Personalized Baby Gift

I love the idea of giving a gift that shows that you took your time with choosing it or that you actually made something yourself. When I got married 20 something years ago I received a set of dish towels that were hand embroidered with the days of the week. Even though they weren't the "style" I was going for back in the 80's I loved them! I loved the idea that the person took the time to make something just for me. Now that I've been working on some homemade gifts myself, I realize that the fun & joy is in the giving as well as the receiving.

So with that introduction I announce that the newest member of our family has been born! Alexah Brooke came into this world on tuesday morning and is doing very well. I knew I wanted to make something for Alexah's nursery, but her mama hadn't picked a name until she was born. So I started working on this project a few weeks ago and just finished it with the personalization.

Here is what I started with:

I found this picture for $3 when I went to a farmers market/swap meet at the coast. I was looking for some frames for another project and this one turned out to work great for this baby gift. I took it apart and painted the frame and the matte black. I took this picture before I painted the frame, but wanted you to see what I'm talking about when I said I painted the matte part. There is no need to waste your paint where it isn't needed so just leave the other part unpainted.


The next thing I did was find some scrapbook paper that matched the baby's nursery. I found my paper at Michael's and ended up using 4 pieces. The hard part was matching up the pattern, but I'm particular and wanted it to look seamless. After I got the scrapbook paper on, I noticed the edges closest to the inner frame didn't look clean, so I glued some pink ribbon all around it. For the inner framed part, I wrapped a light pink piece of paper cut to fit the opening with pink cotton fabric. I attached it with spray adhesive, which by the way, I'm falling in love with. This stuff works fantastic and makes projects go so quickly. So now all we need is the name so I just waited and waited and waited for the baby to arrive and get named.

After Alexah arrived, I cut her name out with my Cricut machine. I used black vinyl and the setting "FLIP" on the cricut because I knew that I wanted it to stick on the glass, not on the pink background. I thought that it would give it more dimension and I was right. The pictures really don't show how cute it is in person. I LOVE how it turned out. I can't wait to see it hanging in Baby Alexah's room. I also made her one of the plaques that I blogged about recently.
I added a few extras on this plaque because it was for a girl and lets face it... girls like bling! How about that button??? I already had that and it matched the paper perfectly!


Here you can see the vinyl on the glass and kind of see the dimension it gives. I think I'm going to be making something with just glass and a frame very soon!!


Here is the finished product. I hope my niece is too busy taking care of Alexah in the next few days to look at my blog so that she'll be surprised when I give her this.