Hellobee

When I was pregnant with Lion, we were looking for ways to decorate the nursery. I’ve always loved books, especially children’s books, and was the Lead Bookseller of the Children’s Department of a Barnes and Noble in high school and college. My friends know of my love of books and threw me a book-themed baby shower where all of our guests brought their favorite kids books as gifts. While we didn’t theme the nursery, it only seemed fitting that my love of books, which I hope to pass on to our children, would have a place in the baby’s room.

Where the Wild Things Are is a favorite of both Mr. Dolphin and myself—I mean, really, who doesn’t love this classic picture book? So, when I saw some pictures of letters with Where the Wild Things characters on them, I had to have them and decided to make them myself and give them to Mr. Dolphin as his first Father’s Day gift, about two months before Lion’s due date.

     
Three of the letters from Lion’s name using pages from one of his favorite books.

We loved the way they turned out and we decided to make similar letters for Panda. We tossed around different book ideas for Panda, but nothing seemed to work out quite right. We used 8 inch letters for Lion’s letters and wanted to use similarly sized letters for Panda. Unfortunately, most books that we looked at didn’t have full page pictures like Where the Wild Things Are or we couldn’t get a good fit onto the letters (i.e., important elements were cutoff, you couldn’t tell what the image on the letter was supposed to be, etc.). We tried Curious George, Paddington Bear and a few others, but they didn’t work. We finally narrowed down our choices to either doing Where the Wild Things Are again (using different pages) or Runaway Bunny (which also has full page pictures), but just as we were making our final decision, we came across The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend in one of our library runs and fell in love.

In case you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it! It’s a Caldecott winner, a truly beautiful book with gorgeous illustrations, and a fun story about imagination. The pictures are so beautiful that with some of the leftover pages from our letters project, I plan to frame and hang them in the kids’ room. We liked that both of the kids’ letters are from books we love, are Caldecott honors/winners and are about imagination. Importantly, the book is taller than Where the Wild Things Are, so even if there was text on some of the pages, we could position the letters to avoid the text.

Here’s how to make your own name letters from your favorite picture books.

Materials:

• 8-inch wooden letters to spell out your child’s name (we also looked at 7 inch and 9 inch, but 8 worked best for Where the Wild Things Are; if you’re using a different book, you may need different sized letters)
• Favorite picture book (I purchased ours used but in very good condition; having done this project with hardcover and softcover, I recommend hardcover as explained below)
• Scissors
• Pencil
• Foam brush
• Modge podge

Instructions:

1) Take apart the book.

With a hardcover book, this is really easy to do because you just find the pages where the string binding the pages together is exposed and snip the thread. The pages are totally flat, with a straight edge making it easier to place the letter wherever you want. It’s a lot cleaner and easier, too.

See the white thread binding this section together? Snip each section and pull the pages off the thread.

If you are using a paperback book, no problem, the project is totally doable! I used a softcover the first time I did the project. I would recommend using a utility knife or exacto knife to cut the pages as close to the binding as possible, so you don’t lose as much of the image and will therefore have more options as to where you place the letters on the page. I didn’t have a utility knife handy because I worked on the project in pieces at my office because I was keeping it a secret from Mr. Dolphin, so scissors work fine. I opened the scissors and dragged the pointy end of one of the blades close the binding.

If you use a hardcover, you will end up with a bunch of pages like this. I like spreading everything out so I can see which pages are usable and which ones are my top choices.

2) Select pictures and figure out placement.

The hardest part of the project was deciding which pages to use! I almost wish our kids had longer names so we could use more of the pages. Both books are so beautiful that it was hard to decide which pages would be best. There were a couple from each book that were obvious choices and we knew we wanted to use no matter what, like the one with the dragon below. Once we figured out which letters to use for those pages, we tried to just do a “best fit” on the other pages to determine which other pictures we would use.

This was our favorite usable page from the book. Some of the pages had text that, because of the placement in the middle of the page, made it unusable for our purposes.

For some of the pages, we moved the letters around a lot to get the best fit to ensure that we weren’t cropping a critical piece of the picture and to avoid too much blank space. When you put the letter on top of the page, you can see what the letter covers to get a better idea of what it will look like when it is modge podged onto the letter. For the image above, for example, we wanted to get part of Beekle, part of the sail and part of the dragon all captured on the letter. Initially, I wanted to use the letter “K” – the first initial of Panda’s name – but the better fit ended up being the “R” so we went with that. This took some time and at the end of the letters for Panda, I had three different options for one final letter and had Mr. Dolphin help me make the final decision.

Trying to figure out whether the letter “K” would work and what it would look like if we used this page for that letter.

One another note about picture placement. I am not an out-of-the-box thinker by any means and I tried to do the best placement based on making the letters perfectly straight or parallel to the edges of the page. Mr. Dolphin came over when I was having some frustration with letter placement, moved the letter about ten degrees at an angle and it looked perfect! So don’t be afraid to tilt the letters a bit if you need to!

Finding the best fit for the letter “E.” We wanted to make sure the face of one of the imaginary friends made it onto the letter.

3) Trace and cut out the images.

After figuring out exactly where the letters would be placed on each page (I suggest you lay everything out first, in case you decide that a particular letter works better on a different page before you trace and cut it out), trace the outline of the letter with a pencil and carefully cut it out. I find that when tracing letters, even when I try to trace it as closely as possible to the wooden letter, there’s a bit of overhang. I don’t mind though, because it allows me to cut right on the line or slightly inside the line, so you end up not being able to see the pencil marks, without losing what I need to completely cover the wooden letter.

