By Karen Parr-Moody
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – On the brink of motherhood, professional photographer Beth Liggett spent a lot of time daydreaming about her child’s nursery. She perused the popular photo curating site, Pinterest, where she got ideas – including one for refashioning a Mid-Century Modern chest with gold polka dots.
Now finished, Liggett’s nursery is a study in modernity. She follows a recent trend seen on home décor websites such as Apartment Therapy, where traditional pastels give way to a range of palettes. Popular tones for baby girls include pale pistachio and light gray with the pinks reserved as highlights in the wall décor, curtains and bedding.
“I think the first thing I knew was that I was not the type of person who wanted to go all hot pink and baby pink,” Liggett says. “It was a bit too standard for me.”
It took the help of family, friends and Pinterest to pull together this D-I-Y masterpiece./Karen Parr-Moody
Elbow grease and ingenuity followed Liggett’s daydreams. She started by choosing a paint color, City Retreat by Allen + Roth Colors by Valspar, which is a pale gray with lavender undertones. The color is perfect for the baby, whose name is Violet (she arrived on July 30).
Against this nearly-neutral palette, Liggett chose a batch of beautiful accent colors, including coral, yellow and aqua.
“I like orange and I like pink – and coral’s a little bit of both,” Liggett said of the predominate tone. “I also thought it would look good with the gray. I like color – pops of color.”
The resulting palette is less baby-like, but there is still plenty of whimsy in Violet’s room. It simply looks nothing like the cookie-cutter nurseries with their bagged bedding sets.
Liggett and her partner, writer Jake Lowary, purchased some of the new items for the nursery, including a white Jenny Lind crib with spindle
posts (which happens to be one of the more popular cribs seen on décor blogs). She also had, in reserve, a Mid-Century Modern chest that she’d found for $25 at City Thrift before she got pregnant. She brought it out of the garage, painted it white and covered in metallic gold polka dots cut out from contact paper.
“If I can do it myself, I would rather,” Liggett says. “Because it’s going to be unique that way.”
Additionally, many of the nursery items were gifted. Michele Tyndall, a talented seamstress who is also Liggett’s supervisor at Austin Peay State University, created Violet’s bedding. And what bedding it is. Liggett chose four different fabrics for the bed skirt, including three prints from Textile Fabrics in Nashville and one custom-designed coral print from www.spoonflower.com. Matching yellow chevron sheets by Circo were gifts from her registry.
Some students at APSU gifted Liggett with script letters in metallic gold that spell out the baby’s name. And her sister gave her a secondhand changing table that she had painted a crisp white; she also sewed new chevron upholstery for Liggett’s rocking chair.
“One thing that I think is really important about this nursery is it has come together through so many more people than just us,” Liggett says. “She has so many fans already.”
Pendants are a recurring theme in the nursery; some also hang over the window./Karen Parr-Moody
In one corner, there is a collection of framed song lyrics that were graphically designed by Violet’s father.
“They’re song lyrics that mean a lot to Jake and me,” Liggett says. “One of our favorite things to do together is to see concerts.”
The lyrics are inspirational lines that are perfect for adults or little ones, including one by the Avett Brothers – “Decide what to be and go be it” – and another by Coldplay – “Look at the stars and how they shine for you.”
With this gorgeous nursery created from love, it seems like the stars are surely shining for little Violet.
Photos by Karen Parr-Moody
Karen Parr-Moody began a career as a New York journalist, working as a fashion reporter for Women’s Wear Daily, a beauty editor for Young Miss and a beauty and fashion writer for both In Style and People magazines. Regionally, she has been a writer at The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper and currently writes about arts and culture for Nashville Arts magazine each month.