Baby Animal Nursery Decor

Now that the furniture is all in and the essentials are purchased, I am finally getting to the fun part of decorating the nursery.  We had decided on a woodland animals theme a while back…mostly because my husband and I enjoy being outdoors, but also because our little guy would be born in the fall.  Today, I’m sharing these baby animal wall hangings that I made fairly quickly thanks to a few store-bought canvases and the easy layering of heat transfer material.

I start most Silhouette projects in the Studio software by filling in my designs and layering them properly so that I can get an idea of what the final project will look like.  This is particularly true of any paper-piecing or other layering projects because it helps me cut each layer out of the correct color.  The final colors don’t always match (as seen here, because I didn’t have all of the HTM colors I would like!), but it’s always a good rough estimate.

Smooth and flocked heat transfer materials from Silhouette can layer beautifully over top one another if you make sure you apply them well.  Here is what each layer of my baby bear looked like to start once cut from each corresponding color of HTM using this design (#60055).

First, I adhered my grassy ground, cut from some light green flocked HTM, to my linen canvas (purchased at Michaels).  I wanted many of my layers to be flocked because I thought my nursery decor should be fuzzy!

Next, I pressed my bottom bear layer on, cut from black smooth HTM.  I usually have more trouble with the smooth HTM because the transfer plastic is adhered very strongly to the material and can be a real pain to peel off without peeling up the HTM once you’ve pressed it.  So, for smooth HTM, I will usually iron the piece for 2 minutes and apply LOTS of pressure (like reallllly lean into the project).

The highlight layer was cut from cream smooth HTM…unfortunately I did not have a light brown to use, but I thought it came out ok anyway!  Notice my layering is not quite perfect, but the top layers are larger so they came out ok in the end.

And then some brown flocked HTM for the perfect fuzzy bear…

Finally, some black flocked HTM was used to give the bear some nice finished edges.

The fox canvas (design # 59238) came together in the same way, but this time I used green flocked, brown smooth, cream smooth, orange flocked, and brown flocked HTM to layer him up.

Raccoon (design #59243) – green flocked, black smooth, grey flocked, grey smooth, black flocked, and white flocked HTM.

The final canvases were hung on our pale yellow nursery walls.  We wanted a happy, gender neutral wall color and the linen material actually coordinates with our white and tan rocking chair in the other corner, so these were perfect!

We thought they fit the best over the dresser/changing table because the wall next to the crib will be getting a much more extensive makeover courtesy of my Silhouette CAMEO (coming to the blog soon!).

I hope you enjoyed this project and will give layered heat transfer material a try!  I’d also love to hear your comments!