It’s time to reveal the finished room I created for my baby daughter, Allegra. In Part One of this post, I took you through a step-by-step tutorial of how I painted the polka-dot feature wall. If you missed that post, you can read it here.
We had professional newborn photos taken by talented photographer Ali Russell of Live Laugh & Love photography. I chose to have two of my favourite shots printed on canvas in black and white, and hung them above the cot. I love how Allegra can look up and see us watching over her.
The polka-dot wall created a sweet dolls-house feel for the room, exactly the effect I was after. It would have looked too busy to polka-dot ALL the walls, but I was left with a blank white wall opposite that also needed some special attention…
I searched everywhere online for the perfect tree decal to stick on the wall. This one ended up being my favourite – I found it here. I loved the simple, sweet design and the fact that I could customise the colours to match my nursery colour scheme. I positioned it on the wall so it looks like the armchair is pulled up in the shade of the tree.
The process of applying a wall decal this large is time-consuming, but not difficult. Basically in comes in heaps of separate pieces – branches, twigs and leaves are all individually numbered, and you place them on the wall according to the numbered picture they supply. This particular wall decal is removable (it peels off without damaging the paint-work), but it’s not re-usable. You can get other wall decals that can be re-positioned and re-used, if that’s what you’d prefer.
The slip-covered armchair is from Ikea.
Beside the armchair is the change table. I used baskets found at Target (the white wicker one) and Sam’s Warehouse (the natural woven ones) to corral all our baby gear. The white basket holds disposable nappies within easy reach while changing; in the bottom basket I store rolled white terry-towelling spit-cloths (also within easy reach when sitting in the armchair to do a feed.) The other baskets at the back hold miscellaneous, lesser-used baby gear such as swimmer nappies, spare packets of nappy-sacks and so on.
It’s a particularly small room, but it’s airy and light-filled thanks to the large sliding-glass door that leads out to the balcony. The house is quite elevated, so there’s a nice view down over trees and the nearby mountain.
From my armchair, this is what I get to look at…
The white ceramic drum stool is something I’d been lusting after for a while. It’s such a versatile and on-trend decorating item. But at the hefty $160-$180 price tag that I was seeing everywhere online, I couldn’t justify the cost. Then I found this one… at The Reject Shop!! FOR $40!!!! And it was identical in every way to the higher-priced stools I’d been looking at online.
Complete. Score. I was so happy, I bought two! One is now being used in our living room as a side table.
The bookshelf houses our collection of board-books, as well the stuffed toys and dolls that have been given to Allegra.
