Baby Shower Idea: Painting the Alphabet

I found a couple design ideas I liked for hanging the alphabet on the nursery wall. From there I started to dream of what my wall of letters would look like. I went in search of unique letters at my local Sunday market and kept an eye out as I went antiquing or to the craft store. An individual letter can range from $2 to $10+, which when you do the math for 26 letters it can get pricey, almost as pricey as buying a framed picture - but where would the fun be in that?! Luckily, when I was browsing my local Habit For Humanity ReStore I came across a shopping cart full of wooden letters, all the same size, for 25 cents a piece. Jackpot!

Now for making them individual...I got out my acrylic crafting paints and started with painting colors: B would be blue, O would be orange and so on. It dawned on me that after I had gotten out my graphing paper, colored pencils and enlisted the help of my husband to craft the design of the alphabet that I created a layer of control that took the randomness out of the whole project. At that moment I put away the pad of paper and thought of another way to make it personal, yet individual. I relinquished all control and gave the painting/decorating over to my friends.

At my baby shower, a painting station was set-up and every lady, that wanted to, painted a letter.

As a follow-up to the baby shower, I sent an email to all my ladies with a picture of the finished result:

Adding this painting activity to the baby shower, made me feel a special connection to my friends - I get to share them with my baby girl everyday she plays in her room. It also allowed the shower to have an activity that was not centered around identifying candy bars melted in a diaper or tasting horrible baby food.

Few notes: In this instance, all letters except for her initials are different. And, the majority of letters are painted, with some having been decoupaged or added scrap booking embellishments to them to add variety.