Amelia's Nursery Reveal and a Winner!

Amelia's nursery is, as in most things with the third child, largely inherited. 

I had grand plans of doing something different for the nursery when we were renovating. I had originally been inspired to do coral and turquoise for Poppy's bedroom, but then found that pretty floral fabric I ended up using for her bedhead here, and so decided that colour scheme would be good for the baby's nursery. I then found a beautiful aqua Pagoda linen range at Kate Lauren Designs I was keen to use, but thought the house just had too much blue and I should add some variety to the overall colour scheme.

Amelia - one week old.

But in the end, I ran out of motivation, time and money and decided to just recycle what I had used for Poppy's nursery at our old farm. You can see my inspiration, ideas and how it once looked here. It was all French inspired pink toile and gingham and was a sweet, pretty room.

The room was originally intended to be a spare room or office, until Miss Amelia came into the picture, but by then the room was already painted Dulux Beige Royal half, which was a flexible neutral that I hastily chose when the painters were agitating for decisions toward the end of our renovation.

In fact the same thing happened with Poppy's nursery at the farm, although that was painted Dulux White Duck half. Anyway, the point is that sort of lead me to the decision to reuse what I had, as it had worked before.

I'm not a huge fan warm colours, I don't wear them and rarely decorate with them. I much prefer cool colours, as you've probably worked out, so decorating in pink is a challenge for me. But I embraced the challenge and tried to jazz up the nursery with a bit of bold colour.

Rikshaw Design

I love Indian cottons with block printed designs in paisleys etc, they are youthful and feminine without being twee or too juvenile. I found this gorgeous cot bedspread at Rikshaw Design along with a couple of pretty matching fabrics which I had no idea what I'd do with, but thought could make a good cushion or blind. I ended up using the pink paisley on the lampshade.

She looked so tiny sleeping in the cot at first.

I've had this occasional chair for years. It's been recovered twice already and its latest incarnation is in this lovely Warwick fabric with gorgeous contrast piping. It's the perfect chair for a nursery, and feeding a baby. Comfy but upright, which is what you need. I think pinks are really hard to pick. They can be dangerously lolly and syrupy, but I prefer them to be a more dusty, dirty pink. So I think this is perfect.

This fabulous bamboo style table is again something I've had for years and matches the two side tables we have in our bedroom. I love it, I so wish I had bought a warehouse full of the stuff at the time. The company has since closed down, and I just can't find pretty bamboo style furniture anymore. The only problem is it's painted in an oil-based paint, so it's going yellow and will need repainting soon.

These dear little owl bookends I found at Bed Bath n Table. I had intended to cover them in the same paper as I did the wooden name letters, but that's a project for another day.

I absolutely adore these prints - there are four in total. They are Bella and Boo, from Lark Made in Melbourne. I bought them as prints for Poppy's room and had them framed. They capture the spirit of little girls so perfectly and were the inspiration for the bedspread with the pink and yellow colour scheme.

The roman blind was a bit of a hatchet job. You know how to get when you're trying to finish a renovation and you're in the decorating phase. You've blown the budget, you're sick of compromising, your husband has the shits because you keep spending money, and you just want the bloody thing finished! I was a bit like this with the nursery. Poor Amelia, hard luck of the third born I'm afraid. Bit of an after thought!

So I didn't spend money getting her a lovely custom made blind as the other kids had, instead I decided to be creative and buy a cheap plain white one from Spotlight and be adventurous with the stencils I had bought on Etsy but never used. You can read about them here.

I've never stencilled before. It all seemed like too much hard work and involved more patience and skill than I have. And I was right. It's not a DIY project well suited to my personality or time constraints! I was a big gung-ho doing it, rushing to finish while the baby slept as usual, so the result was a bit messy in parts, but the effect is good. 

Note to self - don't buy ready made blinds from Spotlight. Although this cost $179 it's very crappy quality and doesn't work at all well.

The lamp I bought in haste at a vintage shop one day while I was picking up some bamboo chairs I'd bought on Ebay, also in haste. It was only $60, which seemed cheap given it was very large and made of terracotta, and I had great visions of turning it into something fabulous. 

It started out all white, then I got carried away with the paintbrush and decided to fill in the little flower details. Not sure if I like it or not now that it has the patterned lampshade, but it'll do for now.

I bought the lampshade at Freedom and covered it in the paisley block print I bought from Rikshaw Design.

The mirror I bought at Freedom some years ago and painted it white.

Here's the link for the tutorial on the wooden letters I made.

Here she is today, nearly five months old.

My grandmother made this dear little dress for me when I was a baby. It's made of lawn, a sheer silk-like fabric, almost like a voile. It's has the most exquisite embroidery and cutwork. Charlie and Poppy both wore it at their christenings and Amelia will do the same.

This was a pretty little cross-stitch that was done for me by a family friends when I was born 43 years ago. It's nice to have some treasured items in the room that have a family history and relevance.

The chest was custom-made for me 12 years ago, when I had a wedding shop. It's been used for many things since, but is perfect in the bedroom and the grey French wash looks pretty and soft.

GIVEAWAY WINNER!

Sorry I'm a bit late announcing the winner of the cushion giveaway. Had a few dramas with my Feedburner feed this week, which pushed my schedule back a bit. Hopefully it's back up to date, so if you're not getting updates in your inbox as you'd expect, please let me know.

I was going to use one of those random number generator programmes to pick the winner, but the kids were very interested in what I was doing, and Charlie had just attended his school's mini-fete and was intrigued by the concept of raffles. So as it was a glum afternoon, I decided to make it fun for them by allowing them to pick the winner.

So I typed everybody's name from comments on the blog, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc, and cut out the names, putting them in a bowl for Charlie to pick. If you entered more than once, you were given the applicable number of entries.  

All images by Melinda Hartwright for Georgica Pond

Congratulations to Vicky Brindley, the winner of the Callisto Home embroidered cushion. Thank you to everyone for entering the giveaway, and for all your comments, likes and follows. 

Vicky, please email me your details so I can get the cushion to you asap.