Aspen’s Room

     

 During my pregnancy, we went through the dilemma of trying to figure out what to name our soon to be baby boy. Patrick (the father) and I both had very different ideas of what names we liked. I had a soft spot for Grayson, which he hated, and he had a thing for Forest, which I hated. We eventually both had a semi agreement with the name Lucas, but we still weren’t in love with it. We knew that we wanted something that related with our love for the outdoors and nature. And that is where I have to give my mother all the credit. She called me up and said, “what about Aspen?” When I brought the name up to Pat, we both finally felt like that was the name. Mind you, we already had the middle name picked out from the beginning, so it also had to flow well with his middle name. Aspen fit perfectly! 

So here we were, finally with a chosen name, and now everyone is telling us “you have to do an aspen themed room.” Now Aspen could be either the mountain or the tree. Trying to replicate a mountain on a wall is a little tougher than a tree. I also didn’t feel like we needed to be so literal, but I did like the idea of painting some trees in his room. I knew that I wanted to have a lot of nature and animal themed art and toys in the room, and trees would blend perfectly with the rest of my vision for his room. 

Next was the color scheme. I actually decided the color scheme around the mobile that I found for above his crib. I had searched for mobiles early on while in my obsessive nesting need to figure out every which way to re-do our house before the baby came. I would never have put that particular color combination together if I hadn’t seen how well it worked for the mobile. The walls in the room were already a blueish grey color, so all we needed was a pop of color not the crib wall. The mobile had a couple different grays, an off white color, and a kind of burnt orange color. Aspen trees, being very almost white and black, would look great against a something bright, so my fiancé and I tried to match the burnt orange as best as we could with the mobile. And that is exactly what color we painted the wall that the crib would lay against. After that, we had a great time painting the trees, and they stood out in a beautiful way against the brightness of the orange. 

The materials we used were paint rollers, a paint tray, and painters tape for the orange wall. Then we used a decent sized paintbrush for the trunks of the trees. I used my acrylic painting brush for the finer branches and the black outline, as well as some of the details in the trunks. However, most of the details in the trunks we used the sponge brushes to get the textural and splotchy appearance.

The trees themselves were not very hard to paint. After Pat and I got the wall all orange,  I threw a little painting party with my mother and best friend and we painted the white trunks of the trees. 

They left me do the branches being the art major and being fearful they wouldn’t get it right (I’m sure they would have been fine). And Pat and I finished up by outlining the trees in black and adding the black knots and lines in the trunks.

We love the way it turned out, and Aspen loves looking at the contrast of the trees. All in all, the room came together great, especially with the nice addition of stuffed animals and animal pictures that tied the room together in the end.