I've been doing pre-school a couple days a week with my 2 year old daughter. We've been doing a lot of art projects about the alphabet. I wanted to display some of her artwork and have been taping them up on the wall. But since tape isn't the prettiest thing, I decided to make this cute display instead! I thought the word CREATE was the perfect description to hang above all of her artwork.
Here is what I did:
Materials:
- 6 5x7 plaques
- 4 scrapbook papers
- 15+ clothespins
- Paint: Seafoam, Metallic Gold, Navy Blue, Think Pink
- Stain: Provincial
- 6 wooden knobs (found at home depot)
- Mirror Cord (home depot)
- sand paper
- paint brushes
- wood glue
- sawtooth hangers (for hanging letters)
Let's start with the letters. I sanded all of them first.
The C: I painted Sea Foam paint and gave it 2 coats.
The R: I painted on the stain and then wiped it off with a paper towel.
The first E: I painted the edges white and then traced the scrapbook paper, cut it out and glued it to the letter using wood glue (see a tutorial
here).
The A: I painted it with the Metallic Gold paint (2 coats).
The T: I painted the edges using Think Pink and then applied the striped scrapbook paper on top.
The E: I painted Navy Blue.
Now for the plaques...
1. I painted this plaque Think Pink
2. I painted the edges white and glued on the multicolored arrow paper on top.
3. This plaque has the edges white and Ruler Paper
4. I painted the gold edges first (I used a small paint brush to get the small edges) and then painted the top white.
5. I painted the plaque navy blue. Then using a circle sponge paint brush that I bought at WalMart to paint the gold circles on it.
6. This plaque has Seafoam edges on it with the green circle paper on top.
Next, I stained all the clothespins and knobs. Instead of painting on the stain onto each clothespin, I put stain in a bowl and dipped the clothespins in. Then I wiped each one off with a rag or paper towel. With the knobs, I painted the stain on then wiped off with a towel.
Instead of screwing the knobs onto the plaque, I just used wood glue to attach them. I knew I wasn't going to hang anything to heavy from these so using glue was a lot easier than screwing them in.
Also I attached the small sawtooth hangers onto the back of each letter.
Next it was time to hang! I had my husband do this. Then I attached the wire to the knobs. I had to use a little sticky tack stuff for the back of the plaques so they didn't move.
Then I found some cute artwork that my 2 year old did and hung it up! She loves it and so do I!
