Confession: I love lettering, typography, whatever you want to call it. I’ve known forever that I wanted to make some sort of alphabet art for the baby’s room, but I put off actually making something until I had a better idea of the space. Now that we have the elusive glider and ordered a bookcase, I know that we can add a mix of pieces to the wall over the bookcase (which has not yet arrived…)

Which means I can finally decide what to do with the space on the other side of the room, above the dresser. Mike talked about our adding some framed art here, but now that we know we can add a TON of frames to the space above the bookcase, I’m leaning towards one giant artpiece.

Of course I don’t have a head-on picture of the dresser, on the wall it’s staying on, that includes the height of the ceiling. But you get the idea that the wall above the dresser is a giant blank slate.

We’ve waited to install our giraffe sconces until we were sure of where we were putting the dresser. Which meant we had to have the glider. Which we just got last week. See how everything comes back to that damn glider?

Now we know we can install our giraffe sconces over the dresser like our inspiration picture…

(Honey & Fitz via Centsational Girl)

Then in the middle, I want to add some giant, horizontal alphabet art. Like this…

(from Free Home Decorating Ideas via Pinterest)

Or like this…

(via Project Nursery)

I’m partial to styles that have multiple fonts, sizes and are not perfectly aligned. Like this one…

(via Project Nursery)

Or this…

(via Etsy)

Or even patterned like this one…

(via Area Fare)

You notice how all of those last 3 have blue in them and 2 out 3 also have green? That’s for all of you people who have tried to tell us that you know we’re having a boy because of our nursery paint choices. Muhahaha.

Up until last night, I figured I’d draft something using a couple of different fonts, then paint the final product on canvas. As I fiddled with Photoshop last night trying to do that fancy mock up of our new bookcase that I posted above, I realized that we can just design something in Photoshop and have it printed on canvas. This would save me a TON of time and be a lot more fool proof than my free handing. I looked up the prices of printing on canvas using Kodak Gallery and was shocked to see that it would be about $150 for a 24″ x 36″, which is about what we would want.

So I went back to doing it myself, when Mike reminded me that the last time I went to Michael’s to buy a canvas that large, they were super expensive too (even with 50% off sale). I do know how to stretch my own canvas, which is always an option, but then I would still be freehanding the letters. Humpf.

Then I thought of just doing a print in a matted frame. I decided to see how large of a print we could order and I was shocked to see that they come as large as 20″ x 30″ for just $20! I checked the Ikea website to see how large their frames go and it seems as though they sell them pretty large. We’d probably want the finished product, meaning the outside of the frame, to be around 24″ x 36″. Ikea notoriously has awkward sized frames, so I think we’ll pick up a frame first. Then we can see how large the opening is and plan a print to fit the opening. The whole thing– print, mat and frame should run us about $50 and would be less tedious than painting by hand. Though I need Mike to be in charge of the Photoshopping magic, I am still a rookie and what takes me 2 hours takes him 2 minutes.

We’ll keep you posted on our progress (though not the specific colors we’re using just yet!). Hopefully the logistics work out and between the 2 of us, we can whip up something awesome

ps- My last day of work is Monday. Let’s hope the baby gives me a full week to wrap up all of this nursery business!

Rebecca has been asking me all week what should we do above the baby’s dresser.  We know we want to rock the giraffe sconces, but we’re not so sure what to do exactly in between them.

Do we go with the classic three frame horizontal look?  Maybe one large frame?  We’ve bounced ideas back and forth to one another ranging from absolutely nothing besides the sconces to crazy framed patterns.

Ok, crazy framed pattern really means what you trendy kids are calling “chevron” patterns.  It’s called a zig-zag.  Seriously.  What’s easier to understand, “I think we should do a chevron pattern” or “I think we should do a zig-zag pattern.”  Yup, zig-zag.  Mike 1, rest of you 0.

Anyways, tonight I present you a combination that popped in my head as I was browsing 20×200.

(“Can You Imagine” via 20×200)

On the left, we have ‘Can You Imagine’ which instantly grabbed my attention.  For one, the background scenery reminded me much of our time spent in Hawaii.  And then the typography brought out the aspect of an imagination.  This baby girl or boy is going to have one helluva imagination; especially since he or she will be talking about Macky to friends as if Macky was a non-fur-baby.

