Nursery decor from A-Z

The alphabet cards on Finley's wall

It's hard to believe it was almost a year ago that I went to the Pick Me Up contemporary graphic arts festival at London's Somerset House. I had meant to blog about it at the time, but being pregnant and constantly tired I never quite got round to it. It was so inspiring and the sort of exhibition where I would genuinely love to own the art so I'm planning to go again this year, and I will post about it this time round.

Personalised prints being created by Nursery Names at Pick Me Up 2013

One of the surprising things was how child friendly it was - it's funny how you start to look at things with a different perspective. We were there early on a Saturday morning and not only were there lots of parents with little ones (a revelation: so this is what you do when you're not hungover and up at the crack of dawn), but there were printing workshops and creative spaces where older kids could get involved in creative projects too. There were also quite a few artists creating work aimed at children and the stuff that really caught my eye was by Nursery Names. In their own words it's a "customisable alphabet print project founded by London based graphic artist & art director Emily Forgot". They were creating personalised prints on site, or you could buy individual letter prints or alphabet prints. But I went for the beautiful sets of alphabet cards. I love the quirky illustrations and the fact that they are fun without being too twee.

I had originally planned to frame the whole set but after struggling home from Ikea with a giant picture frame and trying to arrange them in it, they still didn't look right. Luckily, as I was looking back at my children's nursery Pinterest board for inspiration, I looked again at a nursery that had used traditional twine to peg alphabet cards to the wall. I decided this would be perfect and would make a different yet stylish way to display the cards. I'm really pleased with how they look and now just need to get a few more prints up in Finley's room so it starts to look a bit cosier. I'm also booked in for a lampshade making course at a local creative cafe in June so I can make him an original lamp shade - decent kids ones are surprisingly hard to find.

The alphabet card sets or personalised prints would make a brilliant birthday or christening present for little ones and they come in a variety of colour ways. You can find out more at the Nursery Names website.

Open For Business!

Finally! Today I am flinging open the virtual doors of my online shop and inviting you all to come on in and have a look around. I hope you like it.

You can find the Stars and Buttons Etsy shop here.

When some of my close friends started having babies, I spent quite a lot of time looking for original yet trendy little gifts. That's more difficult than it sounds when you throw in the word 'affordable' so I decided to make my own and Stars and Buttons was born. Now I'm selling my homemade bibs and burping cloth gift sets online which I'm very excited about. I love sourcing lovely printed fabric to turn into bibs, burp cloths and lots of other handmade things. Watch out for a wider range of fabrics and gifts which I'll  be listing in my Etsy shop soon. There'll even be pretty things for grown-ups.

I want to say a quick thanks to the lovely Amy who runs the excellent Robin & Mould Etsy shop for her advice and for providing the motivation to stop worrying about the details and just start selling! And to my lovely model Eléna, who was one of the first to road test the bibs and who is already proving a great bib saleswoman!

You can follow me on Twitter @starsandbuttons.