DIY Nursery Art

I showed y’all my whale dresser and more of the nursery for my grandson here. This DIY nursery art is also in the room. See the craft tutorial below where I show you how to make these adorable canvases for your own home or as a gift.

I love how this project turned out. You can make this with a cutting machine in an afternoon. The part that takes the longest is waiting for the paint to dry!

Supplies needed

• Three 8 x 10 Canvases
• Chalky Finish paint in Legacy
• Chalky Finish paint in Everlasting
• White adhesive vinyl
• Transfer tape
• Scissors
• Cricut machine

Step 1 – Prep canvases

To make your DIY nursery art, start by painting your canvases with the Chalky Finish paint in Legacy. You can choose another dark blue if you would like just follow the same directions. The first canvas is painted with the Legacy straight from the container. The second is mixed with a little bit of Everlasting. The third is mixed with even more Everlasting. My canvases took two coats of paint each (allow to dry in between coats).

Step 2 – Create your design

Next, open Cricut Design Space and go to a blank canvas. To add a similar image, you can search for “whale” and choose the one you like to add to your canvas. In the examples below, I am using design #M40FEA1 for the whale with the spouting water.

Once you have your whale, use a square shape to slice the water droplets so you can move them around and duplicate them. After slicing, you can delete the parts you don’t need. You can see the cuts in the layers panel.

I then moved the water drops around, resized them and made them look the way I wanted them to. You can also flip them horizontally to give it a custom look.

Now to add the waves to go under the whale, I used #MB534002 to create the waves. I ended up duplicating the wave image to make it fit under the whale.

To finish the look, move the waves so they overlap a bit and then click Unite. Pro Tip: you can also cut waves by hand with your white vinyl.

Now you are ready to cut your vinyl. Make sure you select your whole image to resize it for your canvases. Then send your DIY nursery art to cut. If you are using 8×10 canvases, you should be able to fit the whole design on one cutting mat.

After cutting the vinyl, you are ready to put this cute DIY nursery art together.

Step 3 – Put your DIY nursery art together

Do you really want to see how this project came together? And in just 6 seconds? I made a cool video of the process below. Just click play and see how this craft was made….in seconds!

The adhesive vinyl is super easy to just peel and stick to the canvases. You can also use transfer tape if you prefer. Here are some images of the canvases so you can get an idea of placement. 

The top two canvases are all water droplets. I made a few droplets span two different canvases. I just used scissors to cut those into two pieces.

Press down the vinyl really well as you apply. You might find a book behind your canvas helps with this. The waves on the bottom of the canvas were also cut to length with scissors.

This DIY nursery art is perfect for a nautical nursery but you can also use the same idea for some bathroom art. Y’all enjoy this fun canvas art and be sure to use this idea for your home!

You can see more about the nursery here as well as where that art was placed. Doesn’t it look adorable in the image below!??!