Nursery Sign Semi Fail

I mentioned in a previous post that my sister-in-law recently had a baby, little Chandler.

Less than two years ago his older sister was born, and I made her this name sign out of an old section of fence and lots and lots of buttons. (tutorial here)

I can’t very well make Mallory a sign and not Chandler, so I did a little brainstorming on how I could make one without spending days gluing buttons. Buttons would be fine if his name was Bob or TJ or something, but “Chandler” in buttons just isn’t happening. Luckily Cutting Edge Stencils had just come out some new stencils…letter stencils. This was going to be easy.

I started off with a scrap piece if plywood from the garage…

And applied two coats of paint in Gray’s Harbor (same as my kitchen cabinets).

The letter stencils come in three different sizes, 8 inch, 12 inch, and 18 inch. I thought I remembered that Mallory’s letters were about a foot tall, so I ordered the 12 inch letters in an all different designs.

I had planned to stencil the letters on the plywood, trim off all the excess, and frame it. But when I laid out the letters they were way wider than I had anticipated and barely fit on the plywood.

I decided to go ahead and stencil it anyway, since I had come this far.

That above picture was actually taken by Elijah. He has recently become obsessed with taking pictures on my phone…he is getting better, but most of his pictures consist of blurry objects around his feet and direct shots up his nose. Every once in a while though I find a gem on there. This is by far the best picture he has ever taken…think we’re going to practice a little and make him the official photographer of mommy working. Phone photographer, that is, because he is still absolutely and completely forbidden from ever touching – or even looking at – my DSLR.

So, I finished stenciling. It didn’t take me long, and it looked good….but it was huge. So ridiculously huge. It was over eight feet long and I hadn’t even framed it yet.

I stood there staring at it, trying to decide what to do. My inner monologue went a little something like this…

“There was no way I can give this to Jaime. Should I make a new one? Will it even fit in her car…or on the wall? Her kids will be sharing a small bedroom, this thing will look way out of place. I should definitely make a new one. But…I’m almost finished! It’s fine. She will love it. Or she’ll hate it but tell me she loves it. That’s the worst. Then she will hang it out of guilt and curl her lip at it each time she lays Chandler down in his crib…his crib that is much smaller than his ridiculous name sign. Oh, maybe she could handy it vertically! No, that’s dumb. UGH. Decisions.”

A few hours later I’m still undecided and Adam pulls into the driveway. The boys run out to meet him on the porch (as usual), and he comes in with them and says “Hey baby, how was you d…GOOD LORD, is that for Keith and Jaime? It is HUGE. You’re not actually planning to give that to them are you?

So I texted Jaime the above picture and asked her opinion….

Aww, Jaime is so nice. She’s right…six feet, eight feet, what’s the difference?

But I just can’t do it…I’m not in love with it and I can do better. So I’ve started over and am making one that looks completely different and is a more reasonable size. I’m hoping to finish up this weekend and have the final product up on next week. Starting over was the right move, because no one should be on the receiving end of an eight foot gift.