May 10, 2018

DIY Nursery Art – Name Sign

Inspired by Mother’s day coming up this weekend I wanted to share a project I did a few years ago for a friend. If you know any recent new Mom’s this gift would be perfect! I saw a sign like this while browsing pinterest and I had to figure out a way to make one. It is a name sign that also creatively includes all the birth info. It was the perfect gift for a good friend and her littler girl. It’s so simple but adds a personalized touch to the nursery.

All you need is one blank canvas board. I used one that was 11×14, but you can choose any size you prefer. I’d suggest not going smaller than 11×14, because you want to make sure you can fit all the information can fit on it nicely. You also need to make sure to get iron on paper and mod podge. I choose the mod podge with glitter because mine was for a little princess and that seemed fitting.

Supplies: 

  • 1 Blank Canvas (no smaller than 11×14)
  • 1 pack of iron on paper
  • Mod podge
  • Birth Information – Name, date, time, weight, and length.

Step 1

Plan out your color scheme and figure out the size and font of each set of information. I would say the easiest way to choose colors is to use the that were used in the baby nursery. I choose Pink, Grey and Black because it matched the nursery that it was going in. If you have no idea what the nursery looks like I would just choose neutral color and I’m sure they will love it.

Planning out sizing of the words can get a little tricky. One option was to do it trial by error style and just print everything out in different sizes. Then see how they all fit on the canvas. That seemed like a big waste of paper and ink though. I figured there had to be an easy way to do this. After asking my Mom’s opinion it turns out there is. You can set your paper size on microsoft word to the same size as your canvas. If you click on the “size” option in the upper left corner, then choose “more paper sizes” on the bottom of the list a box will pop up and let you enter your canvas size.
From there you can use Word Art to enter all the info and resize to what’s fits. This steps is a little tricky if you don’t know how to use word are to stretch, but there are tons of tutorials online if you google search. If you want you can save the file like this or screen shot and save, so you can remember how you have it set up when you get to step 3. Once you have everything sized to fit your screen will look like this.

Step 2

Now you need to print out all of your words and information. This step is a little tricky because you need to change your page size in work back to 8.5×11 because that’s the size of your iron on paper. Once you change the paper size back, you just need to rearrange your word so that they fit in the new page size. It doesn’t matte that they will be all mixed up, they just need to fit. You will need to use two pages to make this happen. Once you have them all fit to the two pages you need to mirror flip them so that they print backwards. This is because we are using the iron on paper. Your screen right before printing should look something like this.
Now you are ready to print! Just make sure you put the iron on paper in the printer the correct way, there should be directions for that on the package. Once you have everything printed out cut out each of the words. Now we are ready to iron them onto the canvas.

Step 3 

The last two steps are easy compared to getting the sizing correct in the previous step. Once you have all of your words cut out, it’s time to iron them on the canvas. The direction for the paper I used said you only hand to iron each one for 30 seconds. I actually ended up needing to do about 3 minutes each total. You can feel this part out. I would do about 30 seconds at a time and check if it had completely transferred or needed more heat. Once you think the words have properly transferred just pull the backing off the top.

Step 4

The last step was to coat the entire board with mod podge. I did this because it helps seal the project because I didn’t want the letters/words peeling off the canvas after I gifted it. It also added a  fun finishing touch because the mod podge I used had glitter in it. If you’re not familiar with mod podge, it’s basically just a fancy word for glue. You just smear it all over either with your hands, a paint brush or a rag. Once it’s covered just wait for it to dry and your project is finished and ready to go!

 

There are so many ways you could make this sign. Everything from painting with stencils to vinyl. I choose to use the iron on because I liked the way it looks screen printed on the canvas. I’ve used vinyl in other project and it just wouldn’t have produced the right look for this one. My friend I gifted it to loved it and it matched the nursery just perfectly placed on the shelf.

If you end up making one either as a gift or for you’re own nursery I’d love to see it! Make sure you tag me on Instagram @laughlouderblog so I can see your creation!

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