January Ja-'MIE' Project

Back in the day... before children... when I was only preparing for child number one... I made this 'H' pillow for Henry's room. I saw the 'E' on Friends for Emma, and I thought - "how hard could that be?"

ha ha ha.

I'm not much of a sewer - but I designed this 2 foot pillow to hang in Henry's room. Its made out of upholstery fabric and was a BLAST (cough cough) to sew.

My mother in law had to help me finish it. I couldn't for the life of me sew up the hole I left to stuff it (stuffing it was not too fun either...). So she finished it for me - and I LOVE it!

So... along came baby number 2. First of all, this time around - We could not agree on a name. Second of all, the first time we had a boy and girl's name picked out that both started with 'H' - that was not happening this time. So, I did not get a letter done before George was born.

This fall then, I wanted to make him a 'G' for his wall. Though, I wasn't sure if I wanted to attempt the pillow again. So, Christopher and I conjured up the idea of cutting it out of a board... blah blah blah. It would have looked great! But it depended on Christopher doing it for me.

The other day, in my new addiction to blogs, I found this awesome decor post for a NOEL sign on the Sand and Sisal blog that I've recently been following. I could think of about a dozen words I wanted to make for around the house - and then I thought of 'GEORGE'.

PERFECT!

Something I can do myself - and plus, its a start to my 2nd New Year's Resolution -- A ME (Ja-'MIE') Project... once a month.

So, I went to Michael's and bought my letters (I think they were about $3 a letter, not too shabby!) and some acrylic paint. I bought black and a royal blue.

The next day, during the boys' nap (amazing, eh? It was an hour and a half) I got started.

I laid out the letters to have an idea of how I wanted to arrange them.

Then I started painting. Black first, then the blue - it didn't take long. I didn't wait for them to dry in between coats... just a little. By the time I painted them all the first time, I just started the 2nd coat in blue. I did multiple coats of blue - I even wiped it off at one point with a paper towel. I also used a dry paintbrush to rough it up a little.

  

Once I got it all painted - I worked on the layout again. Though, duh me - I forgot I took a picture of how I planned on it being... and redid it. All I wanted this time was for the E's to line up level so when I hung it on the wall, I could just put 2 nails in at the same height instead of trying to guess where the next one should be.

(FYI: I did all of the above in the hour and a half that Henry napped... I got the next part done in the next 1/2 an hour while George was still napping) 

Then I simply hot glued it together on the back and where they overlapped. It took a few times of regluing to make sure everything stayed in place - and I even had to hot glue it after I got it on the wall, but if you get enough of it on there - it'll stay :)

Here's the final product - I LOVE it! All in an afternoon!! (The 'H' took me at least a week...)