Nursery Letters

Look what we made!!  Letter's for Jaxson's nursery! 

We had SO much fun making these.  We went to Hobby Lobby on a Friday night, searching for the perfect letters and scrap booking paper.  Hubby was so cute, laying down all the options of the letters on the floor in the aisle.  He choose the font and size.

Then, it was off to the paper aisle.  Wow, there are about a million different papers to choose from in there!  The only time I scrapbook is when I save our Christmas cards, so I don't really get into all that stuff.   I don't have the time, patience, and most importantly, the creativity.

We probably spent half an hour picking up and putting back different prints.  We decided not to go to "baby" in the hopes that we could leave them in his room as he got a little older and went from a nursery to a "big boy" room.  Hubby actually picked out the two cartoon prints, and I'm glad he did, they are cutie.  We are doing the room in a car theme, so they will go perfectly!

Here's what we did -

1. Hubby traced the letters onto the scrapbook paper.  There was a great debate on whether he should trace them on the front of the paper with pen, or on the back of the paper.  I voted for the back, but he argued that he needed to do it on the front so that he could see where the pattern was.  I was so happy that he was helping me instead of watching TV, and that this was OUR project together, that I relented.  Well, turns out we have a lot of pen marks, but the patterns are perfect - haha!  You can only tell if you are looking for them.

2. I painted three coats of acrylic white paint on the sides of each letter.  In hindsight, I would have done it on the corners too, and cut off Hubby's pen marks.

3. Hubby cut out the letters very carefully.

4. I went back and touched up the cutting of the letters (he had checked out by this point, he felt that his part was done - haha!)

5. I applied a very light coat of matte modge podge on each letter, and carefully laid the paper over the wood.  Then I pressed out all the bubbles, and moved onto the next letter, letting it dry completely.

6. I applied a light coat of modge podge over the paper on the letter.  I got some bubbles, but I learned as I went, the less modge podge the better.  Does anyone know how to keep bubbles from happening??

7. Originally, our plan was to hang the letters from ribbons, so we I hot glued a 4 inch ribbon on the back of each letter.  Hubby checked back in at this time, and fought me that we needed to use Gorilla Glue for the ribbons.  I had him try it on one and he quickly realized that was not the correct tool for what we were doing.

However, when we were hanging them, we quickly realized that the ribbons were not for people that had trouble hanging things in a straight line.  Not even a little.  Bye bye ribbons.

This was my part in the hanging process.

The final result!  We ended up putting a small nail in each letter to secure them.  We are very happy with how it turned out!