stella®: Stella's Nursery, Long Over Due Post!

This post is dedicated to our Stella. I hope she enjoys reading this one day....when she cares to know all of the details and how much fun we had creating her nursery during my pregnancy - as we anxiously awaited our first child to be born :)

So I'm entering that phase again...what my husband would refer to as NURSERY CRACK!!! Because I'm cracking out over Tucker's nursery as my pregnancy with him was filled with all kinds of exciting ideas for our next baby's nursery. And unlike Stella's nursery, this one couldn't not get started on in advance because my ideas did not lend themselves to a Unisex nursery this time around and instead I had a set list of things i wanted to do for a Girl nursery and set ideas for a Boy's Nursery. Well, given all of this - it hit me, I never created a post about Stella's Nursery. So this post is long over due given she was born Aug. 21, 2009

This nursery seemed like it was my full-time job for about 6 months back in 2009 when I was pregnant with what we did not find out was a Boy or Girl! And we all put a ton of work into it! I totally get into this kind of thing - some would call it "obsessed"! Hence why I'm excited about the idea of creating another nursery :) Now if I can talk my mom & dad into making custom things yet one more time, I will be one happy momma (wink wink)!

Anyway - here it is! Old news for most of you but you never know who may come across my blog in search for nursery ideas....as I make my way across some for the ideas I am pondering for Tucker's nursery.

First let me introduce to you the focal point of Stella's Nursery. This is a 22 x 30 (unframed) original painting titled "Self Portrait". This piece of art is so dear to me for this very reason: An Elephant named "Hong" painted this using her trunk and a paint brush and she did so with NO human assistance....other than help changing out the paint brush when it was time to change the color. Hong comes from the Maetaman Elephant Camp in Chiang Mai. Hong is very famous as a video of her painting a similiar painting went "viral" on the internet a few years ago. I have posted the video below - this is a MUST SEE if you have never come across this! (Side Note: It's also so special to me because I used to collect elephants when I was a young girl so stumbling across this just let the nursery all fall into place naturally - I was having a hard time at first not knowing what i wanted to do with it.) Back to the painting elephants - so some may wonder how they can do this - well we all know, elephants are known for having a great memory and these very few and very special elephants are taught a certain number of paint strokes, in a certain order, thus allowing to create this sweet sweet SWEET painting! Many other elephants can paint but it's only abstract. Please know I had an extremely lengthy email correspondence going on between the seller of Hong's painting (which happen to be an American which was nice for ease of communication between the two of us, but who has lived in Thailand for the last 15 years, which was nice as well because I grew to trust him completely) - my emails were confirming all kinds of things with the camp, elephants, paintings - but most importantly the details of how the elephants are cared for at this camp. I was ensured they are retired logging elephants who are loved and cared for at the camp where they now live and that part of the proceeds of their talented artwork goes back towards the camp itself. Also - the elephants only paint when they feel like it - they are not forced to do so of course. Although Scott had several to choose from, I actually had to wait days while Scott went to the camp for some paintings to see if Hong felt like painting over the last month because it was her "Self Portrait" painting, with the RED flowers that I had to have for my baby's nursery (Red because we did not know if we were having a boy or girl so i did not want the available blue flower one or the pink flower painting). I got lucky - the director of the camp was nice enough to sell Scott her red flower one from her collection, figuring she could get another one some other day from Hong.

SPECIAL NOTE:

Here's Scott's website if you are interested in viewing any current elephant paintings that are for sale.
http://elephant-paintings.com/cubecart/

You can click on the link below that will take you to the video of Hong painting - it's so precious and worth the 8 minutes of viewing time, trust me. And WOW - i just realized, since i bought her painting 3 years ago this video has had 4 MILLION more hits on it, crazy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He7Ge7Sogrk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He7Ge7Sogrk

Hong's Painting

"Self-Portrait"

Also, in addition to Hong's painting, we had also purchased another elephants painting so there is one on each side of the dresser. Khankluay is a 10 yr. old Male and the name of his painting is

"Swamp Flowers"

Khankluay's painting

"Swamp Flowers"

The wall was painted with 8-inch wide stripes using the same color but alternating between matte finish and a darker shade in glossy finish. My husband taped off the stripes all the way around the room - in order to get it perfectly straight from top to bottom and evenly from left to right - it was VERY TIME CONSUMING and he's awesome, did it with bells on!

If you look at the crib bumper, you will notice it's the same elephant from the painting. My mom made several things for the nursery and this is one of them. The fabric used on the elephant is the same fabric she used for Stella's crib skirt, pillows that you will later see, and curtain closet and what i used for making the Framed Bow Caddy (of course I made that later since I didn't know if i was having a boy or girl).

The Elephant figurines you see on the shelves that reside on either side of the crib our elephants from my childhood collection. I hadn't seen these in over 25 years when I opened the box up of them once the decorating began - I just love that i was able to incorporate these!

