A Bookish Decorating Project for the Nursery

I can't believe my son is 3 weeks old already! I know that is not really a lot of time, but it just feels like it's flying by already. As my due date approached last month, I kept myself busy with projects around the house and I had some serious nesting going on. One of my favorite projects was decorating the nursery. I knew from the beginning I didn't really want to do a "theme" where we bought perfectly coordinated sets from a baby store, but I definitely wanted to add some bookishness to his room.

I mentioned a while back that I wanted to do this wall art project and frame pages from favorite childhood books of mine and my husband's. But in the end, I had a really hard time tracking down the books my husband remembers and I truthfully couldn't come up with a favorite of my own -- I remember loving story-time with my parents, but there wasn't any one book that stood out in my memory. So, since an unofficial animal theme seemed to be forming anyway after we chose the bumpers for his crib, a lamp for the room, and received an adorable bookcase at our baby shower, I decided to go with three different children's books/series that feature animals: Make Way for Ducklings, Humphrey the elephant, and Paddington Bear:

Make Way for Ducklings, by Robert McCloskey

Humphrey books, by Sally Hunter

Paddington Bear books, by Michael Bond
(Top two frames)

Paddington Bear books, by Michael Bond
(Bottom two frames)

I am thrilled with how this project came out and it really was very simple. I already had the frames because I got a great deal on packaged sets back when I first started hanging pictures around our house and still had a bunch leftover. This nursery project actually filled up the remaining frames I had, so that was a few less piles of "stuff" laying around our house which is always good! Then all I had to do was buy extra copies (some new, some used) of books I already bought for the baby and knew had artwork I loved and would fit in the frames. I tore out the pages I needed, trimmed them to size, framed them (some with mats, some without), and hung them up.

My Dad was quite impressed with the project and had me send him these pictures so he could show them off (in addition to baby pictures of course -- he's afraid the people at his office are going to start avoiding him!) I highly recommend this project for any book lover looking for easy DIY wall art for a baby's room -- or any room! And the best part is that you get to go book shopping first :)