I received many thoughtful gifts at my baby showers, including original artwork by two of my favorite people, Molly and Emily.

My sister-in-law Molly (an artist and art teacher) created the beautiful pair of tiny paintings shown in the photo above. The lilac is a photo transfer of the first baby carriage, and the green is the initial "B" (for baby) - since we haven't yet revealed the baby's name. Both paintings are acrylic and gold leaf, and the colors were used specifically to coordinate with the nursery palette.

Emily created the graphic "Laugh...Dream...Love" poster and printed it on a Gocco. She presented it to me in a floating glass frame with a border of lilac around the poster. You too can have a copy of this limited edition print - she just added it to her Etsy shop. (Lucky me; I got print Number One!)

There are a few additional items I would like to create for the nursery. I was inspired by the work of artist Jeana Bartroff, whose home was recently featured in Cookie magazine's blog. The silhouette paintings above were painted with white wall paint on brown paper bags. I would love to do a monochromatic silhouette series of book characters like Madeline, Eloise, and Curious George...we'll see what I come up with.

Finally, the chandelier pictured above by Lisa Congdon was featured recently in a Design*Sponge post on Rare Device. I would like to create a mobile using favorite papers, similar to the idea shown above, that can be switched out at whim to keep the baby interested!

Painting images by me. Poster images from OrangeBeautiful. Silhouette painting images from Cookie. Chandelier image from Design*Sponge.