like this let me know and I'll gladly share our lessons learned. There is also a similar, and maybe more successful version of this project that I recently saw online here if you are interested.