A Colorful Shared Girls Nursery + Plans for a Shared Big Girl Bedroom

We’re getting ready to make some big changes in my daughters’ shared bedroom (no more toddler beds!), and I realized that I hadn’t shared photos of their existing room yet (oof). So today I’m finally giving you a peek into their colorful shared girls nursery, starting with photos from a couple years ago when Alice was still in a crib. Our home was built in the 1920s and fairly small at 1,200 square feet. We have only two bedrooms, so the girls share the larger bedroom towards the front of the house. It has two large windows and one very small closet, and it’s a tight squeeze – but we make it work!

A Colorful Shared Girls Nursery / Oh So Beautiful Paper

A Colorful Shared Girls Nursery / Oh So Beautiful Paper

The dresser between the two windows is what you see when you first walk into the room. It’s actually my husband’s dresser from when he was a kid – just painted a light teal. We lived in the house for just over a year before Alice was born, but this room didn’t really start to come together until Alice moved in, so we started with a crib on the left side of the room and a toddler bed on the right. Here’s the original mood board for Sophie’s nursery back in 2013!

A Colorful Shared Girls Nursery / Oh So Beautiful Paper

A Colorful Shared Girls Nursery / Oh So Beautiful Paper

I wanted to keep the walls fairly neutral and bring in color through art and accessories. The walls are Classic Gray by Benjamin Moore, and the ceiling is Pink Cadillac by Benjamin Moore with gold star decals on the ceiling. I also kind of love these decals!

A Colorful Shared Girls Nursery / Oh So Beautiful Paper

A Colorful Shared Girls Nursery / Oh So Beautiful Paper

I’m always curious about how folks organize the closets in kid’s rooms – so here’s a peek at our closet! The large baskets on the bottom row used to hold diapers and wipes (and something else that totally escapes my mind), but now hold some extra blankets and a donation bin for clothing they grow out of. The middle row of baskets holds our sheets and waterproof mattress pads, along with some smaller crib blankets and quilts. Then we have clothing that requires hanging, mostly dresses and a few nicer shirts or sweaters. The top baskets used to hold out of season shoes, Alice’s old crib bumper, and some extra nighttime diapers, but now that we’re out of diapers that basket is used for more out of season shoes (essentially one basket for each girl). The crib bumper is now in storage until I decide what to do with it, so that basket now holds knee pads, goggles, and other assorted equipment. We store out of season clothing in bins under Sophie’s bed (previously under the crib), we have a few costumes hanging on the back of their door, and everything else (t-shirts, pants, PJs, skirts, tights, socks, undies) is folded and stored in the dressers Marie Kondo style. At some point we’ll probably have to redo our system once the girls’ dresses get too long to fit in the current space, but for now it works!

A Colorful Shared Girls Nursery / Oh So Beautiful Paper

A Colorful Shared Girls Nursery / Oh So Beautiful Paper

A Colorful Shared Girls Nursery / Oh So Beautiful Paper

My husband and I love to travel and have been all over the world, so we wanted to pass that love along to our girls from the very beginning. The shelves contain a mix of globes, some travel trinkets, family photos, and art prints.

A Colorful Shared Girls Nursery / Oh So Beautiful Paper

The girls have a separate play area downstairs, so we don’t keep many toys in the room – mostly just books, stuffed animals, and dolls. We moved the markers and drawing supplies downstairs once Sophie started preschool, so there’s now another little book cart in this corner.

A Colorful Shared Girls Nursery / Oh So Beautiful Paper

A Colorful Shared Girls Nursery / Oh So Beautiful Paper

A Colorful Shared Girls Nursery / Oh So Beautiful Paper

A Colorful Shared Girls Nursery / Oh So Beautiful Paper

I wanted something above the crib that would provide color and visual interest – but would be lightweight enough that I didn’t have to worry about it falling down on the crib. Tissue paper fans to the rescue! I put them up using removable 3M velcro strips, and they’ve stayed up for 4+ years!

A Colorful Shared Girls Nursery / Oh So Beautiful Paper

Our beloved pom pom basket is from Eliza Gran and helped inspire the color palette for the nursery! It sadly doesn’t look like her shop is open at the moment, but I’m going to put a couple alternatives into a slideshow at the bottom of the post with shopping links.

