So it finally came round to the time for me to design and paint my own baby's nursery after storing up all my ideas after doing so many other nurseries! I grabbed my sketch book and listed every gender neutral theme I had collected before finally deciding on 'The BFG'!
This idea came to me after a phone conversation with my sister (my go-to brainstorming buddy!). I told her my favourite Roald Dahl quote I wanted to use above the cot and 'The BFG' idea grew from there. We both loved the Roald Dahl books growing up and thought it would suit baby Buckett's nursery perfectly!
I started by searching for some of the original Quentin Blake illustrations for inspiration as I wanted to do all the painting in his style, and then went on to sketch out what I wanted where. I knew straight away I wanted The BFG blowing a dream over the cot so I found a reference image to work from. After changing his body position slightly to add in the dream blower, the right image is the what I came up with!
I wanted to scatter some dream jars hanging from clouds around the quote and in other spaces around the room but at the same time I was careful not to over-fill the room and make it look too crowded.
After roughly sketching out my whole design on paper, I got cracking on the painting. I used Dulux 'Polished Pebble' for the whole room's background colour and after 2 coats, it was ready for me to get going on the mural!
I firstly used frog tape to measure and mark out where I'd be putting the furniture so I could paint around it. Then I lightly sketched out the quote to be the main feature of the back wall and once I was happy, I went over it in silver paint. The image below shows how the colour changes and shines with the light, I will add another image further on of the whole wall!
I added the clouds and jars around the room before starting on the second quote. This I wanted to do a bit smaller and place above the light switch... I love this quote and think it's sooo cute for a nursery!
The BFG himself was next to do, so I used my sketch to draw him from floor to ceiling before adding the colour. I made sure I mixed the colours true to the books whilst being soft enough for a nursery. This style was fun to paint because the whole point was to not keep in the lines and make the outline as sketchy and squiggly as possible!
The Frobscottle bottles suited the space to the left of the window perfectly and I'm loving how they add a subtle whizz-pop of colour! ... See what I did there?! Ahem.... anyway... check out the pics below...
Of course I couldn't finish the nursery without adding in little Sophie and thought she'd be perfect perched on top of the dresser. We will see if I've actually measured it right once the furniture is delivered!
I chose to do all the character and cloud outlines in silver rather than black so it would be a lot softer, more magical and tied in with the font colour of the quotes. I'm glad I did this because it stands out without being too harsh against the light grey walls. The baby's name will go on the empty dream jar next to The BFG once we know whether we have a boy or girl!
I am so in love with the final look of the whole room and can't wait to see the furniture in place!
My wonderful husband put up the floating shelf, the book shelves, the scan picture frame as well as working his butt off to get the room ready for me to paint in time! The late nights filling in walls, satin glossing the skirting boards and dealing with a hormonal, 8 months pregnant woman was totally worth it!!
Hope you enjoyed reading how we put this all together, if you did and want to see updates of when the furniture goes in, head over to my Facebook page, Chloé Alexandra Murals and give it a like!