She's CRAFT-AY

We didn't want Nora to have just another boring display of nursery letters. Here is what our child will be rocking on the wall above her crib...

Are you impressed? I sure as heck was. This took two weekends of work, two craft runs and three people — one of whom could be a designer (Rita—the M-I-L—who planned almost every detail of my wedding) and one graphic designer (my awesome husband). Oh, and then there was me. I just want my daughter to have the very best—and it just so happens that I'm a perfectionist!!!!!

Here's how we pulled it off:

1. We started with cardboard letters that we bought at Jo-Ann's fabric & craft store. We spray-painted them white because we, admittedly, first thought we'd leave them that way. Booooor-ring!!!! 

2. We realized we had four really awesome nursery fabrics and four letters in our child's name.

3. We ran to Michael's and picked out buttons, ribbons, flowers, paper crafts and just about anything else that caught our eye in colors that coordinated with our fabrics and nursery colors.

Here's what our craft table looked like for over a week:

4. Next we ironed the fabrics with lots of spray starch so they would have a little heft and be easier to work with. Then we flipped the fabrics over one-by-one and flipped the coordinating nursery letters over on top. We traced the letters out with a pencil and cut them out VERY carefully.

5. It was Jonathan's job to take the fabrics outside and coat them thoroughly with spray adhesive. This stuff is the bomb because you can actually reposition the fabric on the letters if they don't initially lay down perfect.

See, here we are carefully laying the fabric on the letter "N." Team Melville.

Repeat for every letter. Here are the letters once we attached the coordinating fabrics:

6. I wish I could describe the next steps. Really, we just dumped all our do-dads on the craft table and played around with designs (for hours—days, really!) until we got every letter looking fabulous. Then we got to spend hours burning ourselves with a hot glue gun until every do-dad was attached perfectly.

Here are the close-ups of our finished nursery letters:

Oh, and the design on the letter "O" was almost exclusively done by Rita who was inspired by our nursery rug. See if you can tell:

So there you have it, friends! If I can become a crafter, the sky's the limit for all of you! Somebody better put this on Pinterest is all I'm saying!!!!!!!!!!

And, before I end this blogpost, I realized I haven't officially posted pictures of our nursery furniture. Here is the view of the crib (yes, the letters will eventually be attached to the wall above it):

Here is our changing table:

And here are the curtains we picked out for the nursery:

Aaaaand, on Tuesday I'll be 30 weeks pregnant! Ok, I think we're all caught up now! I have more exciting things to blog about soon—there is indeed a lot of exciting things happening in the Melville home!!