DIY Projects For Home Decorating: DIY Dinosaur-Themed Nursery

After battling loss and infertility for three years, my husband and I are happy to announce that we have a baby girl arriving on Christmas Day! We wanted to do something really special for her nursery, and being dinosaur fanatics ourselves, we decided to share that love with her. This nursery was to be a fun, bold place for her to grow up in and further her imagination, so we fueled that by choosing a bold color scheme.

The entire room design was based on a dinosaur mural. Therefore, I painted the walls and ceiling first with a light blue to serve as a base coat and the sky. Then, I used a paint roller and a brush to freehand a mountain range along all walls -- closet included -- with an olive green. Everything below the mountain line was filled in.

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This mural required dinosaurs -- large, realistic ones from floor to ceiling. To do so, we bought an overhead school projector from eBay for $15. I printed out a variety of our favorite dinosaur species onto transparencies. Then, we set up the projector and I outlined the dinosaurs' silhouettes directly onto the walls with a piece of chalk.

To finish the dinosaurs, I simply painted them with one bold color to make them simple, yet whimsical.

To add an additional dimension to each of the dinosaurs, I cut out their names using my Silhouette Cutting Tool. These names were cut directly onto peel-and-stick wall vinyl, which I then adhered to the dinosaurs themselves, or the area surrounding them.

During this time, my husband and I were also in the middle of a whole-house floor install, and the nursery was the first to be done. We ripped up the carpet and prepped for our new bamboo flooring.

This room also hosts a large walk-in closet. We removed the door to make the closet appear even bigger. I bought Closet-Maid storage systems and colorful cubes to provide additional storage space for clothes, bedding, and toys. My husband also installed metal shelving all the way to the ceiling for additional baskets and storage. To finish the room, we added baby furniture, bedding, clothes, and various dinosaur tchotchkes throughout. A lot of the items were gifts from our family, which helped our tight budget immensely.