Vintage Doily Art

Happy Labor Day weekend!  I am enjoying this weekend by relaxing and getting some cleaning and laundry done in preparation for baby's arrival.  I can't believe that it is already September and officially my due date month!

I plan to give a full tour of the nursery in my next post but first I wanted to share a couple of diy projects with you.  The first one is this beautiful and simple art that I made out of doilies and embroidery hoops.  I didn't take any photos of the process because it is so incredibly simple.

I found these doilies at a couple of antique stores.  They are easy to find and it was fun looking through them to find a variety of patterns and sizes.  I was especially excited to find that pale pink one because it fits so well with the colors of the room.  I bought the wood embroidery hoops at Joann Fabrics and decided to buy three different sizes.  I put the doilies in the hoops and then carefully stretched them so that they were taut in the hoops.  I trimmed off the excess doily in each hoop and then applied a line of hot glue around the back of each embroidery hoop to secure the doily in the hoop.

I hung them above the dresser/changing station with simple gold nails.  I can't wait to share a full picture of the dresser once I do a nursery reveal.  It is such a beautiful piece of vintage furniture!

I have one more project to share with you today.  My execution on this one wasn't the best so I will share the original tutorial with you.

I fell in love with these beautiful lace curtains that I found on clearance at Target but I knew that I still needed to block the light in the room somehow.  I decided to buy blackout roller shades because I had seen many tutorials on Pinterest of how to cover them in fabric.  The tutorial that I followed (however I did not follow it very well) was this one from the blog The DIY Mommy. It is a great tutorial but I made a big mistake when I installed the shades.  I should of installed them backwards so that the fabric would cover the roll itself.  I tried fixing it but the shades wouldn't  roll up that way. Because of this I was unable to wrap the fabric around the sides of the shade because it would look bad in the rolled part.

It still looks beautiful and the shades roll up just fine but some of the fabric is starting to bubble because I didn't do a good job of applying the spray adhesive to both the shade and the fabric.  It will be easy to fix but I am just frustrated that it isn't perfect.  It's the curse of being a perfectionist.  I know it is still lovely and much better than plain white roller shades though.  I found that beautiful fabric at Hobby Lobby by the way and with the sale on the fabric I was able to cover 3 roller shades for $25!

Check back next week for the full reveal of the nursery!

Floral Letter + Lace Frame Art

Happy Sunday!  I am happy to announce that the nursery is officially finished.  I will share a full reveal in a few weeks but until then I've got a couple more DIY projects to share from the room. Today I am sharing how I created the floral letter and and lace frame art that is hanging above the crib in the nursery.

The floral letter is actually a repeat project from my blog.  Back in 2014, I created a floral letter R for our porch gallery wall in our last house. I created the floral letter A for this room using basically the same steps (and yes we have a name picked out for baby girl that begins with the letter A but I won't be sharing it on the blog for a while yet).

I started by painting the whole cardboard letter (from Hobby Lobby) gold.

I added the texture that you can see in the paint with this stenciling brush.

I used an awl to poke holes in the letter where I wanted to place the flowers.

Then I used hot glue to secure the flowers in place in the holes that I poked with the awl.

Finally I used ModPodge to attach some lace ribbon to the sides of the letter A.

I didn't take any pictures of how I made the lace frame art partly because they are so easy to make.  I found some open frames on sale at Hobby Lobby.  I used some scrap lace from my fabric stash. Actually the scrap lace in the smallest frame came from my mom's fabric stash and was the lace that she used as part of the bridesmaid dresses that she made for my wedding!  I then cut the scraps to roughly the size of the frames and used hot glue to attach the lace to the frames.  They still seemed to be missing something so I hot glued some of the leftover flowers in each frame.

I felt like the arrangement needed one more thing so I also hung this clock up with the letter and frames.  I actually bought the clock for Lyla's room but decided it didn't work in her room so I am glad to finally find a use for it.

I am so excited to show you the rest of this room!  My next post involves vintage doilies that I turned into art for above the dresser. Keep checking back for that post!

Floral Chandelier

Hello!  I am happy to say that the nursery for baby #2 is nearly finished.  Right now I am in the process of painting the dresser.  All I have left is to buy a crib mattress, mount the camera for the monitor, do 1 more art project, finish hanging decor and organize clothes.  Okay that sounds like a lot still but it really isn't!

Today I am excited to share the 1st of the nursery projects with you.  For this room I decided to go with a floral and lace theme.  If you read my blog then you probably remember the Hot Air Balloon Mobile that I made for Lyla's room.

For this nursery I decided to create a floral and lace chandelier to hang over the crib.  Now my dad pointed out that it isn't really a chandelier without light but if you type floral chandelier into Google you will come up with plenty of images and links of floral chandeliers.  They are quite a big trend for wedding reception decor these days.

This project took quite a few supplies.  Some of them I had on hand and the rest I purchased at Hobby Lobby.  Here are the supplies I used for this project:

• two vine wreaths (one should be larger than the other)
• various floral stems in shades of pink and white
• a stem of greenery (I chose one with several long shoots that I could wrap around the wreaths)
• fishing line for connecting the two wreaths (I didn't have any on hand so I just used jewelry wire)
• lace trim and lace ribbon
• scissors
• hot glue gun and glue

I started by wrapping a stem of the greenery around each wreath.  I used the glue gun to tuck it into different parts of the wreath until I got the look I wanted.  

Next I took the flower heads off of the stems and glued them onto the wreath.  I then connected the two wreaths with the jewelry wire (fishing line).  I made sure to secure the knots with hot glue.

Next I tied pieces of lace ribbon in varying lengths to the bottom wreath.  I had 4 different kinds which really created a nice look.

Finally I attached four pieces of wide lace trim (I had this on hand from another project) to the top wreath and secured them with hot glue.  I tied them together in a knot at the top.  I hung the wreath above the crib from this ceiling hook.  

It was a project that went together fairly quickly and I love the way it looks!  

Thanks for reading my post and I hope it inspired you!  Next time I will write a post about the decor that you can see hanging on the wall behind the crib in one of the photos above.  Have a great day!