Harry Potter Nursery II: Now in 3D!

     Ok so it's not actually in 3D, I just like to make my post titles sound like summer blockbusters sometimes. But let's be honest, 3D blog posts would just give you a headache anyway. The reason this gets a sequel title is because Jen and Jason moved a few months ago, so the nursery situation underwent some shaking up. It's mostly the same elements, with a few new things thrown in for fun. The biggest difference is that this room is so. much. bigger. than the old one. Let's have a look around, shall we?

 

     Hello, friend! This is the same owl light and bird cage from the previous house. The cage is from Hobby Lobby, nobody remembers where the owl lamp is from because our heads are filled with air dead flies and bits of fluff (obscure Harry Potter reference: engage!). 

     The wall art is custom, made by my best friend Stephen because he's at that level of talented where you want to hate him for it but then you're like "ehhh, he's a good kid." 

     This is new! They're a bunch of Harry Potter character illustrations from Etsy, framed in deliberately mismatched frame styles to visually reference the paintings in the staircase at Hogwarts. 

     And over here is the old-timey style trunk, which is also from Hobby Lobby, and an ornately framed Ikea mirror. 

     The wall color in this room was color-matched to Benjamin Moore's Woodlawn Blue. In the old nursery they didn't want the walls to be too blue because it would look like a boy's room, but that's the other exciting thing about their new house: the twins each get their own nurseries now! I'll be showing you Evie's on Wednesday, and it went in an entirely different decor direction...

Don't hate me cause you ain't me.

Please read that post title in your sarcasm voice. 

All the feelings.

     Last Friday I says to myself, I says, "Wouldn't it be fun to watch a Harry Potter movie every night, then I can have them all re-watched in a week!" And at the time it sounded like a great idea. By the end of night four, though, I was starting to reconsider. Now, after night five, I'm pretty sure I made a gross miscalculation of exactly how "fun" this was going to be. 

Pretty much continuously from the end of Goblet of Fire on.

     If you'll excuse me, I have to go empty my Tear Bucket so I can finish the last three movies.

Finished Harry Potter Nursery

     The Harry Potter nursery is now officially (ok, not offically. Mostly?) finished! I think there may still be some art added, and the idea of a rug has been bandied about for ages, but for the most part, this room is finito. And not a minute too soon, as those babies will be here before you know it. Let's do some looky-loo-ing. 

     Those amazing Hogwarts House baby-mascot paintings were done by my awesomely talented photographer/artist friend Stephen (check out his website if you want to go look at more pretty things/if you need a photographer in the Northern Virginia area!). I sent him a concept and basically said "make this happen all cute and stuff," and he definitely delivered; they are just beyond perfect.

     The cute swirly names above each crib were painted up all sparkly and nice by Amanda, and my mom made a curtain to cover the closet with some magical little sparkly stars on it (since it's a small room it made more sense to nix the door. The curtain rod it's hanging on is sturdy enough to do pull-ups on, so there's no worry about the babies yanking the whole thing down on themselves -- Jason does not mess around when it comes to safety). There are cute details all over this room!

     I think the best part of this room is how so many people have contributed their skills and efforts to pull it together. A nursery should be put together with love, and this one is definitely full of it. That sounds cheesy as all get-out, but what can I say. Babies! They make me go all sentimental! 

Sounds like wings!

If you don't picture itty bitty wee baby 11 year old Harry Potter saying that, I just...I dunno about you. 

     Today I started work on a mobile for the Harry Potter nursery. You may have seen a winged-key mobile floating around on Pinterest for a while, if you've hopped on the bandwagon and started mainlining craft projects and cake recipes and other assorted Pinterest-cultivated heroin. I'll pop the picture in here, but I can't seem to find the original source, since the pins all link back to a non-existent blog or various tumblr pages.