But really, I glazed at this picture for a solid five minutes watching the waves grow as they approached me and then watching as they hit against the rocks.  Then I realized nothing was moving in this piece of art work.

(“Baby White Tiger No 5 via 20×200)

And then I saw this baby tiger.  What better way to make The Baby a crazy cat person than to hang a picture of a big cat?  Gotta start them young, right?

I love the simplicity of this piece, a baby white tiger on a simple backdrop.  But more importantly, I couldn’t help but think that this tiger had a piece of all of our cats — small sized tiger with big paws reminds me of Darwin, the fluffy white chest reminding me of Sunny (our precious guy we lost to panleukopenia), the big eyes with a slight tilt of the head reminding me of Mowie and the overall goofiness that Macky shares with this tiger.

In 20 years, you’re going to hear about The Baby having a TLC special about owning too many cats.

(“Closing Credits at the End of a Movie” via 20×200)

And to end, we have some artwork reflecting the geekiness in me.  I love that this really screams our youth while throwing several colors into the mix.  I really want to go play space invaders now.

I’m not sure if we’ll go with any of these, but I figured I’d throw them out there.  Maybe Rebecca will let me mount three LED televisions up there so the artwork can always rotate and be random.

Now that is a great idea.

2011 is over already, can you believe it? Since this year was our first full year of blogging (and living in the house), we figured we’d jump on the end of year list bandwagon! So without further adieu, here is a list of our top 5 favorite projects that we completed around the house this year…

5. Powder Room Paint Job

Though painting is nothing all that special, we took a flying leap out of our comfort zones with this near-black paint choice. I think it paid off

4. Pencil Eraser Art

This was another project that didn’t take me long, but had a big impact. I still love looking at this thing and I’m thinking of ways to use some pencil eraser art in the future.

3. Entryway Chair Rail

This was our first molding adventure and we got a serious high off of conquering those funny angles. Therefore, we loved it this year.

2. Stamped Concrete Patio

While we did not attempt this one ourselves, we definitely did not expect to have an awesome patio this year. It’s a reader favorite so our wood plank stamped patio gets the runner up position on our 2011 list!

1. Office stripes

Measure once, measure twice, okay measure 5 times then level, remeasure… 18 hours later peel off tape and have clean stripes! The amount of blood, sweat and tears that went into taping this room and the almost perfect finished product (we needed a few touch ups) make this our favorite project of 2011. Plus looking at the stripes through our french doors everyday makes it even better!

Honorable Mention:

The Baby.

Look at the little chin chin! I couldn’t resist the baby bomb

Hopefully 2012 will bring even bigger and better projects. We’re really surprised at how many things we’ve checked off our to-do list this year. We have a bunch of things to get started on for 2012 ASAP! What should we tackle first?!

Rebecca and I have been discussing the whole gallery wall thing for quite awhile.  So much so that we’ve probably purchased nearly thirty to forty frames in anticipation of finally getting the wall going.  The only problem besides finding time to do so?  Actually determining what to put in these frames.

We have a couple of pictures in mind such as a handful of our pictures from our honeymoon in Maui, our nephew leaping into some fall leaves and, of course, pictures of the cats.  But, those might only fill up — at most — 10 of those frames; certainly not enough to fill out where we’re planning on doing the gallery wall.

While looking for our marriage certificate (yeah, you read that) the other day, I came across some little cards we picked up from a small shop in New Hope, Pennsylvania (if you can ever get the chance to visit New Hope, please do so).  They are 5 x 5 inch cards with inspirational quotes on them.  Now, we’re not ones to do sappy quotes on our walls, but the ones we found actually have some meaning behind them for us.

So where does this all connect?  Well, we bought the cards to frame … and to hang on our eventual gallery wall. We’re not sure if we’ll frame all the cards we bought, but we couldn’t narrow it down to just one at the store.

Probably one of my favorite all time quotes, outside of “Keep It Simple Stupid”, comes from good ol’ Teddy Roosevelt.

Our second pick was a quote from Gary Lew.  Simple and to the point, but enough to get you thinking.