A Colorful Shared Girls Nursery / Oh So Beautiful Paper

My favorite Roxy Marj blanket! She no longer sells handmade blankets, but you can find her lion blanket and bear blanket at Crate & Kids on super sale. The rest of our crib and toddler bed bedding was all from Land of Nod (RIP), but you can now find a good selection at Crate & Kids. And did you see that Anthropologie now offers kid bedding? Lots of great options there, too!

A Colorful Shared Girls Nursery / Oh So Beautiful Paper

Eventually, especially once we were ready to potty train Alice, we moved Alice out of the crib and into Sophie’s toddler bed, then put a twin bed in the corner where the crib had been. Sadly I don’t seem to have a great photo of Sophie’s current twin bed, but it’s the very simple wood Tarva bed from IKEA painted a pale pink.

A Colorful Shared Girls Bedroom / Oh So Beautiful Paper

A Colorful Shared Girls Bedroom / Oh So Beautiful Paper

A Colorful Shared Girls Bedroom / Oh So Beautiful Paper

We’ve made even more changes since these photos were taken: the monitors, diaper pail, and changing pad are long gone, some of the furniture has been relocated to other parts of our house, and as of last weekend Alice is no longer in a toddler bed! So now we’re ready for an even bigger change – bunk beds! The girls have been begging us for bunk beds FOREVER, and over the holiday break we decided to just go for it. We passed Alice’s toddler bed on to another family in the neighborhood, ordered a new mattress and bunk bed, and the plan is to put the new bed together this weekend. It’s been a tight squeeze with a bed on each side of the room, so I’m looking forward to freeing up some floor space when we move to bunk beds. I’ll have to take down the tissue paper fans and gallery wall to fit the new bunk bed, so it’s also an opportunity to update the room in a way that makes sense for them at this stage in their lives. I’m still working out the details, but here’s what I’ve got for inspiration so far:

Colorful and Modern Shared Girls Room Moodboard

Bed with canopy | Pink bunk bed | Magic Flag | Cane Chair

Bright and Colorful Room | Mint Green Bunk Beds | Tassel Wall Hanging | Velvet Pillows | Curtain Bunk Beds

We’re planning to get a bed canopy from Target (I can’t decide between this pink one or this tassel one) to suspend from the ceiling over the top bunk and drape down along the side of the bottom bunk. I love the idea of creating a cozy little space for the bottom bunk, so we may also add curtains to the bottom bunk? TBD. We currently have two dressers in the room, but I’m debating trying to replace them with one wider dresser? Also TBD. I’ll need to add a shelf next to the top bunk for books and water bottles. I’d like to fit a desk or work table in here for homework after school, but I think I’ll need to play around with the layout before I make that decision. I’m also looking forward to a fresh start when it comes to wall art and the opportunity to simplify the room décor a bit, so keep an eye out for a sale over on my Instagram sale page!

Okay, phew! That was a loooong post about our shared nursery and plans for a shared big girl bedroom. I think I covered everything, but let me know if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them. Also – let me know if you guys would be interested in posts about our experience with a shared bedroom. I know I looked for resources on sleep training and potty training in a shared bedroom but didn’t find a lot out there, so if it’s helpful I’m happy to share our experiences. 

Romantic Wildflower Inspired Wedding Invitations

We love it when wedding invitation designers draw heavily upon the wedding venue for design inspiration! Michelle of Honey Paper (a member of our Designer Rolodex, naturally) designed these romantic wildflower inspired wedding invitations with the lush wildflower varieties of California’s Santa Ynez Valley in mind. From crisp honeysuckle to bristly blue fiesta flowers and pale leopard lilies, the delicate foliage in this suite is spot on – and so pretty paired with equally delicate text in pale green script!

Romantic Wildflower Inspired Wedding Invitations by Honey Paper

From Michelle: Nicholas proposed to Katherine under the open skies of California’s Santa Ynez Valley in Santa Barbara County as the heads of lupines and poppies unfurled like antique quilts shaken out and smoothed. As native Coloradans, the couple felt a connection to this peaceful land between the mountains and wanted to share the gentle, pastoral countryside and local culture with their loved ones on their wedding day.

