Remember how excited we were to cover that old painting with sleek new nature-inspired fabric from IKEA? The pic is below to jog your memory and HERE'S the post on how we accomplished this look.
And then, do you remember how I slaved for days/weeks over this trio of cutie felt owls, below. HERE'S that post for the entire DIY tutorial too.
PS - By the way, that bump is like 100 times bigger these days. It's almost go-time people!
So what happens when you combine these two? Ahhhhhh, check it out below! I'm seriously so smitten I can hardly hold my smile in! Even Walt's guy friends have taken a peek at the nursery and high fived me for my owl wall art work.
Yeah, it's a piece we'll cherish for years and hopefully our lil' man will appreciate his lil' buddies above his crib too. I have to say, if you haven't seen Legend of the Guardians yet, you have to. HERE'S a clip I love from this amazing spectacle of intense and creative animation. It's a family movie everyone will love, seriously. Anyways, we don't love owls where Zola is concerned but they're creatures we respect and have even been spotted HERE in our backyard.
So let's move on with the tutorial. Now let me remind you, you could actually do this type of art with any (flat) stuffed animal type thing. We knew we wanted our owls to be hanging out in their tree canvas but we just weren't sure how to attach these 10" stunners for safety reasons. Once I realized hanging them from a ribbon would do the trick, we were off to the races to complete our DIY nursery wall art. Read on, readers for the how, where and how much.
As soon as I had a few of the front of the owl bodies completed, I placed them on our fabric canvas and bam, I knew those lil' furry babies were 'home!' Done and done...now we just needed to brainstorm how to attach these furry friends.
So we were at Michael's scooping up some magnets for THIS project, and per their usual, they had a huge bin of discounted ribbon. I was looking through it for holiday wrapping needs and came across this rich forrest green spool. And then wham, it hit me! This is how I'd hang those little owls...voila!
I used a few safety pins from my recent purchases and attached the ribbon to the top back of each owl.
And now things get complete ghetto and hilariously creative around CC. We used out kitchen chip clips to attach the ribbon to the back so I could play with the height and placement of the owls on the front. Genius...I think so! I wasn't about to staple those babies on without contemplating exactly where I wanted them to sit pretty first.
I thought about it for about a day and we just rested the entire wall art on the top of the crib. I bet I took it up and down about ten times in 24 hours until I found the perfect combo of high, low, rule-of-thirds goodness.
Walt busted out his trusty staple gun and secured those ribbons into place on the back of the canvas.
Here's a close up.
And the back of the wall art. I mean, no one is ever going to see the back (except thousands of readers, ha!) so I didn't even cut the ribbon. It was a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am job. I wanted to get that art on the wall, pronto.
I told Walt I wanted something super, duper, uber secure for this piece of work. Why? It was hanging over my baby's head! So he headed to Home Depot and opted for these heavy duty fasteners. I trust his judgement and never really truly understood why these were the best choice...in his words, 'They just are!' Well ok then, ha!
He attached them to the back of the frame on the left and right side...
And then put heavy duty anchors and screws into the wall.
This did take some serious measurement perfection. You can just slightly see the fasteners on the back of the canvas on the top left and right of the frame, on top of the fabric. So he had to precisely measure where those holes would land on the wall. And then make sure the screws were lined up and level. So it wasn't a quick and easy process, but most importantly, it was a very safe hanging option.
Hoot-hoo! (You like that, don't cha?) Here is the art, hanging in all it's sweet owl glory. Do you love it? Actually, I hate to be this way but even if you hate it, I don't care! Because I'm so head over heels in love with this piece of work that it almost makes my eyes water. Maybe it's the fact that those lil' felt faves took hours to make and all the nights I spent sewing, just made me think of our lil' man. Or wait, maybe it's the fact that Walt and I really did create this entire piece together. Remember, the painting underneath is an oldie but goodie. You can spy its bright turquoise goodness HERE.
We are hootin' and hollerin' over here about our baby boy's fresh new wall art and hope you enjoy it too. Let us know if you tackle something similar in your house, we'd love to see pics! Send them to us via CasaCullen@Gmail.com and maybe (just maybe) you'll see your creative goodness live on CC too! Enjoy!
