Nursery Fabric Art

As you've probably gathered from my other posts I'm not the kind of girl who's going to go crazy buying all matching decor for my baby's room. I'm also not that into cute, cartoon characters covering the walls. If I have to look at it, I want to like it. He won't be able to provide an opinion yet anyway, right?

After perusing a recent issue of DIY Magazine I was inspired to try their fabric collage idea for this nursery art project.

My inspiration for the giraffe and the elephant started with some fabric I found for my crib bumpers. I really liked the shape of the animals, so I traced them onto plain copy paper.

Then I outlined the drawing with a thick, black sharpie.

Next, I enlarged each drawing by 400% on a copier and cut out the templates.

I purchased small amounts of fabric in colors/patterns that coordinated with my original fabric and used these templates as patterns to cut out the body of the elephant and giraffe.

I also cut out pieces for the tails, hair, ears, and other accent pieces on each animal. The background for each fabric animal was a 16" x 20" very basic, cheap canvas from the craft store. (I think it was less than $8 for 2) They are not what most artists would use, but they would work for this project.

I painted one canvas blue and the other orange in the same shades from last year's wall art project. Then I attached my fabric pieces using Golden Acrylic Matte Medium.

I happen to have this on hand already, but truthfully it was a bit too think, so I would probably use a thinner adhesive or craft glue if I were doing this project again. I also didn't think much about the fact that my background paint had a satin finish, so the matte medium made the edges around the animals look dull when it dried. I ended up coating the entire canvas with a gloss vanish just to give it a consistent sheen.

Here's a closer look at the finished canvases.

I thought about adding some other elements like leaves or grass, but with all colors and patterns comprising each animal I decided to keep the background simple. At least I now have a few things for these lovely green nursery walls.