DIY Birthday board

With my little boy's first birthday rushing towards me like a freight train in March I was scouring the Internet and Pinterest for ideas for his first birthday. I was totally horrified overwhelmed with all of the resources, information, and seemingly endless number of moms who spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars and plan for months to throw their babies their very first birthday party. Of course there is nothing wrong with going all out for a first birthday if that's how you roll but I just couldn't get it together. I'm just not that organized/crafty/imaginative/etc, etc, etc. I did want to do something for the little man's big day and was so thankful when I ran across the idea for a birthday board on Etsy. While they are super cute I just couldn't justify spending upwards of $50 on something I could feasibly make myself.

After a quick trip to the store for materials I got to work. Here's what you'll need:

I had most everything on hand so I just had to pick up the poster board and colors, only about $12 all together. I got black foam poster board so that it would stand on its own and so that the colors would pop. Initially I had planned to use colored pencils but they ended up not being bright enough against the black board. In the end I used chalk pastels which were very vibrant but also extremely messy. Next time I will defnitely do more research before hand and pick up some brightly colored paint pens.

 Begin by finding a board on Pinterest or Etsy that you like so that you can have something to refer back to when you are designing the layout for your birthday board. Draw the letters,shapes, and designs you like on your board with a pencil (mechanical are nice because of the fine tip), touching up any mistakes along the way with the eraser. The ruler is very handy for keeping lines straight and for measuring letters

After all of the words are in place and you like the way the outline looks, begin to color everything in. If using a black board, test your colors out on the back before starting on the letters, just to make sure they show up well! One benefit of using chalk pastels is that they can be easily erased with a normal eraser if you make a mistake. 

And ta-da! Here is my finished board. We set it up and tried to do a little photo shoot but greatly underestimated the difficulty of getting a 1 year old sit still. After his birthday we found a plain black frame and hung the board in Lewis's room, it looks great!

Happy crafting!

xoxo - Leah