While I wish I was a millionaire, designing on a budget is totally fun & rewarding. You seriously don’t have to sacrifice a beautiful home because you can’t afford to drop hundreds of dollars on each room. In fact, even if I did have tons of money, I would probably DIY it anyway! It’s lots of fun & even more special that way. With that said, I really wanted to incorporate a modern animal profile bookend in Jason’s room… but I didn’t want to spend the money on them… so after I made his adorable jigsaw animal blocks, I got inspired to DIY it.

So first I sketched out a rhino (the animal that inspired the room.) I drew it to the scale that I wanted the bookends to be, and subtracted a good 3-4 inches of blank space where the books would go.

Then I had to submit my concept proofs to June for approval… 😛

Next, I traced out the cut out template onto wood with chalk.

And then I had to get that version approved by Bell… seriously, it’s hard to get things done around here! Haha!

Now that all the red tape was in the past, I cut out the shape with my jigsaw, and used a dremel to carve out the finer details.

So far so good.

Next, this guy was in need for some serious sanding.

I cut out the base to be the width of the shelves, and upright board that would be used to support the books, to be just slightly higher than the rhino’s back.

Then I used gorilla glue to attach it together. You can use screws if you want, just make sure to pre-drill the holes so the wood won’t split.

Next, I painted it all white.

My jigsaw job wasn’t perfectly level (oops!) but that was okay, because I just filled in any gaps with wall spackling.

June was so fascinated by the rhino that she played with it before the glue had totally dried… and she got startled by me walking into the room after I had told her not to touch it and dropped it… so the rhino broke… and emotional pregnant me cried… Haha! But I redid the last steps of gluing and painting, and look at how cute they turned out!

That’s it for now. Keep an eye out for the rest the projects & printables from Jason’s Nursery Reveal.

XOXO

All the new posts from this series are listed below: