{craft the catalog} West Elm Shadow Fossil Leaf Pillow Covers

I immediately fell in love with these pillows when I saw them in the West Elm catalog. They seemed so unique and I love the go-with-anything grays. But I have a hard time spending a lot of money on throw pillows, so I got to wondering if I could DIY something similar using a fake fern as a stencil. The result? Well, see for yourself...

I love them! And I hope you do, too. Plus, hello... less than half the cost! Here's what you'll need to recreate the look.

Supplies:

• 1 1/2 yds fabric (heavy weight cotton)
• 2 shades of gray paint (I used Folk Art Steel Gray and Medium Gray)
• 2 fake ferns (I got mine in a bunch from Michaels)
• 18x18 pillow insert
• 12x16 pillow insert

Start by cutting your fabric... you'll need:

• 1 piece that's 18.5x18.5
• 2 pieces that are 18.5x12.25
• 1 piece that's 12.5x16.5
• 2 pieces that are 12.5x11.25

Then lay out some trash bags to protect whatever you're working on, and paint your first fern the lighter shade of gray. You can use whatever you want to paint the fern... I found a foam brush worked pretty well. Try to get good coverage with your paint, and make sure to get the stem.

Then stamp the 18.5x18.5 and 12.5x16.5 pieces of fabric. Press firmly, but don't worry about any imperfections. This isn't supposed to look perfect.

Wait a few minutes (not several, just a few... if the paint dries on the fern it will peel off when you go to re-stamp) and re-stamp over what you just did with the same paint color. I found that double stamping made it look much better. Again, try to line it up but it doesn't have to be perfect. Then repeat with your darker paint color. The West Elm pillows have the darker gray layered over the lighter gray, but I tried that and it just looked like I screwed up. So this was my alternative.

Let the fabric dry overnight, then heatset with a dry iron. Use your other fabric pieces to sew a basic envelope pillow. I won't bore you with a tutorial since there are already several good ones online. I particularly like this one.

Here's how they look in their final resting place... our bedroom!

Let me know if you have any questions about the tutorial! I hope you guys are liking these DIYs. I have one more planned out for now and am looking for more, so let me know if you see anything you think is ripe for knocking off. :-)

{nursery progress} paint!

It took us 1 coat of primer, 3 coats of wall paint, and 2 coats of ceiling paint - but the painting is finally done!  As a reminder, here's how it looked before:

And here's how it looks now!

We covered every inch of that room with paint - the walls, the built-ins, the trim, the window, the ceiling, and even that old door.  Before we started I had tested some pretty big patches of a couple different colors on each wall, so I was pretty sure the color we picked would work out - but there's always that moment of panic after you get the first coat on when it's too late to turn back and you're still a couple coats away from being able to see the finished product.  But thankfully it's exactly what I'd envisioned - a rarity in the life of a DIYer.  (PS... the paint is Acro Pure No-VOC from Miller Paint in "Teal Treat" #0712.  The white paint is also No-VOC in a semi-gloss finish... they apparently don't recommend water-based paint for trim because it doesn't spread as well, but we used a soft bristled brush and it worked out great.)

You'll notice that the old door is still there... we realized that a new door would also need a new frame and that was just way more than we were ready to take on.  So we sanded the old door so that it actually closes, and I even managed to fix the mortise lock so we don't have to replace that either.  We're going to leave the glass uncovered for now, but I'll probably add a little curtain for it down the road.

Oh, and here's a close-up of the new hardware on the built-ins:

I'm kind of obsessed.

I can't even tell you how happy I am to have the painting done... not only because it means we can get the furniture, but because having to scoot around on the floor painting baseboards while you're nearly 6 months pregnant really really sucks.  Not exactly painless, but totally worth it.

nursery progress: the design plan

Before we found out the baby's gender, I thought I had my mind pretty made up about the direction I wanted to go in for the nursery if it was a girl. (I didn't really have a clue for the boy, so from a design perspective it was rather convenient that the baby turned out to be a girl.) I never ever thought I'd be a pink nursery kind of person, but when I saw this color palette I was a convert. It was the right combination of feminine, fun, pretty, and vintage. I just had to sell Jared on the idea. So I created two mood boards: one with the pink palette and one with a cute yellow/aqua palette I'd seen on one of the baby design blogs I subscribe to. The plan was to make the pink palette so good that he just had to go for it, and make the yellow/aqua palette just so-so. Hey, I never said I was going to be totally objective about this process. :-) Here's the pink mood board I came up with:

Here's the thing. I liked it, but didn't love it. I had a much harder time than I thought I would finding the right fabrics and accessories, and I'm still not 100% thrilled with what I ended up with. It's cute and girly, but it just didn't come together as well as I had hoped.

So then I moved on to creating the yellow/aqua mood board:

And you know what? I completely fell in love with this room. Creating this mood board was fun, unlike the stress I felt trying to create the pink one. It was so easy to find great fabrics, art, and accessories to bring the room to life - which gave me hope that actually shopping for all that stuff would be a breeze. And I really liked the feel of it once it was all done - it's so sweet and cheerful - girly without being too obvious about it.

So I sent the mood boards to Jared for his thoughts, not telling him which one I liked better. He genuinely liked them both, but said there was something about the yellow/aqua room that sold it for him. Phew!

Now that the design was done I went back to the budget worksheet I'd put together to see if we could really have the nursery of our (okay, my) dreams on a $1500 budget. Thankfully, with a good amount of DIYing and a bit of repurposing, it's actually possible. Here's the plan:

To buy:

• Crib
• Mattress
• Dresser
• Rug
• Light
• Sheers
• Cornice kit
• Hardware (the Anthro hardware is a bit of a splurge, but it's one of those elements that really makes the room for me)
• Bookshelves
• 3 Frames
• Hot air balloon print
• Slide out bins for the closet floor

To DIY/sew:

• Painting the walls, ceiling, trim, Poang, bookshelves, and built-ins
• Fabric covered 7" cornice for the window
• 2 changing pad covers
• Crib/play quilt (Amy Butler pattern from Little Stitches for Little Ones)
• Gum Drop Ottoman
• Padded arm rests for the Poang
• Toss pillow for the Poang
• Paper circles mobile
• 2 DIY art prints

So yeah, kinda a lot in the DIY column. I'm desperately going to try to get at least the quilt and ottoman done before the end of my 2nd trimester. The other DIY projects are on the easier side and I can enlist help for those if need be.

We've already gotten the first step of the nursery makeover done - bringing in an electrician to install a light switch for the overhead light (fumbling to find that little chain the middle of the night just wasn't going to happen, plus we feel like having a switch that dims is going to come in very handy) and adding another outlet to the wall where the window is. (For the record, the electrical work was not included in the $1500 budget because we felt like it was something the room needed regardless of what we used it for.)

The next step is paint! Luckily, Jared's "never painting another room in this house ever again" vow is no match for the love he has for his pregnant wife and beautiful unborn daughter, so we'll be tackling the painting together. I'll try to post pics of our progress along the way, so stay tuned...