the primary fiddle: the obligatory name on the nursery wall

So, I know that everyone and their brother puts the baby's name on the wall using some sort of wooden, printed, painted, or crafted technique. And if you know me, you know that I generally shy away from things that everyone else does because I like to be complicated and figure out cool ways to "go my own way" (in the words of Fleetwood Mac)...

Welp. I totally and completely jumped on the bandwagon when it comes to this one.

I decided that there are some things that you do not because they're great design or super unique, but just because you like them :) I really love the name on the wall in nurseries- maybe because it's a way to stamp the room as theirs, or maybe because I remember the sense of "mine-ness" that came with my bedroom as a kid and I like the idea of making him feel as at home as possible from the very beginning.

Either way, I bought some wooden letters from Craftcuts (you can pick from a wide range of fonts, specify the thickness and height and type of wood for an almost-custom product) with the intention of Mod Podge-ing some book pages to the front.

Nick and I are both big readers and love having books around the house, plus I thought the texture of an old book page would look really cool on the wood. So we found an old book at Goodwill for, like, $1.00 that had the aged look we were going for and that had a good sized font (we didn't want it too big because then you would have been able to read the pages from across the room and too little would have meant losing some of the initial "hey, those are book pages and that's cool!" reaction that we wanted). Turns out, the book we came home with was "It" by Stephen King. I know, I know. It's weird to use a horror book for nursery crafts. I was convinced that since you wouldn't be able to read the words, it wouldn't matter and the pages were the perfect color so we came home with it anyway.

Fast forward a few weeks when I finally sit down to start applying the pages to the letters...

I start flipping through the book to pick which pages to use and I. just. can't. I tried so hard to find a page that didn't have something creepy and/or scary written on it (an apparent impossibility in a Stephen King novel) and just couldn't do it. I walked into the other room and showed the pages to Nick. He was creeped out, too. On to plan B...

My Mom had actually warned me about this exact thing happening because she thought the book was a weird choice and had suggested using pages from a children's book. This was back in my stubborn "my plan will work exactly the way I'm hoping" stage, so I didn't think much about it. Until the creepy book forced my hand. (So, thanks, Mom! I should just listen to you from the beginning next time)

Plan B entailed Nick & I picking our favorite children's books, looking through them on Google Books to see which ones had the coolest illustrations and colors and then ordering a used copy of our favorite from Amazon for really cheap. We ended up going with Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak because we both LOVE the book and because it has amazing graphics with very cool colors.

Quick rundown of the method:

-Stained the sides of the letters so they would "pop" off the wall more
-Used my exacto knife to cut out the shape of the letters on the pages we picked out
-Applied a thin coat of Mod Podge to the letter's surface
-Stuck the page onto the wooden letter and let dry
-Applied a second thin coat of Mod Podge to the top of the page to provide some protection and to give a slight sheen, let dry completely

-Mounted on the wall using spray adhesive (that I applied to the back of the letters using a paintbrush dipped in spray adhesive that had been sprayed into a paper plate instead of spraying it directly on the letters)

Now here are some photos!