I’ve always had a deep fascination with the ocean. It has always been magical and relaxing to my husband, Dom, and I. We wanted Maddox’s room to have that same feeling. I knew I wanted to do an ocean theme for Maddox’s nursery so I set out brainstorming ideas when I was pregnant. At first I thought of doing a painted mural but that seemed so permanent. I wanted something I could remove easily just incase Maddox had different ideas of what he wanted in his room. I’ve noticed so many awesome vinyl decals for sale at retail shops and I thought that would be the perfect solution to my commitment phobia!
At first I started looking up all sorts of sea life in books and online. I created a reference folder and started sketching. I got totally carried away and started inventing my own animals. See Merferret! :D After the sketching I started to vectorize all of the creatures since I knew those were the type of files I would need to submit to the sticker company. Then I moved onto color and that was a tough one! Our guest room, soon-to-be nursery, was blue and I thought going monochromatic might help us achieve that calming feeling we wanted for Maddox’s room. I changed my mind several times and decided I had to add a pop of color. I went for a snack in the fridge later that day, like I often did when I was pregnant, and saw cantaloupe! I knew that creamy orange would give me the pop of color I was looking for! All my pregnancy eating helped my work and my baby - all the reason to eat some more! Now came the measuring! I took measurements of the wall in Maddox’s nursery and created a mockup in Illustrator to help me figure out how I wanted to layout all the creatures. It was fun to finally see all the elements work with one another but something was missing… Hand-lettering! I made a hand-lettered quote and put that front and center. That helped everything come together!
ROLE: Design, Art Direction, Illustration
