Thursday, October 28, 2010

Nursery Artwork

Charley Harper: An Illustrated Life

For a while, I was trying to look for an art print to serve as the inspiration for our entire nursery. I wanted the print to set the colors for our decor palette and set the direction for many of our other design decisions.

I did a lot of wading through Etsy in pursuit of the perfect print, but I lost patience pretty quickly. I kept coming back to the artwork inside the cover of our ABC book, illustrated by Charley Harper. I searched for the print on his website but couldn't find it. Finally, I found a book of all his prints on Amazon. Fortunately, someone had created a video review of themselves flipping through the entire book. It looks like there's a lot of great stuff in there that we can cut out and frame, including the original print I wanted.

I found lots of great art created specifically for kids in mind on Etsy, but I ended up not wanting to create a room with a narrow age range. I think I'm going to let the crafts that I make for the room dictate its design. This means the fabrics will have to be chosen very strategically...

I love the way this mom designed her own fabrics. I will not be doing that, but I will be making an ottoman very similar to hers, and our room will have an element of gray (via the slip cover that's on the sleeper sofa). I'll be adding color through the quilt that will go over the couch, the rug, the ottoman, pillows on the couch, and handmade stuffed animals. I think we might also copy her idea of turning an IKEA bookshelf on its side to use as a kid-sized shelf.

I also love this artist's work. If we have space leftover on our walls, I might have to add one of her pieces to Coconut's collection...

Image courtesy of sugarloop



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3 comments:

Rebecca said...

That is one of the prints on our list. My favorite Charley Harper print for our little guy's room is Devotion in the Ocean. Fabulous Frames and Art has a great website to browse all of Charley Harper's prints. We are lucky enough to live in Cincinnati (Charley's hometown) where Fab Frames is located where they do shows of his work regularly.

www.fabframes.com

Sharpiegirl said...

oh dern....I found this picture of the funniest halloween tshirt if you are pregnant.

http://nanannwoogies.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/2007-10-30-1.jpg

Mama's skeleton and baby's skeleton waving at you

Dana S. Whitney said...

You might want to look at illustrations by Alice and Martin Provensen, too. But can't go wrong with C.H.!

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