Romantic Wildflower Inspired Wedding Invitations by Honey Paper

The venue, florals, stationery details, and seasonal menu all drew inspiration from the generous, natural beauty of the region and the couple’s shared interest in sustainable food and love of the outdoors. I created original watercolor illustrations for the stationery and dinner menu inspired by the wildflowers of the region. An oval wreath of native ferns, chaparral nightshade, lilies and blue fiesta flower with its bristly foliage encircled the text of the invitation. An elegant script in green, the color of weathered copper, suggests the wandering stems of California honeysuckle.

Romantic Wildflower Inspired Wedding Invitations by Honey Paper

The deckled edges of the invitation and response card highlight the artistry of the mould-made paper by Fabriano, a distinguished Italian paper company wholly dedicated to renewable energy and sustainable business practices.

Romantic Wildflower Inspired Wedding Invitations by Honey Paper

Bright white envelopes with old-world flaps were lined with my original watercolor illustration of the pale leopard lily, an abundant native plant often found alongside hedge nettles and stream orchid. Long, billowy stems with silky petals gracefully reach toward the first hints of the morning sun. Fess Parker Wine Country Inn and The Bear and Star were a perfect venue pair. Nestled among meadow, hill and stream, The Bear and Star restaurant boasts a closed-circuit ecosystem, meaning its menu is entirely crafted from the harvest yielded by Fess Parker Home Ranch. While quail, pig and cattle roam pasture, heirloom vegetables and fruit cling to vine and branch like baubles and gemstone.

Romantic Wildflower Inspired Wedding Invitations by Honey Paper

As favors, guests took home some of the garden spoils in packets filled with heirloom seeds from the year’s previous yield which read, “Let Love Grow,” with a running border of leopard lilies. The Bear and Star’s Chef John Cox prepared a family style dinner which started with a farm fresh hors d’oeuvres bar and the local Pinot Noir, Riesling and Syrah. Guests gathered at long tables on the veranda under a gentle sky and helped themselves to scoops of heirloom beans, quail egg and spring radish.

Romantic Wildflower Inspired Wedding Invitations by Honey Paper

Envelopes were addressed using a romantic script the unmistakable green of spring’s first sweet pea shoots and paired with monochromatic vintage stamps. What an absolute delight to be part of this beautiful wedding day that was both a celebration of love and an homage to the riches of the earth.

Romantic Wildflower Inspired Wedding Invitations by Honey Paper

Thanks Michelle!

Design: Honey Paper
Paper: Fabriano Paper

Honey Paper is a member of the Designer Rolodex – check out more of their beautiful work right here or visit the real invi­ta­tions gallery for more wedding invitation ideas!

Photo Credits: Ashleigh and Erik

Nine Awesome Design and DIY Books

Hi everyone! I have a growing list of books that I’ve been meaning to share with all of you – so today I’m sharing them all in one fell swoop! We’ve got some fun illustration instruction books from some familiar faces around OSBP, creative ways to customize your things at home, a peek into the lives of creative business owners, nature-inspired prints and patterns, and so much more!

Nine Awesome Design and DIY Books

1. Erin Austen Abbot of Amelia is known for curating amazing wares for her shop in Oxford, Mississippi. With her first book, How to Make It, Erin takes us behind the scenes with 25 makers to share a behind the scenes look at what it takes to run a creative business. Yay Erin!

2. Dinara Mirtalipova is one of my favorite illustrators; we’ve been lucky enough to feature some of Dinara’s work here on OSBP, and I’m constantly in awe of her intricate folk art-inspired illustration style. Her new book, Imagine a Forest, includes 45 step-by-step tutorials for creating your own folk-inspired illustrations – along with plenty of illustration inspiration to gaze throughout the day.

3. Christine from Yellow Owl Workshop is a genius when it comes to stamps, stencils, and fabric dyeing. Her latest book, Make it Yours, is all about customizing your favorite objects around your home, from scarves and tote bags to quilts and dressers.

4. If you’ve ever wanted to learn the art of watercolor illustration, now is your chance! Everyday Watercolor from Jenna of Mon Voir will teach you everything you need to know for creating gorgeous watercolor florals and nature illustrations.

5. I love following illustrator Carolyn Gavin on Instagram, and I was thrilled to see her new book: Draw, Color, and Sticker Things I Love Sketchbook. The sketchbook is full of ready-to-color illustrations and partially illustrated pages that you can fill in using your own imagination. So fun!

