Bedroom Monogram

I got all kinds of crafty over the weekend.

A while back, I saw this bedroom monogram over on Young House Love:

Image from http://www.younghouselove.com/2008/02/bed-letters/

I knew right away I wanted to make one of my own. I’ve played with different fonts and things a bit here and there, but this weekend I was finally inspired to complete my little version of the project.

Here’s how I made mine.

First, I printed off my letters and my “and” on sheets of vellum, which is translucent and available at craft stores. (I found mine in the scrapbook paper aisle.)

Side note: my “and” is actually three. The three characters in the top left are the Hebrew characters for “a,” “n,” and “d.” The character on the bottom left is “and” in Farsi. (Side note to my side note: I actually feel pretty smarmy about putting both Hebrew and Farsi on the same document, seeing as Israel and Iran are mortal enemies. But both are dear to my heart, so they’re just going to have to deal with it.) Finally, the dots and dash on the right half make up “and” in braille.

Then, I went through my collection of scrapbook paper (of which I had exactly seven pieces, all of which were purchased with this project in mind, so don’t go letting yourself think I’m a scrapbooker) and I chose three different prints with similar gold tones. I wanted each letter to be showcased differently, but I also wanted them to have a cohesive look.

Next, I used the glass from one of the frames I’d chosen as a template to size my letters and scrapbook papers correctly. Ben helped out with this part so that I could take pictures.

When the placement looked good, we (well, mostly Ben) traced around the glass and then cut everything out.

The only thing left was to pop each letter and its scrapbook paper background into a frame. I am so thrilled with how they turned out!!!

Once everything was framed, Ben hung them on the wall above our headboard, where they look fantastically custom and “grown-up.” I took a few photos of them up there, but none of them turned out very well so you’ll have to make do with the finished shot above. Actually, when I took that picture, I realized that these wouldn’t have to go on a bedroom wall; the trio would look perfectly lovely on a console table or in an entryway or on a hallway wall or even on a mantel.

I love that the scrapbook paper allows for easy customization, too. You could do polka dots or stripes or a crazy football background – whatever you fancy.

So that’s what I was up to this weekend. What’d you guys do?