DIY Name Blocks

I plan on making lots of things for the nursery because a) nurseries with personal, handmade touches are always the sweetest and b) I'm buying a $1,000 chair.

When I ran across this tutorial the other day, I knew I had to give it a shot--so Danny and I bought the supplies and had a night of crafting.

Like with anything he and I attempt to do, this took way, way longer than we anticipated. Three hours for 4 blocks. That's 45 minutes per block.

Keep reading.

Anyway, this post should actually be called "MYHDIH Name Blocks." Make-Your-Husband-Do-It-Himself Name Blocks; as soon as I started trying to cut the paper with the X-Acto knife, I started getting pissy. I was cutting chunks of the block off, the edges of my paper were all jagged, and I was afraid I was going to cut my face off.

My awesome husband volunteered to take over. In fact, he yanked the X-Acto out of my hand and told me not to touch it again--and to just let him know which paper to put where. Apparently, I'm scary when I'm angry.

First, he spread some Mod Podge on one side of a 2"x2" block with one of those craft sponge thingies.

Nothing sexier than a man with Mod Podge.

Next, he put the block, Mod Podge side down, onto a piece of pretty paper. He then cut around the block with an X-Acto knife. He did this 23 more times. This task is so much more tedious than you're imagining. It's horrendous.

Go, Danny, go!

 After that, I stamped letters onto the blocks. All but 2 of them, anyway.

See? I'm not completely useless!

Luckily, the boy name and the girl name we've chosen both have 4 letters--so we only had to do 4 blocks. Each block has 2 lettered sides (one from each name) and 4 stampless sides.

Block #1:  boy side. 

Block #1:  girl side.

I don't have a picture of myself in action, but once everything was papered and stamped, I went over all of the edges with Mod Podge to smooth them down. Here's the end result:

All the pretty blocks, with the last 3 letters

turned away from you. You didn't think  

I was going to reveal the names, did you??

See previous caption.

I'm going to put these way up high on a shelf, unstacked--you know, horizontally. In retrospect, I'd only decorate the 10 sides that could potentially be visible (4 for each name and the two end sides). That would have saved a good hour or so.

In summation, making your own baby name blocks isn't fun at all--but holy crap, they're adorable. Oh, and I'd marry Danny a thousand more times if I could. He's the greatest.