A Sweet Bundle of Baby Boy!

Monday, March 08, 2010

I have been scrapbooking every Wednesday for several years with a fun group of women. We call ourselves "The Scrappin' Queens". Needless to say, we have all gotten very close and have shared many joys and sorrows over the years. One of the girls gave birth recently to her first child, a son, after many years of trying. We were all thrilled for her and her husband and I wanted to make something special for the baby that they could use for many years. I love the idea of personalizing things and expressing my creativity with a handmade gift. One of my favorite new baby gifts is a set of decorated letters spelling out the baby's name. This sweet little guy's name is Spencer! So here's what I came up with!

I bought wooden letters at a local craft store, sanded them and then painted the edges of each of them with acrylic paint. The baby's bedroom is decorated in bright green, light blue and chocolate brown, a very unique choice, but one that will certainly work for him for many years. I painted 2 of the letters in each of the 3 colors, alternating them. I was able to find a collection of patterned paper that had all 3 colors AND that had a boy theme, vintage cars and bikes to boot!! How lucky was that? You know I love all things shabby chic!!

I roughly cut each letter out of the paper and glued them down to the wood. I let them dry and then sanded the edges of each one. It was a slow and tedious job, but well worth it. I then distressed them all with some Close-to-Cocoa ink and then came the fun part ~ decorating them!!

I saw these adorable frogs in our local craft store and decided that that would be the perfect theme ~ bugs!! How does that poem go ~ "snips and snails and puppy dog tails". Well, there are no puppy dogs tails (ewwww) here, but there are snips (of twine) and a snail too!!

I added star buttons, brads, corduroy buttons, eyelets, twine and a bit of ribbon. I just couldn't help myself with the ribbon!!

I stamped the dragonfly image (Stampin Up!), colored it, bent the wings up so it looked 3- dimensional and attached it with pop dots. I LOVE how the froggie's googly eyes are looking up at the dragonfly. He looks to me like he is thinking ".....mmmmm lunch!! Now if I could jussst stick my tongue out farrrrr enoughhhh.....".

Here is the other frog and friend and a close-up of the first two.