Sarah's Nursery: Penguin Book Art

Most of the art pieces we hung on the walls in the nursery were no-brainers.  My favorite is the watercolor hanging over the glider.  Our grandma is an incredible artist and painted it specifically for the nursery.  It's beautiful and whimsy and reminds me of all the fun we've had painting together over the years.

The baby also adores it.  In fact, when I'm trying to get him to relax in the glider, I have to face him away from it because he gets so worked up looking at it.  Clearly he is already a refined critic.  

I love being able to use meaningful pieces like this, but I had the hardest time figuring out what to hang above the crib.  All moms know that crib art is difficult because you can't hang anything heavy that could fall on your baby, and you have to hang it awkwardly high so that the baby can't reach up and grab it.  Enter Penguin.

Penguin book art has been all over the design world lately.  One of our favorite examples is the painting Courtney Cox hung in her beach house, featured in Elle Decor:

Of course this picture warms my nerdy, bookworm heart.  Literature, art, and design combined?  Is there anything better?  A few more faves:

Needless to say, I am obsessed with this trend.  So when Julie spotted a box full of old Penguin postcards at Housing Works, our local thrift store, we knew we had found the perfect solution!  We decided to hang multiple postcards rather than blowing up just one because it would allow us to bring more color into the space and would just be a little different than what we've seen done before.  We hung them using Command picture hanging strips:

...and just eyeballed their placement.  This is not recommended but actually worked this time.

We love the interest these postcards add to what was a humongous, blank white wall.  Pretty postcards of any type can be an easy, cheap, and unique answer to the question of what to hang over a crib.  We love them grouped, like we did in my nursery, but also think that a single enlarged postcard (framed or unframed) would bring make a bold, graphic statement in any room.