 

     But I envisioned my version of this being a little lighter, brighter, and more attractive to baby eyeballs. Not to mention shinier. Babies love shiny things, I hear. Like little magpies, except babies aren't usually believed to be harbingers of doom/servants of Satan. Magpies, man. They get such a bad rep. To be fair, they do murder a lot of other birds, but mourn the death of one of their own with observable funereal habits, and if that doesn't say "Magpie supremacists plot takeover of entire bird kingdom" then I don't know what does. Anyway, keys. Here's my process: 

1. Gather supplies! Old keys (a lot of antique stores will have big boxes of keys that you can pick from, in case you don't have a bin of rusty old keys sitting around from your previous life as the warden of a Victorian insane asylum), wire, fabric glue, hot glue, and iridescent fabric.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Bend the wire into something roughly resembling a wing shape. This is a rather thin wire, just thick enough to hold the shape you give it, so I just used my hands. If you use a thicker gauge, you might need to bust out the pliers. I started off with something super simple, but plan to get more adventurous (double wings, pointed wings, butterfly style wings...). Make sure the wing style you choose fits well with the key you're working with. Or don't! It's Harry Potter, things don't have to make sense. Do what you feel, follow your heart, and so forth with the encouragement.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Next, glue the fabric to the wire using fabric glue. Just run some glue along the wire on one side, plop it down, hit the other side of the wire with some glue, and fold the fabric on top of it. Then set something reasonably heavy (a book or something, not like, your car) on top and let it dry for a while.
    

   

   Thanks mom for being my hand model!
   
   
   

4. Once it's all dry, just trim around the outside as closely as you like. I left a little bit of room because I like the idea of the fabric fraying a bit and making a really soft, time-worn look. But if you're into precision, you could cut close to the wire with an x-acto knife. Then a blob of hot glue will keep the wings attached to the keys, and you're done!
     
   
   
   
   

     I wish I could accurately capture how pretty the colors in the fabric are in movement. They catch the light and turn blue and pink and purple depending on the angle. It's pretty! I'll definitely post some pictures when I've made some more and put them all together on the mobile. I think it's going to turn out really nice!

"Baby Harry Potter would totally want to live here."

     My oldest sister is going to have twins a few months down the line, which if you know me in real life (or you're her -- hi, Jennie!), you'll already know because I'll have excitedly prattled on about how stoked I am to be an auntie in your presence. And about the design plans for the nursery. It's going to have a Harry Potter theme, and I've been enlisted to help plan it all out since I have a good "mind's eye" for such things and can easily envision the finished product. But I can't just keep my decorating visions in my head -- no one will ever see them there.

     So I've been playing around with Sweethome 3D, a room planning/3D modeling application that lets you customize everything to your liking, then create a virtual walkthrough. I considered using Google Sketchup, which is even more customizable, but it also seems to have rather a steep learning curve (tangential note: Did you know that the way we use "steep learning curve" is technically incorrect? Most people use it to mean "difficult," when in reality it's a curve of time vs. proficiency or aptitude, so a steep curve would mean you could become very good at something in very little time. I guess "shallow learning curve" just doesn't sound as threatening?), and I didn't feel ready to totally immerse myself in learning how to use it. Maybe some day.

     Anyway, I thought I'd share the latest and most accurate (according to the ideas being thrown around, that is. Accurate according to its current reality would be A: useless, and B: very boring, as it is currently an empty white room) version of the walkthrough for your perusal.

The Thing in the Woods

     You know how when you hear something rustling around in the woods just out of sight, you think "Probably a squirrel...rabid racoon...wolverine...mutant bear with sniper training" and it just escalates so quickly in your mind you don't really have a chance to stop it? Yeah, well I may have let that instinct get a little out of hand. You see, living in the middle of nowhere has a way of making you keenly aware of the fact that the dark unknown of the forest is all that surrounds you.

     But I don't think it's bears or wolves or mountain lions traipsing around the woods at night. No sir, not anymore. Pop culture and basic common knowledge have led me to the rather obvious conclusion that when you hear a big something in the woods but can't quite see it, there are only two explanations: either there's a Sasquatch or a Sassysquatch (proper scientific term for a female Sasquatch) gallivanting about, or Voldemort's hunting the unicorns again.

     Or explanation number three, which I shall plainly present to you here: it's both. The thing you hear moving in the brush is.....

 

     So there's a fun image to keep in your head next time you're getting wigged out about twigs snapping nearby.