6. How to Draw Type and Influence People is basically an activity book for grown-ups with a focus on hand drawn type and the role that type plays in advertising. If you’re interested in the grown up coloring book trend but not into traditional illustrations and patterns, this might be for you! 

7. Print & Pattern: Nature celebrates beautiful nature-inspired surface design, patterns, and motifs – including from a few stationers that are familiar faces around OSBP!

8. Rubber Stamping offers a comprehensive guide to the art of block printing and reduction printing using traditional rubber blocks, hand carved designs, and roller printing techniques.

9. I’m a huge fan of watercolor artist Kristy Rice of Momental Designs, so I was thrilled when she came out with a series of adult coloring books for watercolor featuring her original illustrations! The books are printed using thick watercolor paper and feature floral illustrations, woodland illustrations, and fun patterns. Check out the full series here!

Rebecca + Gregory’s Rustic Illustrated Wreath Wedding Invitations

I love everything about the invitations that Rebecca created for her own wedding last year – from the affordable production to the beautiful illustrations and the meaning that Rebecca imbued into each element. And the simple color palette of black, white, and kraft? So perfect for a late fall (early winter?) wedding!

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From Rebecca: When you’re a graphic designer, and you’ve been analyzing wedding announcements your whole life, it makes paper planning for your own wedding rather difficult. A few years ago, I decided I would have lace on my wedding invitations. I started making sketches and comps so that I would be ready with the perfect design when the day came. After Greg and I got engaged, I opened up those old files and knew it wasn’t quite right. It seemed outdated and not really “us.”

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So I started designing. Well I tried to start designing, and every time I tried, I got too nervous. I always over-analyze wedding invitations and so I would imagine people analyzing our wedding invitations and I would panic. But one night when I had some downtime, I sat down with just my sketchbook and my favorite pen. I drew all of my favorite things. The first was a loop-de-loop.

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When I had been going through my lace phase, I was also going through a loop-de-loop phase, but the loop-de-loop stuck with me. I would always sketch an ongoing infinity symbol back and forth on my sketch books. Always. I experimented with all sorts of weights and styles and lengths, I thought they were so pretty. And then the more I analyzed it, the more I thought it was the perfect motif for a wedding invitation. It was never ending. There were ups and downs, but it was always connected. The line might be thinner in some spots and thicker in others. In my sentimental, symbolic view, I decided it was perfect. I explained it to Greg about our relationship and future union would be eternal and always bound and connected. That there would be ups and downs, but we would always be together. So we knew the loop-de-loops had to stay.

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But I also really love circles. And I wanted the circle to be involved too. I went back to my sketches and showed them to my sister, Melissa. She loved the wreath I had made with our initials. She stopped at the wreath and said,”Yes, yes. That is so you.” So we put it on a quilt, some notebooks, our invitation, etc. It became the branding of our union. I’ve always loved linen paper, so that was an obvious choice for both the paper and the envelopes. I wrote out all the addresses with some of my favorite fancy pens and used a stamp that my parents already had as the return label.

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In the end, it was really nice to make our own wedding invitations. It was a special experience and I’m so glad that I was able to make something super affordable and with lots of meaning.

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Wreath-Motif-Wedding-Invitations-Rebeccamade-OSBP9

Thanks Rebecca!

Design: Rebeccamade

Printing: BYU Print & Mail

Check out the Designer Rolodex for more tal­ented wed­ding invi­ta­tion design­ers and the real invi­ta­tions gallery for more wedding invitation ideas!

Photo Credits: Mikki Platt and Claire Marika Buys

Seasonal Stationery: 2015 Calendars, Part 4

Now that it’s officially 2015 – let’s take a look at a few more 2015 calendars! If you’re still on the hunt for your perfect calendar, you can find previous highlight posts here and the full 2015 calendar round up right here!

2015 Calendars via Oh So Beautiful Paper

1. Julie Song Ink floral watercolor calendar

2. Mr. Boddington’s Studio

3. Little Bright Studio hemisphere constellation calendar

4. And Here We Are

5. Linea Carta – I love the little paint splatters!

6. Mink Letterpress (incredibly intricate!) quilt calendar

7. Parrott Design Studio