There are 9 kids in my husband’s family
There are 5 in mine
Needless to say
there are ALOT of birthday’s to keep track of!
I’ll be honest –
I am not good at keeping track
but
I knew my kids would love
to send their cousins cards
for their birthday’s
because what kid doesn’t
LOVE getting mail,
especially Birthday mail?
Not to mention the fact
that we have so many people to keep track of
and 8 of our siblings are not even married/have kids yet!
(this is going to be HUGE once that happens!)
I feel better knowing I can keep track of these things 🙂
I am however
crafting challenged
I don’t have a Cricut
or any of those fancy machines
for cutting some Vinyl out
I thought I would get some stickers
or letters at the craft store
but the variety and cost
was was too much for me
So a light bulb went off in my head
I’ll just decoupage it!
I have a printer
I’ll buy some fancy paper
(that was on sale at Michaels)
and it was SOOO much easier
than figuring out another way
Now don’t get me wrong,
you can use your fancy machines
or Vinyl to do this
but if you are like me
and challenged in the crafting arena
all you need is some
mod podge and a printer!
What you need:
- Letters – whether you use a stencil, vinyl, a cricut, freehand, stickers, etc. Use what works for you, but I’ll just talk about what I did. Just substitute what I did, for your preferred method!
- 8″x 24″ board – I just had a piece in my garage that was close to this size. (months can be spaced about 2 inches apart with a 24″ board, which is what you need, so 24″ is the minimum length you need) My husband keeping random things pays off!
- Small eye hooks – I just bought a couple of packs of the smallest ones at Home Depot. I used 14
- Round discs – sold at Michael’s. This is for the names.. I think they were around 1.5″ in diameter – it was the only size they sold at my store… you could use any shape you choose for your board – stars, ovals, diamonds, whatever works with your decor/style
- Wire
- Small 1/16″ drill bit – the smallest they sell at Home Depot
- Drill and Wood Sander
- Spray paint (optional – I just used some we had in our garage)
- Lots of patience if you have as many names as we do!
Steps:
- Sand your board. The shapes you buy for the names should be all ready to go, so no need to sand them.
- I spray painted the board white – this is optional depending on how you decide to decorate it! but I wanted a smooth surface to work with.
- Create your letters for the board and the names for the discs via your method… How I did it: I used Word (and used the ruler function to make sure I had the right size/spacing!) and picked a font and size that would work/that I liked. I then printed it out (It was 2.5 pieces of paper for the “Birthday” and month part on the board) on some fancy cardstock, scrapbook paper that was on sale at Michael’s. I even color coded the discs for the different families – one color for my family, one for my Husband’s, and then one for our family. The Discs have the person’s name and the day of the month they were born. You could also have the year they were born on there, but I didn’t have that information for everyone 😛
- Attach letters to your board via your method.. How I did it: I cut the paper to the right size using an exacto knife and scissors. I then glued it to the board with my Homemade Mod Podge. I did the names on the discs the same way – Printed the names and the date of the Birthday on the paper – cut them out and then glued them to the discs. You use the Mod Podge on the bottom of the paper to glue it to the board/discs, and then brush it over the ENTIRE surface of the paper on top. This will firmly place it to the board/discs. As long as you put it on SMOOTH and STRAIGHT, don’t worry about any wrinkles that you see as it dries – they will flatten out once it is dry! Once they were dry, I was able to clean up any edges that I didn’t cut perfectly with my exacto knife and it was actually easier to cut/trim than before it was glued 🙂
- After it is all dried, Drill small holes in the top and bottom of each disc
- Drill a hole in the bottom of the board, under each of the months of the year – approx. every 2 inches. Hopefully you spaced the names of the months properly when you created your letters scheme (I used the ruler in Word to space things properly)… To hang the board, I also drilled 2 holes in the top – 3 inches in from each side.
- Screw the eyehooks into the holes under each month – also put 2 in the top of the board, if that is how you plan to hang it
- I used wire (I had some floral wire from another project I’d done) to hook all the discs together, in order of day of the month, and then into the eyehooks on the board. There are many methods you could use to hang the discs, but this is REALLY easy, and I just happened to have the wire laying around anyway
- Used some ribbon between the eyehooks on the top of the board to hang
- Enjoy a job well done!
