Lions, and tigers, and bears! Oh, my! Who knew the cost of sticking a few animal-themed nursery wall decals around my baby’s room could be so pricy! While some sticker companies charge as little as (cough) $40 for a pack of tree wall decals with woodland creatures, others (like Dwell studio) will bill you $120 for some digitally reproduced canvas wall art featuring an owl in a tree. What a freaking hoot!
Nursery Ideas: Paint a tiny elephant and save big money.
Anyhoot, I’m not buying any of it. After searching around my house I came up with a few nursery decorating ideas that wouldn’t burst my kid’s fledgling piggy bank.
By recycling my old Painted Stripes, Wallpaper, and Canvas Wall Art project, buying three $2 canvases from the dollar store, and using my stock of acrylic paints, I managed to spend around $10 to decorate Chloe’s baby room. Take that, insanely expensive baby industry!
Free Nursery Templates:
To help you get into the do-it-yourself spirit, I’m sharing my free nursery templates for your tracing pleasure. These are great for the nursery or for a toddler’s room. Get the older kids involved for a fun and frugal weekend project.
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| Download: Bunny Template | Download: Giraffe Template |
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| Download: Hippo Template | Download: Elephant Template |
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| Download: Snail Template | Download: Bird Template |
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| Download: Owl Template | Download: Nursery Owl Template |
Some stuff you’ll need:
Materials:
- Blank canvas (cheapest at dollar stores or Walmart)
- Paint (Washable Kids Paint is great for DIY projects too.)
- Paintbrushes
- Stencils — Elephant, hippo, owl, snail, bunny, giraffe, or bird.
- Pencil
- Scissors
Nursery Wall Art Instructions:
This is so easy people. I stenciled and painted three charming owls for Chloe’s nursery in one afternoon. Here’s how to get the job done!
Owl. You Need. Is Love.: Add few fun words. Silliness is allowed.
STEP ONE: Download. Choose your favorite animal creature template. Heck, download them all. Use a printer or printing software to enlarge or shrink each template to the preferred size.
STEP TWO: Cut and trace. Use scissors to cut along the stencil lines. Trace stencil onto canvas with pencil.
STEP THREE: Paint. Get creative and paint some colors onto that stenciled canvas. Let dry.
STEP FOUR: Hang. Hang that canvas. I asked my husband (The Carl) to use his handyman level to get each canvas straight along the nursery wall. If my hilarious owls look lopsided, it’s his fault. Yep, that’s my kid’s dresser — I use it as a change table to save money. And check out my frugal cloth diaper stash.
UPDATE, UPDATE, SUPER CUTE UPDATE: You really much check out Taya’s Baby Room on a Budget over at SimplyFrugal.ca. Super cute and classy for around $450.
That’s it! What’s your frugal way to decorate a baby or kid’s room on the cheap?
Love,
Kerry
Your nursery artwork is adorable, Kerry! I think kids really treasure the decorations we make for them, more than some swanky store bought thing. We got dollar store wooden letters in our kids’ names and painted them with the colours and patterns from their quilts. They love them. (At $1 a pop these letters are frugal – shorter names being the most frugal of all 🙂
I found this following idea on another website long ago, sorry I can’t cite the reference: Choose your favorite cards and gift bags received at our baby shower, cut them as needed to create collages, and put them into inexpensive frames for some quick & frugal nursery decor. I used a 3-window horizontal frame for 3 very nice, related looking cards, and did 2 other medium sized pieces cut from lovely gift bags. One gift bag had an image like a watercolored patchwork baby quilt, and I cut pieces from one side of the bag to replace some of my less favorite images with ones I liked better. A nice coat of cheery paint on the walls, and we were pretty much done!
Yep, that’s how we did it! I didn’t want to paint the room and I was looking for something funky. A cute giraffe and birds set of tickets (admittedly bought, no time for handcraft–I just actually had the baby!)did the trick.
Your nursery is so cute! Gifted mama!
LOVE the owls! I DIY most everything for our daughter’s room. Not only is it so much cheaper, but it’s fun and cute! Thanks so much for the free printables!
Great ideas! I have always wanted to take a large picture book and frame some of the pages. Like from Alice in Wonderland, Winnie the Pooh, or other classics. You can even go the Goodwill or a used book store and pick up children books for cheap.
Where did you find the stencils? Trying to find car and truck ones so I can make something like this for my nephews.
@Laura I made the stencils. Sorry, I made animals.
Excellent work indeed. Any of them would look great in a nice frame, on a wall. I don’t think it’s the kind of thing that looks as good on a screen. For simple me, those first impressions signal it as art more than anything I could be told about it. Love to see the ones that didn’t make the final cut.
Thank you so much! Love them!
Awesomely creative!!! I actually printed out the owl stencil to use as a layered scrapebooking insert for my sons baby book (his nickname is Hootie go figure lol) He turned out beautifully 🙂
Absolutely fantastic!! Thank you for these amazing ideas! I’m waiting for my first baby and I’m keen on decorating his room on my own. Thanks again :)!
You’re so awesome & generous! Thank you soooo much for sharing the stencils, I’ve been looking for stencils like this for my daughter’s KG teacher who is expecting a baby soon. Thanks again!