Personalized DIY Nursery Art

I am so glad to be able to say that I'm almost finished with Bubs' room. The final piece of the room was to make some wall art using his name like I did in Charming's room.

A big part of the delay in getting things done is the price of things in Canada.  I found the letters for Charming's name at Hobby Lobby for a couple of dollars each and spent an afternoon painting them to match the crib bedding with paint I already had from previous projects.  That was a very thrifty project and fun to do.

Charming's crib bedding

As much as I wanted to do something similar for Bubs', I've lost my passport and haven't been able to cross the border.  And Michael's in Canada charges around seven dollars per letter.  Multiply that by 5 and add 13% tax and that's just silly and somewhat painful.

So my friend, Lynne, who is a regular cross border shopper picked these little guys up for me one day on a cross border run before Christmas.  I immediately spray painted them the same orange that I used to paint Bubs' lamp.

And then they sat in the craft room for a couple of months because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with them.  The room is pretty big and the letters are small so they would have looked lost all on their own.  I thought of painting some canvas and mounting them on that and even started on one but I didn't like how my canvas turned out.  So they sat some more, waiting for me to have some sort of inspiration.

It finally happened earlier this week when I was looking through my collection of frames for a gallery wall that I'm working on.  Sometimes I worry about my "collections" but I have to say it's a good thing I'm a  hoarder  collector of picture frames.  Because there they were, just waiting to be used.  Six Dollar Store frames that I had bought awhile back.  And they're exactly the same as the ones I used on my photocopied wall art project.  Perfect match!  I removed the glass and the backing and added foam mounting tape to the top and bottom of the frames.

To make it simple I laid the frames on the floor in front of the crib and spaced them out that way.  I'm sucky at measuring things and trying to do the math.  All that subtracting and adding makes my head hurt and I never get it right anyways.   Once they were spaced the way I wanted them I used a level to draw a line on the wall that would indicate where the frames would be placed.  I just drew it straight across marking the top and edges for placement.

Then I mounted the outside frames first, the middle one next and was able to use those as a guideline to place the last two.  That's probably about as clear as mud which is why I don't do tutorials very often.   Here's a little diagram to help explain my vague instructions.

 I'm sure there are way better ways to hang things but that's all my brain could come up with that morning.  And it worked!!  Yay!  I added some mounting tape to the back of the letters and centered them in the frames.  I didn't measure or do any math to place the letters, just sort of eyeballed them until they looked centered.  

It's mounted a bit higher than I would normally like but Charming recently started peeling the decal off the wall above his crib....lesson learned.

Love how the orange pops against the gray walls and white frames.  Stay tuned for the full nursery reveal in the next week or so.

Linking up to my favorite parties here as well as to Coastal Charm, Home Stories A to Z, Shabby Creek Cottage, and Watch Out Martha.