Alphabet Wall

I have been seeing the adorable alphabet walls all over Pinterest, so, I decided to tackle one for baby’s room. Truth be told, I couldn’t be more indecisive this pregnancy, so this has been a much harder project than it should be.  I have gone back and forth 100 times on what color I want to do the room, what fabric to use, etc.  That being said, if you know what you want and don’t change your mind every 3 days, this is an incredibly easy project.  Here is how I got my ABC Wall:

1.  Find 26 frames – Start looking everywhere for frames.  Garage sales, online buy/trade sites, and The Dollar Store are all great places to look.  Don’t worry about color of the frame, because you can spray paint them.  Look for the sizes and design you like.  I didn’t have much luck at garage sales, so I used what I had around the house, found a few at Dollar Tree, Hobby Lobby, and HomeGoods.
2. Spray paint all of the frames.  I wanted white, so I grabbed a can of white spray paint, removed the glass, and sprayed all of them bright, shiny white.
3. Design the background for the frames – The bedding and window’s treatment in baby’s room was made by hand, so I used coordinating fabrics for the background. You can use scrapbook paper, fabric, or anything else that has the color/design you are looking for.  I had 3 fabrics that I really liked, so I alternated them for the background of the letters.
4. Start laying out frames – I measured how big of a space I was going to use above the crib, and then I made a similar rectangle out of blue painter’s tape on the floor. This gave me an easy way to move the frames around and get them just right.
5. Once I knew what order I wanted the frames to be in, I started matching fabrics to the frames. While this part is personal preference, I arranged them so that the same fabric wasn’t next to or above each other, wherever possible.  When you have the fabrics matched to frames, you can start cutting fabric. I used the glass of the frames as a template, and cut the fabric about an inch bigger on all sides.  from there, I hot glued the fabric to the cardboard backs of the frames (or if needed, I used card stock to glue it to).
6. Up next – get the letters to go in the frames.  I decided I would print out the letters and stick them to the fabric.  I found a few fonts that I really liked, and mixed them up throughout the alphabet. Click here to download the list of fonts I used on my wall. In order to keep the letters white, I messed with the font settings to only outline the letters, instead of filling them in with black ink. If you are using Microsoft Word, you can use these steps to outline your letters:
   1. Highlight letters and right click on them
   2. Select ‘Font’ in the drop down list
   3. Click on the ‘Text Effects’ button on the bottom of the pop-up box
   4. Select ‘No Fill’ on the ‘Text Fill’ list on the left
   5. Click on the ‘Text Outline’ option on the left
   6. Select ‘Solid Line’
7. Print the letters – I tried to put a few letters per page to minimize the paper I used, but you could certainly do each letter on its own page.  Want to know how my letters looked before I printed them and hung them on the wall? Here is a Word file with how my letters looked before printing.  I grabbed a ream of card stock from Staples and printed everything out and then started cutting.  Once all of the letters were cut out, I glued them to the fabric with super strong fabric glue.  I used E6000, but I’m sure any fabric glue would work.
8. I then put the glass back and my pictures got ready to hang my masterpieces.  Since I didn’t want 26 holes in my wall, I used Command Velcro strips to put my frames on the wall.  Not all of my frames had picture hanging kits on the back, so the velcro worked great.
9. My ‘K’ is a crooked and needs to be straightened out, but otherwise, I LOVE my new wall.