Third Trimester!

Today is the first day of the 3rd and FINAL trimester! I am so beyond excited to be in the home stretch. I can't wait to meet this little lady!

To celebrate our third trimester, I worked on a little project for Hannah's nursery. I found this monogrammed button project on one of my favorite sites www.houzz.com (just as addicting as Pinterest!).

I was looking up nursery decor on Houzz and found this guy for $38 on Etsy...however, I figured I could probably make it myself for much cheaper.

All you need for this project is: a cut out letter pattern to follow (or you can draw your letter), buttons, craft glue, and a shadow box picture frame.

Luckily my mom is the "craft master" of the Pacific Northwest and already had a ton of buttons.

Hannah's room is going to be decorated in creams, pinks and browns...so I sorted through the thousands of buttons to pick out my favorites in those colors. My mom's collection did not have enough cream colored buttons, so I did have to go out and buy a pack for about $4.99.

I decided to make my cut-out letter in a purplish-pink color...just in case I had some of the paper showing through from under the buttons. I figured having a base that was similar in color to the buttons would camouflage any missed spots.

I started with one section of the letter and laid out a pattern of buttons, flat on the paper (without glue yet), just so I could get a feel for spacing.

I shifted a few buttons around, but once I settled on a pattern, I started to glue it all down.

I moved on to the other section of the letter...still laying down a pattern before I glued it.
Finally I had a pretty good base layer of buttons covering the letter.

Next, I went back and filled in any open spaces with smaller sized buttons. I wanted the letter to have more of a 3-D look, so I kind of piled the buttons on top of one another, instead of trying to match buttons super closely to lay flat. 

Lastly, I glued the finished button letter to a piece of white card stock and arranged it in my shadow box picture frame (that I got on sale for $4)!

And it's done! 

Here is a close up picture of the letter.

I think it turned out pretty well. I have a slightly more critical eye, so I see some things that I would like to change, but overall I was surprised at how easy and fun it was. I can't wait to see it set up in Hannah's room!
I spent a total of $9 on this project...which is much better than paying $38 plus tax and shipping...however I was lucky to already have a majority of my buttons on hand.

I picked up lots of other projects to do for H's room, so there will be lots of craft posts coming!

Happy "third trimester" to us!