Making the Alphabet

I wanted to create a 'found' alphabet for the wall in the playroom. Here's how I did it:

I started this project in my head a long time ago (October) and I even made the letter O out of willow tree branches at that time. The letters J and H hung in Jack and Henry's rooms but when Jack's room became an Outer Space room and Henry's room became a Dinosaur room there was not space for their letters. So I held on to them thinking I might find a new home for them in this little project.

The idea for this originally came from that Pottery Barn alphabet bedroom. I'm not one to squee over Pottery Barn normally. They have cute things, no doubt, but I don't think they sell things that are so cute that they justify the price. The cutest things in the catalogue are designed by room stagers for the product photo shoots and they're usually the things that aren't for sale (except for that dinosaur pillow sham).

Anyway, I digress.

So the idea is from Pottery Barn (Kids). I started by going to my local craft stores and buying letters I liked. I tries to pick letters far apart in the alphabet (as you can see the layout of the letters was toyed with quite a bit) so I wasn't sure which letters would end up above or below others but if I liked a particular design I picked up a few hoping they'd look hap-hazard enough.

Hanging them on the wall was tricky. Not gonna lie. I decided that letter N should be the center and then measured and hung the other letters with mostly equal spacing. I made my husband help me with this part because sometimes I needed the letter held at the wall to eye-ball the spacing.

I used paper with the missing letters written on them and wrote a note on the bottom what the letter would be so for example: Letter C says- "C, painted buoy". Letters F, K, L, Q and T are vinyl and were ordered online. My mom got a buoy for me near her home at the beach, and the last by not least to arrive is the letter I, the magnifying glass.

In case you can't tell (because sometimes my photos are enlargeable and sometimes they're not): letters B, S, and Y are wooden letters that I glued buttons to the front of- I love how they turned out. Letter U is a horseshoe. And Letters N and R used to be a brassy/gold color but I didn't like how it went in the space so I coated them in silver paint.

I don't love that the letter L and T are the same and so close together so I might make the T out of two sticks of wood from the woods near my house. Also the spacing between the A, B and C is a little wider than I'd like so I'll probably scoot those in a bit. As with all good artistic endeavors they are never truly finished.