The two whimsical frames you see on either side of the crib were made by my dad and I helped paint them.

The B&W photo in this one is a CLASSIC for this elephant nursery, although hard to see in this pic. It's my sister, dad and me at The Toledo Zoo in 1976 - Amy & I are sitting on the cement elephant statue and my dad is standing next to us. This cement elephant still resides at their and I can't wait to get the same shot with Stella...and her sibling who will be here in June/July and Justin - to replicate the photo (Dad and his two kids)! Also - the flash kept washing out the colors, but the four swirly parts of this frame are not black, actually grape purple with primary green circles at the end of the swirl. So very fun and colorful in person.

The B&W photo in the this frame is of Justin, my husband, when he was about 5 yrs. old.

My dad put alot of time into these projects and taping those BW Checkers just perfectly were quite the task!! But hey, he's a artist that is a perfectionist so the ball was in my court for sure! Plus it gave us something to do in the early evening when we were up at the lake that summer.

I was about 7 months pregnant there.

My dad also made this "Night Light" - it has a working pull chain hanging from the lamp where the small night light bulb turns on & off.

He carved this out of wood but the green lamp & lampshade is carved out of metal to resist heat better from the bulb (although heat from such a small bulb isn't much)

Hard to see in this first photo - but there are more of my childhood elephants on either side of the elephant bookends, top of the hutch. Five on each side.

Close up of some elephant figurines from my childhood

And more here too on the two shelves that reside on either side of her crib....the Babar xmas ornament figurines hang year round from these shelves, those too are from my childhood.

My mom made me the felt flying elephant - I added the angel wings to it. These were my last and final addition to the nursery, which took me over a year to get around too. Not everyone was crazy about them but I think they're cute and whimsical!

My stuffed animals from my childhood: King Babar The Elephant and his wife Queen Celeste, shown here on Stella's "Big Girl Bed" which is waiting to be adorned by a side board that my dad is making and a round cloth bed canopy.

I replaced what i thought were plain & quite boring black knobs that came with her Bella Dresser & Bella Hutch with these fun B&W checkered ones - which also match the BW checkers on her lamp and the BW checkers on the above whimsical frames we made.

The canvas behind the diaper changing pad was painted by me - in the 2nd pic you will notice the same stripes on the canvas as we have on her walls.

Stella is looking up at herself - we put a self-adhesive mirror paper on the section where the 3 red bins lay on.

HER BOW CADDY

I took this piece that was sold as a framed cork board board and removed the cork so I could cover it in the same dotted fabric as we used for her closet curtains, crib skirt, etc. Then i used two kinds of ribbon, a very wide B&W one and then a very skinny red one, laying that one within the large one - the bows clip onto the skinny one.

CLOSET CURTAIN

Her closet is the old style from maybe from the 60's (?) - a very wide 8-foot closet that had the two original ugly big sliding wood doors. Too soften up that look we removed those clunky doors and hung a curtain made by my mom that uses the same fabric you see throughout the nursery. I added gold satin hand-tied bows to soften it up even more. I did this with all three rooms as soon as I moved into this place years ago :)

ANTIQUE CHILD ROCKING CHAIR (In The Family)

This is an antique rocking chair that used to be my late uncle Gary's, from the 40's (maybe it's even older??). My mom made seat cusions and the skirt - this was a surprise gift to me.

I love it & Stella enjoys rocking in it and reading her books.

HER HAMPER

We took a hamper that I found which had black wood legs (only one existed apparently with black legs) and replaced the penguin themed fabric bag with this one. Thanks Mom!

My Aunt Snookie gave this to me - the plant no longer is in it but instead....get this....paper roses (since the elephant in the painting is holding roses) THAT ARE MADE FROM ELEPHANT DUNG. It's a product called Elephant Poo Paper - it's also the same paper the paintings are painted on.

My friend, Jenny, painted this step stool for Stella. I gave her our left over paint cans of the two tone cream color - she used it on the sides in her argyle design. Oh, she also incorporated the swirly design that her shelves have going on.

Stella's JoNana (my mother in law, JoAnne) friend in Florida created these adorable Illustrations for Stella. Although originally done on 8 x 11 paper I cut to this size due to limited wall space for anymore art in her nursery :) One sets on her dresser and on her hutch.

Misc. Pics

Painted the legs on this round cushion seat red

Check out the elephant made out of towels, a gift from Stella's Great Aunt Deb at my baby shower

My sister letter pressed the coaster you see here - as a give away and using at my baby shower

...and my sis letter pressed Playdate Cards for Stella.

Also painted the legs on her pottery barn glider ottoman red
(which btw was the best purchase for her nursery...we still use this super comfy poofy chair to rock stella and read books to her)