"V" is for Vinyl Birthday Board

Alright...I'll be honest here. This A to Z Challenge thing is starting to kick my butt. Thank goodness most of the projects were already finished and just needed photo editing and posting. The last few days have been nutso. I've been working more or less non-stop on projects "W" and "Y" since the weekend. I'm very glad that I didn't do this to myself earlier in the alphabet. I now know exactly how I need to plan for next year. Don't worry though...there will be projects for every letter of the alphabet. I won't be missing a day.

Today's project is "V". And "V" is for Vinyl Birthday Board. A lot of times I'll find something cute on Pinterest and want to make it. But...then I discover that it's an Etsy product. No tutorial. Drat. That means that I get to be creative and figure out how to make a knock off on my own. Sometimes these can be the most stressful projects, but to be honest sometimes they are the most fun.



Today's is the first of three Etsy knock-off projects wrapping up the end of the alphabet. You'll also be seeing one (somewhat) for "W" and one for "Z". How they all ended up clumped together is beyond me.

The inspiration for this project (or "Pinspiration" if you will) was a Birthday Board Reminder from The Cozy House. It sells for $55. I've been hanging onto this in a pin board for quite a while and finally decided to make one for my mom for Christmas. I put Collin to work helping.

To start, I purchase a few packets of solid wooden discs. They came in packs of twenty in natural wood finish.

I busted out some paint from the garage and gave everything a nice coat of Desert Tumbleweed. I'm not kidding. That's the paint color. It's what we have on the walls in our house.

Once they were dry, I passed them off to Collin and had him drill holes.

He got them all done and brought them into the house and then we realized that we're stupid. They each needed two holes. Otherwise there would be no dangling the discs from one another. Back out to the garage he went.

Originally, I had planned to hand write the names and birthday numbers on the discs. Then I remembered how much I hate my handwriting. That disc went in the garbage and I moved on to plan B.

When in doubt, label ALL THE THINGS!

I tried a few different combinations of letter and number styles and sizes. What you see in this series of photos is not what eventually got used (see the final pictures for the real deal). I settled on a solid font for the names and a larger outline font for the numbers.

Getting them to fit correctly was a bit of a challenge. Before peeling, I would trim the numbers and letters as close as possible and then line up on the disc. If you look closely in the picture below, you'll see that I didn't trim the "28" as close as I should have before sticking down. I also managed to make things a little crooked. This was a slow process.

The last component to this part of the project was the hooks. I put Collin in charge of this. He had about as much fun with it as I did with the labels. It was a little bit like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The first set of hooks looked great, but they were too small...you couldn't get the hook over the disc and into the hole because the "J" curve was too narrow.

Too small.

The second batch was too big. They fit, but they were clunky looking and the curve wasn't tight enough, the discs fell off the hook if not placed just right. Fail.

Too big.

Good news...the third set of hooks fit just right. Bad news...the store only had a few. Ugh. We still have a pile of the smaller hooks that need to get returned to the store for larger ones. Mom still has a partially unfinished project...sorry, Mom. She has the board and the discs, but not enough hooks to hang everyone up. We're horrible children.

The main portion of the board presented it's own challenges. I used a $1 board from ReStore and painted it in the same Desert Tumbleweed. I selected some fonts and cut out adhesive vinyl for the "family" and "birthdays". Those parts were pretty easy.

The months were too small of a font to cut out in vinyl. And we already discussed how I hate my handwriting. It took me a pretty good search of the scrapbook room to come up with a solution, but I landed on these label stickers from a set of TAB Punches by We 'R Memory Keepers. They'd been in my stash for a while and they were just what I needed.

I measured the stickers and the length of the board to figure out placement. Even with the measuring, it still took me three tries (and two sacrificed stickers) to get it right.

Once that was all done, I packed up the discs and my main board, and took everything to the garage. It all got a good spray with automotive clear coat. Collin then placed the circle hooks under each month, I added some photo hangers to the back, and we were all set.

Phew. Crisis averted.

Original Etsy cost: $55.

Total cost for my project (including leftover clear coat and vinyl and assuming we can exchange the hooks straight across): About $30. I'll take it. I'm going to call this project a success.

Thanks to all of you stopping by from A-to-Z Challenge! I love new readers. Make sure to leave me a comment below (including your blog address) so that I can return the favor by visiting you.