I recently found this cute little canopy crib at a local estate sale, and decided to transform it into something woodsy (of course!). To be honest, I’m not entirely sure why I felt compelled to grab not only this, but also another crib and a small cradle, because I don’t typically go for baby stuff. Perhaps I just couldn’t help myself because there was so much good stuff at this estate sale. It’s rare to find quality miniatures! (Also, in case anyone is wondering, I don’t believe this crib is still manufactured. The things I got from this sale all seemed to be 1980s – early 2000s.) Anyway, once I got home, I found myself inspired to decorate them all! Here’s the completed time-lapse if you’d like to just cut to it, and some additional thoughts on the design process below it if you’re interested:
Things I Left Out of the Video by Accident
Adding in a small apology here because I seem to have misplaced the clips of pillow-making and blanket-draping, so the video isn’t as complete as it could be. I might make a separate video of the pillow-making process later, as there were some things I learned while trying to make pillows from various materials. As far as the “moss” (crushed velvet) blanket goes – I used the same process as the drapes, except that I had to really saturate it with the starch to get it to stay in place, because it was so thick. I was starting to feel really doubtful about my decision, because of how many layers I was adding, but it did eventually stay put! When in doubt, just starch the heck out of it!
Design Process
The thing I chose to focus on the most with this piece was the varied use textures. I took some inspiration from the aesthetic of Disney’s “Maleficent,” envisioning what Princess Aurora’s crib out in The Moors might look like. I felt that using several eclectic materials would add to that woodsy magical vibe. I started out with the floral cotton fabric – a lovely cut that I bought in Kyoto, because the scale of the print was just perfect for miniatures! To bring compositional balance to the busy pattern, I chose to make the pillows solid colours, but with a variety of textures so they weren’t too flat and unnatural. Faux fur and fluffed-up felt “moss” added to the natural look. I loved the colour and textural difference of the satin (and after all, she is a princess, so there should be some element of luxury, right?), but it was pretty straight-edge compared to the rest, so I added a mushroom using colours matched from the floral print. Painting the mushroom also turned out to be a great idea in that I was able to hide an over-zealous glue job! Oops.
Conclusion
In all, I’m pretty happy with how this turned out! It was a learning process, as I haven’t done a whole lot with fabric yet, but it was really fun. I hope you were able to learn a little something from my trial and error, too. Thanks for watching/reading, and feel free to comment with any questions you may have. I will do my best to answer!
<3 Kaitlin
**This piece will be listed for sale shortly, on my Etsy. 🙂