Designing the Nursery: Can you fall in love with a rug?

I have been a little bit worried about how the nursery is going to look with white walls and possibly white furniture, so I wanted to inject colour through some of the textiles in the room. I was cruising around Houzz looking at rugs and found this incredible nursery by Dvira Interior Design Toronto that I just fell in love with:

Contemporary Kids by Toronto Interior Designers & Decorators Dvira - Interior Design Toronto

The rug - which is exactly what I wanted - is an Ikea Strib rug and sadly discontinued. But the photo gave me an idea of what to look for. After searching 'Colourful Nursery Rug' on Pinterest, I found this photo of a felt ball rug:

Photo courtesy of Dots by Dorte Damgaard

This rug is Hay's Pinnochio rug - hand felted and strung in Nepal. Similar to the bespoke Swedish GRAN wallpaper I wanted, this Danish designed rug (sticking with the Scandinavian design concept) does NOT come cheap. Canadian website The Modern Shop lists them at $549.00 for a 90 cm circle, which is definitely smaller than what we'd want on the cold basement floor of the nursery. The 2 metre circle, which is closer to the size we'd want, is listed for $2,829.00! Not happening!

I considered for a second attempting to DIY this rug - lots of people felt things. But my Google search turned up lots of stories about carpal tunnel syndrome and the frustration of making hundreds of felt balls. It seemed like most people never finished their attempted rugs, and I am neither as patient nor as crafty as a lot of people who blog about these things.

Again, I went to Etsy instead to see if I could find something a little more realistic for our price range. Etsy has quite a few of these rugs listed for much more reasonable prices. I even found one I really liked in a decent sized rectangle - 120 cm by 150 cm for about $425.00 CDN shipped. Check out NativeCraftNepal for some reasonable Etsy felt ball rug options.

I thought I had Tim convinced that this was a great option, but he was talking to his mom about it and she told him that we had to go to Winners and at least check out the rugs there before we settled on anything. I think Tim was easily swayed by this suggestion because he didn't love how colourful the rug was. He was worried about it being too loud for the nursery. My arguments about babies loving colour apparently weren't persuasive enough.

Whether babies love colour or not, Tim and Wendy turned out to be right about Winners - we found an AMAZING rug. We both loved it right off the bat, even if I did have a twinge of regret about the more colourful felt ball rug. This rug is felted wool as well, but is wool twists rather than felt balls. It's a very similar texture and feel, though. Tim loves that the colours are more neutral. He loved it so much that he actually stood guard over it with his hand on it while I went to find someone to help us get it down. When I teased him about it, he argued that it was necessary - one woman had come over to eye it while I was gone and he had to defend it! The texture of this rug is amazing underfoot. It feels like you're getting a foot massage every time you walk on it, which is why both Tim and I have been taking random walks around the living room ever since I rolled it out last weekend.

Not only was this rug significantly cheaper than the felt ball rug (unsurprising, since that was coming from Nepal and this was driving home with us from the south end of Peterborough), but it's larger as well. We're hoping the 5x7' size will be perfect in the nursery, which is roughly 9x12'. We're planning on cutting at least a foot or two off the long end of the room by adding built-in wardrobes at some point. The room we're using for the nursery doesn't have a closet, so we'll need that storage space. 

I think this rug is going to look amazing with the decals - we received the colour samples from Julie at iSigns Decal Studio and have been going back and forth with which greens look best with the variegated blue tones in the rug. What do you think? From left to right, the colour chips are Celadon, Olive, Light Green, Green, and Dark Green.

Designing the Nursery: Picking a "Theme"

One of the questions that I was often asked about our wedding was, “What is your theme?” Unfortunately most people seemed stumped when I tried to explain that we didn’t really have a theme, or a particular colour scheme. I feel like people are having a similar reaction to the direction we’re going with the nursery.

I knew very early on in the pregnancy that I wanted the nursery to be wilderness themed. If we had been having a boy, it probably would have been more literal. Not camo – but actual camping gear. But since we’re having a girl, I love that I get to take that same wilderness theme and make it a bit more my style. I want it to be a good representation of both Tim and I – a space we both feel comfortable and happy in. The direction I’m going in is what I’m titling “Scandinavian Wilderness”. The original inspiration was the GRAN wallpaper from Fine Little Day:
 

Unfortunately Tim vetoed that as soon as he found out that it would cost us around $450 (eeek!) just to do a feature wall. My mother-in-law suggested we could get a very similar look by stenciling, but I know that we’ll probably have to be repainting down the road when Sierra (yes, we’ve named her already) is old enough to have tastes of her own. Painting over stenciling does not strike me as being particularly fun. I think you’d have to sand down all of the edges of the trees. I’ve used decals in a rental before, though, and absolutely loved how they applied and how they looked.

I wanted to source decals as locally as possible, so I looked up wall decal companies on Etsy located in Ontario. After sending out a few e-mails, I received a quick response back from Julie at iSignsDecalStudio in Kitchener. I sent her the photo of the GRAN wallpaper and asked if she’d be able to do something similar. She sent back this graphic of decals she had made in the past, which both Tim and I loved. The colours are so nursery-friendly! She’s sending us samples of the different colours of greens she has available so that we can customize the trees to how we want the room to look. I can’t wait to start picking out other items to go along with these!