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A House Full of Sunshine

The art of making home

A little girl’s gallery wall… and a room reveal!

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We’ve been in our house for almost a year, and I’ve still never shown you any pictures of Allegra’s room… until today! (Hooray!)

It’s been almost finished practically forever. The bones were there: the beauty of building new is that a lot of decorating decisions are made at the plan stage. I’d asked the builder to add VJ panelling (beadboard) to the lower part of the walls, and chose a soft girly pink for the top half  – Dulux “Petite Pink”. With those two elements in place, the room already looked quite feminine and pretty.

All it really needed was something on the walls, a nice rug and some bookshelf styling.

I found the perfect rug on sale through Temple & Webster, an online shopping site. Unfortunately, because the site works on the basis of one-off sales that run for one week only, I can’t give you the source for the exact rug I used, as it’s no longer available. I do get asked about my sources quite a bit, so because I don’t like to disappoint, I found these lovelies for you at homewares super-store Zanui, with nationwide delivery for my Australian readers – just click the image to learn more. (Affiliate links used)


And because 90% of my readers are American (yes, for real!) – I can’t leave you lovely people out! Here are some adorable pink-themed rugs from U.S. sources, any of which would look oh-so-sweet in a little-girl room:

So, we had the floor rug situation sorted, and the room was looking better already.

We already had the white slipcovered armchair from Ikea, and I didn’t even buy new cushions for it, since the ones I used in Allegra’s last nursery at our old house were perfectly good. (I KNOW. How self-disciplined am I???! Let’s please pause for a moment to appreciate my restraint.)

Instead of indulging my cushion obsession, I turned my attention to a bit of bookshelf styling. The bookshelf faces the armchair. It used to be an orangey pine colour, but I painted it white and distressed it for a shabby-chic effect.

I started by emptying all the books onto the floor, and then sorting them by colour to create a rainbow effect. It’s funny – this is one of those little design tricks with big impact that I’ve seen other people do over and over, but for some reason I’d always looked at the motley assortment of books on Allegra’s shelf and thought it wouldn’t work for us. When the colours are all muddled up higgledy-piggledy like normal, it doesn’t look like you’ll have enough of any one colour to make the rainbow thing happen. It was SO much fun to give it a try and discover that we actually did have enough variety amongst our books to create some blocks of colour. And it looked pretty cool.

I found the adorable polka-dot tin buckets at Target. They hold Allegra’s tights and headbands. A few of her extra-special stuffed toys and dolls found their way onto the shelf as well. Her “everyday” toys and dolls live in the wooden box with the star cutout at the foot of her cot.

The next detail to take care of was the blinds. I’d picked budget-conscious white Romans for this room, with the intention of dressing them up somehow. I removed the flexible rod threaded through the bottom seam of the blind so they would sit with a gentle swag, and added some wide pink cotton header tape, tied into a bow. To release the blinds, we just pull to untie the bow. Because the ribbon is threaded under the velcro band at the top of the blind, it stays in place beautifully until it’s time to tie them back up again. 
Amazing how one simple, 5-minute fix adds an extra layer of femininity to the room and takes the blinds from builder-standard to custom-looking and pretty. 

Lastly, and most important – a gallery wall for above the cot! I started with the two canvas prints of Allegra’s newborn photos, then built around those. The framed picture that says “This is the start of something beautiful” was found at Spotlight, as was the butterfly shadow-box.

Incidentally, I had planned on doing a DIY version of the butterfly art, but realised that by the time I paid for a butterfly punch, shadow-box frame and scrapbooking papers, it would be cheaper just to buy it ready-made. No point doing DIY for the sake of it. Sometimes DIY can be the more expensive option!

I had the monogram letter “A” already, and bought three more small frames to complete the arrangement, including one with a nice baroque detail. I laid them all out on the rug to get a loose feel for how they would fit together.

Because these frames are all super light-weight, I hung them with command adhesive, and just eyeballed the placement. I have a little rectangular spirit level the size of my pinky that sits neatly on top of a frame: best tool ever for hanging pictures straight quickly and easily. (It came in a pack of Command adhesive, if you’re wondering where to get one!) And the beauty of the Command adhesive is that they attach with velcro, so if you step back and it’s looking a bit wonky, you can easily rip it off the wall and make a fractional adjustment.
This is how the arrangement came together up on the wall. Pretty close to what I’d envisioned – I just swapped over the two frames at the bottom left, as they were feeling a bit too top-heavy the other way. 
The chalkboard print on the right that says “And she will be loved” came from Etsy as an instant digital download.
The two frames on the left were DIY’ed. I just raided the scrapbooking aisle at Spotlight for a couple of pretty papers and a little pack of embellishments. For the bottom frame, I layered a cut-out “Cherish” button over a paper doily; the top one says “be happy, be yourself”. For wall art that literally took 5 minutes to throw together, I was so pleased with how they turned out. I think they look quite sweet!

So, that’s the story of this finally-finished nursery. Allegra is 2 now, so she won’t be my baby much longer. I don’t even want to think about her outgrowing this cot – far too sad! For now, we’ll keep enjoying as much snuggle time in the white armchair as I can possibly sneak in.

Let’s chat: What theme have you used for a girl’s bedroom? Anyone have any idea how we can keep our babies small for just a bit longer…?
Photos by Living Lens
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Comments

  1. Lynne Grierson says

    What a beautiful room Karen! Your gallery wall is lovely, I use command strips to hang pictures as well and love the convenience of being able to make little adjustments to how they sit. I am also so impressed by your cushion restraint! I just left a visit to Adairs without any cushions in my bag!! Maybe we are both making baby steps to recovery from our addiction. šŸ™‚

  3. April says

    Your daughters room is gorgeous. That&#39s too cool that you included american links too. lol

  4. Lynne Grierson says

    What a beautiful room Karen! Your gallery wall is lovely, I use command strips to hang pictures as well and love the convenience of being able to make little adjustments to how they sit. I am also so impressed by your cushion restraint! I just left a visit to Adairs without any cushions in my bag!! Maybe we are both making baby steps to recovery from our addiction. šŸ™‚

  6. April says

    Your daughters room is gorgeous. That's too cool that you included american links too. lol

  7. JoannaMurnan says

    Wow, what a gorgeous room! We&#39ll be setting up my daughter&#39s toddler room before baby #2 arrives and I might have to borrow some of these fantastic ideas!

  10. JoannaMurnan says

    Wow, what a gorgeous room! We'll be setting up my daughter's toddler room before baby #2 arrives and I might have to borrow some of these fantastic ideas!

  13. Jane says

    Hi,
    I love the paint colour choice and want to paint my girls&#39 bedrooms the same. We don&#39t have panelling though and so I&#39m wondering if full strength petite pink will be &#39too strong&#39? or if I should go half strength? Would you kindly advise me šŸ™‚
    Jane

  14. Jane says

    Hi,
    I love the paint colour choice and want to paint my girls' bedrooms the same. We don't have panelling though and so I'm wondering if full strength petite pink will be 'too strong'? or if I should go half strength? Would you kindly advise me šŸ™‚
    Jane

  15. Karen Schravemade says

    Hi Jane! Yep, I&#39d go half strength for sure. The petite pink would be a bit much without the White panelling to break it up. šŸ™‚

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