Nursery (phase 4) - I think we are done!

Pinterest.com is like craft porn. You pin the crafts, look at the pictures, imagine that you are doing them, but that's how far you will go...

I wanted to make my craft fantasies come true, so I decided to create a distressed canvas of stepson for the baby's room.

I figure the baby's room needs a picture of his brother, since he lives far away.

When I told my husband my new project, he said, "What's up with all the old and run down looking stuff for the baby's room?" (he was referring here to the other crackled stuff) and I smirked, "It's to match his dad, so we are keeping a theme going: old and run down."

Truth is, I can't afford antiques and do enjoy very much making a mess. Some day I may get tired of old and run down looking things, but as for now I can live with them (my husband included - just kidding; he is a very handsome guy).

First, I needed to finish the other projects:

I glued some type of velcro behind the letters so that they wouldn't damage the walls. I don't trust them that much, even though the package says they are sturdy and trustworthy. We moved the crib away from the wall, since I can totally see those letters flying about with the first little earthquake.


Next, we hung up the crackled frames and curtains.

I told stepson to go stand next to his dad and pretend he was helping for this picture (while his dad cussed under his breath because he couldn't get the curtains straight). Stepson did a pretty good job pretending he was helping! He learned from the pro!


I bought something called gel medium (the matte kind, but the glossy is also nice), a sponge brush, a cheap canvas and something to hold the canvas up.

I blew up a cute picture I had of stepson at our wedding. I had put it into sepia beforehand and printed with our own home printer on plain paper.

Then I applied gel medium to the canvas, splashed some water on the paper image and glued it upside down to the canvas.

About three hours later, when the gel medium was dry, I brushed water on the picture and started to rub it with my finger until the paper left the canvas (like a beer logo leaving the beer bottle when it is nice and cold - did someone say beer?).

This is tricky because you can easily rub the ink away.










After rubbing the picture as much as I could, I applied another coat of gel medium to keep the integrity of the image. While wet, the gel medium looks blueish, like on this image.


Stepson looks like an important military figure from the 1800s. It turned out very cool!

I put this picture on the crackled dresser, which is still pretty naked (we may add a lamp there).

Here is the end result of the nursery.

We may still get a tiny lamp for the dresser, probably with a red shading, the color of some of the patterns of the bedding and maybe a rug.

I think otherwise it is pretty much done!!!