And our last pick and probably the one getting my vote for the gallery wall is a Zen saying.  It also happens to be a Jason Mraz line in the song Make It Mine.  But most of all, it’s stays true to a decision we recently made in quitting my job to do SongMeanings full time.

The company that made these, Quotable Cards, has many many more — some great, some corny and sappy.  I just found “grow old with me! the best is yet to be!” by Robert Browning, which is also a famed John Lennon line.  Or even Lincoln’s “whatever you are, be a good one.”

We’re planning on lining our entry way, up the stairs and the upstairs’ hallway with frames.  Rebecca had it as an item on our to-do list for our staycation way back in August.  Yeah, we never got to it.  Rebecca has been swamped with graduate school (oh and growing a baby) and if she leaves the entire thing up to me, it’s going to be filled with album art, hip-hop lyric quotes and pictures of kittens — some of which won’t even be ours.  I think it’s best if I wait for her, eh?

I mentioned last week how I wanted to make something for this season’s Pinterest Challenge with Sherry at Young House Love, Katie at Bower Power, Ana at Ana White and Erin from House of Earnest. I just wasn’t sure what to make! One of the projects I’ve been wanting to make was this washer monogram, but Michelle from Decor and the Dog tackled it during the last challenge…

(from Decor and the Dog)

So I looked through all of the things I’ve pinned the past few months to come up with something I could tackle in a few hours. I stumbled upon this pencil-eraser-used-as-stamp art from Li’l Magoolie…

(from Li’l Magoolie via Pinterest)

And I had a light bulb moment… why don’t I make a monogram using pencil erasers as stamps? That way it’s entirely different, but bringing together two Pinterest projects! So that’s what I decided to do

I decided to stick with the color scheme of our house… various grays/greiges/blues.

I picked up a couple of extra bottles of 89 cent craft paint just to make my life easier. I basically bought all of the shades of gray they make and I already had the blue.

The rest of my materials were 100% free! I used some cardstock I already had, pencils that were laying around and a frame I already purchased. To get the monogram, I printed out our last initial, an S, in a very fancy font called… Times New Roman. I printed it in bold to give me thicker lines to follow. I eyeballed the size in print preview and figured it would look decent on a 5×7 piece of paper. I then traced my printed S onto my cardstock by holding it up against my sliding glass door.

I traced it ever so lightly, then also erased what I had just traced. Sounds crazy, but it left me with the most faint line ever so that it wouldn’t be noticeable under the paint but I could still follow it.

Then it was time for paint! I didn’t use stamps like the pinned image did, so I squirted a little of each paint onto a paper plate, then dipped some sponge brushes I already had in each color…

Then I dapped my pencil erasers on the sponge brush, not the paint itself. If I dapped too much I could use a cleaner part of the sponge to remove some. I had a pencil for each color (digging out a 4th one required some office scouring!)

I did some test dabs on a piece of scrap paper before starting. Then I just followed the lines and alternated colors along my S and tada! All done!

It took me about an hour or so, which was honestly longer than expected, but well worth it. I had to decide where to put my new work of art so I decided on the entryway table, which was filled with pumpkins and Halloween candy today.

The candy will be leaving tonight, so I just put my art in a matted frame and leaned my frame over by one of my beloved deer bookends. Ps- I’ve been searching for a white lampshade to replace that gray one for months.

I’m not sure if my monogram will be staying here, since we’re planning on adding a whole gallery wall(s) up and down our staircase. Ideally, I’d like to eventually hang it, especially since the frame I had on hand is meant for hanging

I strangely love that the mat that came with the frame is a little off-white. Since the chair rail, deer and cardstock are bright white, it mixes it up a bit. Maybe even a fun colored mat will look good until I hang it?

I’m very happy that I chose to do another art piece for this Pinterest challenge. I love making things for our house but I often don’t have the time to dedicate to making things anymore. Spending an hour making this completely made my day and I wish I had more creative time these days. I am also proud of myself for scaling down my always overambitious projects. I originally planned to do this monogram, plus two 8×10 more abstract pieces. Once I started eraser stamping I realized how time consuming it was and that an even larger piece of paper would take even longer! Maybe I’ll make them another day (since they were pretty cool ideas, I must say), but for now I am perfectly happy with my monogram