4) Modge podge away!

Working one letter at a time, using a foam brush, apply a thin coat of modge podge to the top of the wooden letter. Immediately place the corresponding cutout from the picture book on top of the letter, taking care to line up the page with the letter. I thought that this would be the hardest part, but you actually have more time than you think to do this step and I sometimes had to move the page a couple of times to get it to line up correctly.

Don’t go too heavy on the modge podge for the first coat!

After gluing the paper letter on top of the wooden letter, apply a thin coat of modge podge over the top of the paper adhered to the letter. Repeat with the remaining letters.

5) Apply another one to two coats of modge podge.

After you’re finished with the remaining letters, go back and apply at least one more layer of modge podge to all of the letters. Trust me, you’ll need that extra coat to help smooth out any air bubbles and get it to really adhere to the letters. You may also find that in some areas, particularly around the edges, the paper is coming up off the letter. I applied more glue underneath the paper in those areas, sometimes using a toothpick if it was a hard to reach area.

We decided that the “R” was actually a better fit for the dragon page. Note that there is a small crease because we did not place the letter directly on page, but had it slightly span two pages, which worked because of the color used on the opposite page. Here’s the “R” while it was drying after two coats.

Note: the paper will bubble at this stage. I was a little disappointed the first time I did the project, but decided to keep going, reasoning that if they were going to be hung on a wall, people wouldn’t notice until they got close. As it turns out, with another one to two coats of modge podge, the bubbles flattened out and disappeared, leaving me with nice, smooth letters. Basically, if your letters look bubbly and warped, just apply another coat of modge podge, leaving time to somewhat dry in between coats (you don’t want to soak the page in glue).

6) Let dry overnight.

Let the letters dry overnight, laying flat. Actually, I think it takes much more time than 12 or even 24 hours to completely dry, but they will be okay to handle after 12 hours. Whatever you do, do not stack your letters on top of each other if you’ve completed this project in the last four days. I repeat, do NOT stack your newly-finished letters on top of each other. Let me tell you a little story: I finished this project on a Monday evening after work. I laid the letters to dry flat inside a couple of boxes on the floor of my office. On Thursday evening, I packed up the letters in a canvas bag and brought them home. On Sunday morning, I pulled them out to put them in a pretty bag for Mr. Dolphin to open and found that a couple of them had stuck together because even after several days, they were still a little bit tacky. I had to carefully pull them apart and there were some areas where a bit of the page stuck to the back of another letter. It ended up not being a big deal because you can’t tell where it happened (those areas of the pages miraculously were white). But I would have been super disappointed if this had ruined one of the letters. So give your letters plenty of time to dry.

7) Display your new and colorful letters.

Our letters came with ribbons that we could attach to the backs of the letters so we could hang them. They also had nail holes drilled into the backs, so we could put nails into the wall and hang them that way. We didn’t go with the second option because my previous experience in trying to line up two nails with these types of holes did not go well. Instead, we used command strips. This brings me to the second don’t-be-like-me story of this post.

At work, I’m required to use command strips to hang my frames because the office had been recently remodeled and our management team didn’t want us putting holes in the wall. Command strips and command hooks are supposed to be really great because they can support a decent amount of weight and supposedly remove from the wall without any damage. I have found neither of these things to be true. I used command hooks to hang a makeshift curtain in my office for the interior window while I was still pumping and the curtain fell down on me more times than it stayed up. When using the command strips on Lion’s letters, they stayed up just fine, but did not come off the wall just fine. You see, there’s a specific way you’re supposed to remove the command strip, that requires pulling down on a little tab, but you can’t do this if the tab is completely hidden by a wooden letter. When we moved the boys in together and I finished making Panda’s letters, we decided to move Lion’s letters—and despite Mr. Dolphin’s best efforts and trying things like using a blade screwdriver to remove the letters from the command strip—we had some drywall to patch up. Don’t be like me. Don’t use command strips to hang your wooden letters.

The second time around, we purchased picture ledges for the letters. Just make sure you lay out your letters with the spacing you want and measure before purchasing the ledge. Our kids have shorter names (six letters) and we ended up with a forty-six inch ledge. If your child’s name is on the longer side, a picture ledge may not work out for you.

Three of the letters from Panda’s name.

Other tips:

For Lion’s letters, I purchased them off Amazon before they were discontinued. We bought 7 inch letters from Michael’s using a 20% off your entire purchase coupon (I didn’t have the patience to go up six different times to use a 40% or 50% off a single item), but then we returned them when we finally found 8 inch letters at Babies ‘R’ Us. We also found letters at Jo Ann’s and Bed Bath and Beyond.

If you feel so inclined, you can paint the sides of the letters which will be exposed and not covered by the pictures. Because we had just moved into our new home when I made Lion’s letters, we had a ton of sample latex paints hanging around. I took one of the rejected living room colors and painted the sides of Lion’s wooden letters so they wouldn’t be white. I asked Mr. Dolphin whether I should do the same with Panda’s and his response was, “I didn’t know you painted Lion’s letters,” so I skipped this step the second time around. If we were planning to use a more bold color or wanted something to match the colors of the images we were using, I might have done this step, but it wasn’t necessary.

We love these letters! It’s a great way to display some of our favorite picture books in a personalized way and they were super easy to make.