Fall in love with the nursery wall art you use to decorate your child’s room.
I’ve decorated a lot of nurseries, toddler rooms and plays rooms over the past 30+ years. (4 kiddos of my own and now grand-kiddos to love.)
There are no shortage of nursery wall art ideas and decor for your nursery or toddler spaces. But what if creativity is more interesting to you than off-the-shelf? If that sounds like you, then printable artwork is a great way to go.
Printable Kids Wall Art – Old Friends and New Uses
If you’ve worked with printable art before, some of these ideas you’re probably familiar with. But it’s always good to start with the basics and build from there.
These home decor ideas will get your creative juices flowing.
- Frame and enjoy
- Crop and enhance
- Divide and frame
- The digital art grouping
- 1 printables set + your photos = perfect
- Printables to inspire
- Teach with printable art
Printable Wall Art – Frame and Hang
This idea is our foundation. You have found a piece of digital artwork you love and want to display in your child’s room. Get that art printed out and on the wall!
This fun woodland printable was inspired by the Rocky Mountains here in Colorado, where I live. There are lots of different ways to use a piece of woodland nursery digital artwork like this and you can see more here.
A note about printing. If you are satisfied with the quality of your home printer and it can print out at the size you want, by all means, print your digital art at home.
However, that’s not always the case is it? Sometimes a good digital file needs more than the home printer can deliver. That’s not a surprise, of course, and is exactly why there are such things as online print websites and off line print shops.
How do you know if you should print your artwork at home? If you regularly prints the hard copies of your photographs on your home printer and are happy with the results, then you might be satisfied printing your wall art at home – assuming you can print out at the sizes you desire.
But a lot of us aren’t satisfied with printing our photographs at home. I know I’m not. So I use a variety of print shops to get exactly what I want and you can, too.
Good artwork is worth every penny and every minute you spend making it what you want. Attention to detail is what will make you smile every time you see it.
Crop that Printable
A printable file is just that; a digital file. As such, with the correct software, you can manipulate it as you wish (unless you are prohibited from doing so by the terms set by the artist you purchased it from. I allow my clients to do manipulations like this with my digital art as long as it’s for personal use only.).
Using Photoshop or Gimp (what I use) or Canva or any other photo manipulating software, you can do all sorts of fun things. A fast and easy thing to do is simply crop your art file and achieve a more creative look.
Using my owl printable you can see the totally different look. And if you want to see how I painted my owl, take a look here.
{Want to get a free printable nursery decorating checklist? I’ll bet you do! Come on over to my post on the many ways you can use celestial printable nursery art and grab your copy.}
Divide and Frame Your Printable Art
Take 1 piece of printable art that’s decently sized (I’d choose at least an 11×14 at 300 dpi) and simply crop/divide it into quarters (for example: divide the same printable in half both vertically and horizontally). After printing, frame those quarters and hang as a group.
I’d keep the frames smallish (4×6 inches, 5×7 inches, 8×8 inches). This is definitely a more advanced technique because when you crop your original file you’re going to need to re-scale these quarters into the right ratios to fit your frames.
Aspect ratio has a huge impact
If you have no experience with this technique, I’d recommend this photography youtube video.
Since the photographer is speaking about photography, just substitute “digital print” every time he says “photograph” so you’ll catch his methodology.
Alternatively, instead of dividing a printable file into 4 equal pieces, you can also crop areas of pattern you like and place into the 4 frames. A printable that has a random pattern works best for this technique.
To check if these ideas of cropping will work with your printable artwork, print a test copy at 8×10 inches, cut apart and tack on the wall in a collage, leaving space for the frames. Do you like what you see?
Nursery Wall Art Shines Using Printable Groupings
This is one of my favorite ways to decorate with printables. You get so much value for the money you spend and come away with multiple ways to use your nursery wall art.
Let’s take a look at an easy idea. You find 4 gorgeous nursery printables you love. You print them out at the same size, frame and hang them in a group. Smart, easy, perfect.
This next idea is just as easy but even more creative.
A Printable Set + Your Photos
Use your favorite printable artwork and add other artwork and photos you love. In this example we’ll also print them out at different ratios for a super fun look.
Which art grouping do you like best? Which will work in your toddler’s bedroom or baby’s nursery? What space do you need to fill? These are all important questions to ask as you plan out your printable artwork group.
Want more helpful information on basic how-to’s of artwork groupings? Check out LoveToKnow’s article here. It has a ton of insights which can help anyone successfully plan and hang their art collection.
Nursery Wall Art Using Printables to Inspire
Want to set a specific mood or tone in your child’s room? Put a sentiment like “Laugh” in your child’s space where you and your little one can see it and talk about it every day.
I have used this same idea to surround my children with many positive messages over the years. And it’s totally customizable. Whatever character trait or habit we were working on at the time, it found its way onto our walls. From learning emotional control to remembering to be kind to friends, it’s easy and it works.
Using Nursery Wall Art to Teach
Of course you’re using art to teach your child basic concepts like colors, numbers, the alphabet and more. Color stimulates the brain and helps build memory and awareness. It’s a matter of personal taste whether you want simple line art or more sophisticated printable artwork in your child’s space.
Here are 2 printables I’ve designed for you to introduce your child to basic colors.
Click on them to go the pages where they can be accessed and learn more about how color effects learning here.
Get this free Preschool Color Chart by clicking on the download link.
Hang it at eye-level so your child can talk with you about it everyday. Or cut apart the colors so your child can hold them while you practice together.
Printable artwork rocks! Now you can see why I love designing digital art so much.
What do you want to explore next in the world of printables?
Don’t stop here! There’s always a new idea waiting that can add just the vibe you’re looking for in your toddler’s room or baby’s nursery. Here’s a great place to start: farmhouse style free lemon printables. I made them just for you!
