Going Wild Zoo Animal Dresser

When we first started having children we went with a gender neutral theme: zoo animals. This worked out perfectly because our little girl was quickly followed by a little boy. While our daughter has moved to pink, purple, princesses and ponies, our son has remained an avid zoo animal fan. Especially monkeys.

This dresser was a freebie from Freecycle. As you can see, it's seen some loving already. I did nothing to prep it except wipe the fronts down. I don't expect the zoo animal phase to last throughout all his years and figured it would make it easier to change it down the road. Ok, actually, I'm just lazy, but he will have the option of changing it when he gets older...he's 3 now.

It was bit tricky coming up with patterned zoo animals. Hippos, elephants, and monkeys were out: solid colors. For a brief moment I considered adding simple faces so I could do a monkey and elephant...but then realized that this was more work than I wanted to put into the project. Mostly because I don't trust my painting skills and wanted to avoid frustration.

Hence: zebra, giraffe, alligator (per son's request), and jaguar.

Project was created mostly free-hand, except the zebra drawer, where I relied heavily on a pattern printed from google images.

jaguar

The jaguar drawer was a learning experience. I honestly didn't know what a jaguar looked like. Given this pattern below it should be a leopard drawer because jaguar spots are arranged in rectangular patterns.

leopard

Even though it isn't exactly what I was shooting for I am please with how it turned out. The drawer scared me the most because I lack confidence in my free-hand painting skills. Glad I didn't let fear stop me from trying this pattern out!

Photos compliments of Wikipedia.