DIY Alphabet Wall

If you do a Google or Pinterest search for a nursery alphabet wall, you will find so many cute ideas.

In my search for ways to decorate the nursery, I stumbled across this and was inspired.  I just loved all the cute ideas for an alphabet wall.  I did not realize however, until a few days ago, how expensive it would be to do.

The problem is not finding the wooden letters.  Many craft stores sell a variety of unfinished wooden letters in various fonts that are perfect for this, but they're just so expensive.  Going into it I thought I could just buy an alphabet pack of letters and go from there.  It was nearly impossible to find anything like that.  Almost everywhere I looked, in stores, and online, made you buy the letters individually.  Then, depending on the size you wanted for each letter, they could range from $1.50 to $5 each.  That shocked me.  I never thought they would be so expensive! 

After realizing I would not be able to do the project as I originally had intended I decided to try and figure out a different way to achieve the same outcome.  So here for you, is my DIY version of an alphabet wall.  And all I spent was $4.

Supplies
Cardboard
Scissors
Sharpie
Pencil
Paper
Crayons
Paint
Paint brushes

Luckily I have been getting lots of baby goodies so I had tons of cardboard boxes piled up.  The first thing that I did was cut up 26 cardboard squares.  I chose to make mine different sizes, but you could just as easily make them all the same size.

 

Next, I brainstormed what I wanted my letters to look like.  You can make just plain letters in various fonts, but I decided it would be fun to make the letters look like something that started with that letter (for example: A for Alligator).

 

Next, I sketched the letters out on the cardboard in pencil, and then outlined in sharpie. 

 

Then I painted all of the letters.  This was time consuming and space consuming because I did it one color at a time.  I didn't worry too much about staying inside the lines because after the painting was finished, I went back over the letters with a sharpie getting all the edges and details to stand out.

The last, and hardest part of the project was cutting the letters out.  Especially if there were a lot of little details to cut out.  These Octopus legs were a challenge.  Luckily, my wonderful husband offered to help.  So I cut out the big chunks with scissors and he did the more challenging parts with an exacto knife.  We finally got it finished, even though by the end our hands were very sore.  Then, I got to have the joy of hanging them on the wall and seeing the finished product.  I just used 3M to hang them. 

 

 

Another Nursery DIY Project

Adam and I knew that we needed another dresser or bookshelf for the nursery, but we didn't want to buy one.  So, here is how I repurposed a piece of furniture for the nursery for only $10.

This is our old entertainment center

 

We have been keeping it in the nursery and storing some things in it, but I thought it would make a good bookshelf or toy chest for the babies things.  So the first thing I did was paint it all one color.  You can't tell very well in the picture, but it is a soft green.

 

Then I sketched out some painting that I wanted to do on it, keeping with the forest thing and I painted it using acrylic paints.  This is the finished product.  I am really happy with it.  I also covered the glass much like I did with my plastic storage DIY.

 

And here it is in it's place in the nursery

 

Later today check out the pictures of our nursery progress!

 



Nursery DIY

This pregnancy was a surprise to Adam and I, which means that we are not as financially prepared as we would have hoped to be.  This is becoming a challenge because I want to start getting the nursery ready and things like that, but everything that I do has to be done with minimal spending.  So here’s a nursery DIY that cost me $10.  Recently I have been working on getting the nursery ready by purging all of the stuff out of it.  Since we moved into this apartment the second bedroom has been a catch-all storage room, and it is nowhere near ready to have a baby in it, so I have been going through things, reorganizing and getting rid of some thing.  Some of our things have been stored in plastic drawer storage containers.  After my cleaning I had two empty ones that would be perfect to store diapers and things in, but they were so boring, so I decided to change them up.

 

All I needed was scrapbook paper, scissors, and clear adhesive.

First, I made these cute little forest animals out of scrapbook paper.  (The nursery theme that we have picked is forest animals). 

 

Second, I measured out the scrapbook paper to fit in the drawer.  Then I attached the animal to it and taped it with double sided scrapbooking tape to the inside of the bin.  And that was it!  Here’s the finished product.

 

I’m pretty excited about how they turned out.  I think they are super cute. 

Do you have any cheap nursery DIYs?