Loving my ABC's

When we moved into our house in the burbs, my first priority was to get Blake's nursery up and running.  I wanted the transition from his teeny tiny room in Manhattan to his bedroom in the burbs to be as seamless as possible.  

For starters, we had to paint his room since the previous owner had 3 daughters, and everything was a shade of pink or yellow.  Aside from painting, I thought we had plenty of artwork to cover the lengths of his new walls.  Once everything was unpacked and hung, I realized we had a large empty space above his changing table.  The space remained blank for quite some time until I was inspired by a DIY project I saw online.  It was perfect - it was a statement piece with a hidden message within. 

I headed to Michael's to get all of my supplies.  At the time, I wasn't planning on capturing this in a blog, so I only have a few pictures beginning to end.

What you need:
1. Large canvas, size will depend on the wall space you have available
2. Full alphabet of wooden letters, and a wood heart that replaces the O
3. At least 2 different paint colors
4. White spray paint
5. Hot glue gun/glue sticks


Directions
1. I started lining all of my letters up, and something just didn't feel right.  I played around with the layout several times before I found the right design.

2. I choose to have minimal separation between the rows of letters.  I wanted the final product to look "cozy" with the letters squished together.

3. I painted the canvas a darker shade of blue that would pop against the light blue of Blake's walls.  I painted 2 full coats to make sure that there were no white spots poking thru.

4. With the exception of the I, the heart, and the U, I painted all of the wooden letters white.  After all of the letters dried, I realized I didn't like that the letters looked dull and flat.  I was really hoping they would have a sheen to them.  I took them outside, and spray painted them with only 1 coat to get a super glossy look.

5. I painted the remaining 3 wooden letters light grey.  I selected light grey because I didn't want a stark contrast between the rest of the alphabet.  The color palette in Blake's room is very serene, and I wanted to keep it that way. 

6. I located the middle of the canvas so I knew where to start.  As a double check, I also measured the distance from the top row of letters to the top of the canvas / last row to the bottom of the canvas to be sure they were equidistant. 

7. I hot glued all of the letters to the canvas, and that's it! Ready to hang!


The nice thing about this project is that you can really customize this to your color palette.  You can make the "I love you" a stark contrast to make it pop off the canvas.  You can also skip the canvas altogether and nail the letters right to the wall.  After having Blake's room professionally painted, the last thing I wanted was 26 new holes, so I opted for the canvas look (only 1 nail needed).

The finished product.  The "I love u" pops out more in person next to the white letters.

Blake loves his new wall art so much that he tries to pull it off the wall every now and then :(

Time Spent:
Approximately 2-2.5 hours.  The longest part was making sure the edges of all the letters were painted.  I initially did 2 coats of white, but had I gone straight to the spray paint, I could have saved a lot of time.

Estimated Cost:
Total $97
Canvas ($20), letters ($52), Martha Stewart Vintage Blue paint ($10), White and Grey acrylic paint ($5), White Glossy Spray Paint ($10)
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Check back in a week or so for more pictures of Blake's nursery!  It is one of my favorite rooms in the house!