A Bold Stripe For a Bold Girl

It’s totally different designing a nursery than a children’s room.  When you design for an unborn child, you design more for the parents.  When you design for a child, you get to take their personalities and interests in mind.  My BOLD-LIL-BEAN loves flowers and blue…well at least the week I started working on her big girl room.  So when I found the Marimekko fabric to wrap an existing canvas painting I no longer liked, I knew it was perfect to update her space.  Besides the fun floral, I love the wide stripes on it and knew it was a perfect way to incorporate elsewhere like her drapes.  I ordered a few different swatches of black and white stripes.  The striped pattern actually runs vertically off the bolt but I really wanted to run hers horizontal instead.

After hanging three options of wide stripes up, ultimately, I decided to go with the widest for the biggest impact. Sydney agreed although she was busy wearing her life vest and reading her potty training book so I’m not really sure if she put her all into that decision.  Oh to be young! The pattern is a 3″ stripe called — Vertical from Premier Prints.  I love it and can’t wait to get it ordered and sew in some blackout lining.  I’m praying that a darker room that my kids may be tricked into taking some naps again!!!  A Mother can dream at least…

The other two patterns can be found {HERE} & {HERE} at Warehouse Fabrics online.

Sophisticated Silhouette Baby Shower

A friend of mine, Shannon, (Mother of 2 and overwhelmed with baby shower details) hired me last minute to put together this baby shower for her girlfriend.  She had some plans in the works but ended up needing help pulling together the shower she had envisioned.  She hoped for yellow and grey with a modern setting and pretty flowers.  With no particular theme, I decided to use a silhouette of a baby girl so that I had something to pull through the entire party as well as infuse a little “baby” into this sophisticated-modern shower.

Rather than using a solid color for the baby silhouette, I merged the shape with a grey and white diagonal pattern.  I love that it was also repeated in the table runner fabric.  I finished her off with a flower and rhinestone headpiece and she was ready to party!  Guests found this with their names at each place setting.

Fabric — Waverly: Square Root Sterling

Flowers were the next order of business.  When you don’t have a huge floral budget, I always suggest using smaller groupings of flowers.  By making a variety of smaller arrangements, you are able to spread them out on the table, making for a fuller look.  Plus, smaller vases need less flowers to fill them up.

I used a different fabric for the table cloth on the favor/sign in table.  The diagonal stripe was repeated on that print as well.  Atop sat the favors– baby feet shaped cookie cutters dressed up with a tag displaying the guest of honors due date.  Before heading to their dining table, guests left their sentiments for the Mommy on strips of paper that were folded up and left in the cardboard honeycomb.

Fabric–Amy Butler: Midwest Modern Optic Blossom Linen

The whole shebang took place at Scott’s in Walnut Creek.  Their outdoor terrace was such a beautiful venue and it’s amber colored ceiling cast such a warm glow for the shower.

On To Baby Feature: #1 Real Birthday Party!

Today I received an email from my friend– subject line saying “Did you see?”  Ohhhhhhh…my curiosity was peaked!  Inside it read “You’re party is listed as #1 on the On To Baby top 5 parties today.”  Wow I was just not expecting that!  I followed the {LINK} and there it was, Miss Sydney enjoying her ice cube tray lunch at her 2nd Birthday Party.  I’m so very excited that this party was listed in the top 5 as the “most viewed Real Parties”!  Thank you OTB and Happy 1 year Anniversary to them.  The On To Baby blog is such a fantastic site bursting with beautiful images and information for all things baby and kids.  They’ve been kind enough to feature Sydney’s Russian Doll party as well as my Winnie the Pooh baby shower. If you are on the hunt for great inspiration images you should definitely check it out.

Valentine’s Card-Eye On You!

I used to be pretty crafty in my younger–less busy years.  I always told myself that when Sydney started school, it would give me the excuse to dust my skills off and make cute little things for her classmates come Holidays and Birthdays. So here we are…Miss Beans is in Pre-School and it’s Valentines Day tomorrow!  I scoured Pinterest for inspiration and ran across {THIS} adorable idea on the Makes and Takes blog.  I wanted to make it my own so I used a variety of digital scrapbook files in Photoshop and created my own rendition.  After laying out all of my patterns, monster and text, I printed out all the parts, cut and assembled them and added the eye. These did take me a long time between design and assembly but I’m really excited and can’t wait until Sydney can take them to all her little Valentine’s tomorrow!

INGREDIENTS:

ETSY- Shop: VN Digital Art – Doodle Flower

Lily Bimble – Zig Zag

Fei Fei’s Stuff – Doodle Frame (freebie  that I don’t think is available anymore)

Googley Eyeballs (I found mine at Joann’s and they are self stick)

Monster– I hand drew in Photoshop and layered on my digital paper

Fruit Leather

In The Works-Tween Room

I haven’t spoke much of this project but it’s a big one!  I am slowly working through the entire house and wanted to share a few update photos that are just from my iPhone but you’ll get the idea.  This was such a fun room for a sweet tween-aged girl.  Her family just had moved to the Bay Area when they hired me and we really wanted to make it special for her so she had something to be excited for during a tough transition.  Amongst her requests was a comfy chair to cozy up and read in, a canopy and a garden!  When I went back recently to hang the drapes I was pleasantly surprised to find she had been taking such great care of her garden.  I was so proud of her…my young grasshopper!

See that Moroccan print on the drapes….that will be repeated in the room in a really fun way but you’ll have to stay tuned for the results.

Next on the list to finish up the room is to hang the art.  I worked on getting just the right frames for each print and had some custom mattes cut to accentuate a few of them. The black frame with the dog face will have to be painted.   I can’t wait to see the end result.  She is an animal-ocean-reading lover so the wall is a collection of many of her favorite things.