ABC Wall Art Tutorial

I got a lot of emails and comments about the Alphabet Wall Art I created for the PINK room. I wish i had taken pictures the whole way through putting it together, but it just never occurred to me that people might love it as much as I do.

It was actually Big Daddy who finally convinced me to start taking pictures one evening as I was obsessing over it.

So I got the frames from the dollar store and thrift stores and sprayed them all white (even the white ones, so they would match). Then i took a HUGE gold frame that i have had for years and sprayed it white too.

I used a variety of scrapbook paper in each of the frames and used chip board letters to create my Alphabet.

Then i took a HUGE sheet of butcher paper and measured the inside of the big frame and taped it to my table.

I took a little while to arrange the frames until I was happy with the result.

Then I traced all of the frames in their spot and labeled each frame outline. I made sure to not only label it by letter but also by row and number. Ex: Q row 1 #1. I had 4 rows and 23 frames.

Then I cut out each outline and turned over the frame and marked where they "hanger" was on each.
I hung the BIG white frame first and then got busy taping each "paper frame" into its place, making sure i was 100% happy with each placement.
Then I hammered in all of the nails on the little red spots of each template BEFORE removing it from the wall. I took each template down as I added each frame
I seeeeeeriously love the way this turned out. We have had a lot of company lately and everyone adores it as well.

I have had a few people ask me why I didn't put the letters in alphabetical order.

My answer is pretty simple. To me, anyway.

As an Early Childhood Education Specialist (I develop curriculum for a living) I never teach children their letters starting with A and ending with Z.

I also don't start with the letter Q as seem in my wall art.

I start with the letter M first. My reason is a little detailed but basically I start with the letter "sounds" most children make first. I also like to help them start building words as soon as possible. So M is first followed by E. It just goes with my All About Me and Getting to know You curriculum that begins each school year.

Get it?

OK getting off my teacher box...maybe it is not as simple of an answer as I thought.

ANYWAY...no need, in my opinion, to put letters in order. To me it makes it more interesting and fun for the children to search for the letters.

Did you notice the word ZEN in the collage frame? What about the word JOY?

Yep, awesome.

Today I am linking up with: