DIY Birthday Sign

It's hard to believe our little Jubilee is a year old already! We had a great time last month celebrating her birthday with a British themed tea party. One trend I have been seeing quite frequently on Pinterest is the faux chalkboard birthday sign. Since I love crafty stuff I thought I would give it a try and write a post about how you can make your own! I had so much fun making it, that I made another one for my niece last week. Here they are side by side.

I'm waiting until closer to Olive's birthday to fill in some of the stats.

STEP 1: GATHER YOUR SUPPLIES.
 You will need:

• 1 large black foam board--you can find them at Dollar Tree and Hobby Lobby. I used the shiny kind for Jubilee's and the matte kind for Olive's. The markers I used dried faster on the matte board and had a little bit of smudging on the shiny board but both looked pretty good in the end.
• 1 pencil--regular or mechanical will work fine
• metallic permanent markers-- I used Case Mate Metallic Markers from Wal-Mart ($2 for a pack of four that included silver, pink, blue, and gold). From what I've read online, it sounds like Sharpie brand metallic markers end up looking a little dull on the board. You could also try paint markers if you want a wider selection of colors though they tend to smudge and drip easily in my experience.
• large ruler or some sort of long straight edge (optional)

STEP 2: DECIDE WHAT INFO YOU WANT TO INCLUDE
You can include as much or as little as you want. My sign ended up a little wordy but I really wanted to include a lot of specifics. The sign I made for Olive included more pictures. Here are some ideas to get you started but you can also check out google images of birthday signs for more:

• Stats: height, weight, # of teeth, shoes size, etc.
• Favorites: foods, activities, toys, games, books, songs, animals, shows, princesses
• What they want to be when they grow up
• Nicknames
• First word
• Words they can sign
• Words they can say or things they say that are funny
• Milestones/accomplishments

Once you have the categories, jot down a few items for each on a piece of paper. Don't forget to include the date and their name of course!

STEP 3: SKETCH YOUR DESIGN ON PAPER
If you're brave you can skip this step but I definitely felt like planning it out on paper enabled me to visualize how to fit everything. I went through several drafts for both kids before I settled on the right design. If you need font ideas, I like 1001freefonts.com.

STEP 4: LIGHTLY DRAW YOUR DESIGN ONTO THE FOAM BOARD WITH PENCIL
The pencil marks don't erase very well so take your time. Makes sure to press lightly otherwise you can puncture a hole in the foam board.

I started out by measuring and marking the space for the name and banner (I did somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 the length of the board). I wanted her name to be a nice straight line so I VERY lightly marked a line across as my guide. 

STEP 5: GO OVER PENCIL MARKS WITH PERMANENT MARKERS
If you are using a shiny foam board, the markers will dry much slower so be careful not to drag your hand over any areas that are still tacky. If you're right handed, start in the upper left and work down and to the right to avoid smudging.

As far as choosing colors goes, just have fun with it! I chose to use pink for all the category titles and white for the dividing lines to keep it a little uniform throughout.

I ended up with smudges above the U, the I, and the right end of the banner. You'll see in the final product where I covered them up with other drawings.

STEP 6: TAKE A STEP BACK AND SEE IF YOU NEED TO ADD ANY LITTLE DETAILS
The little blue bird, the butterfly, and the white flower were added specifically to cover smudges. I added dots around her name to give it a little more interest.

STEP 7: GET PHOTOS OF YOUR LITTLE ONE WITH THE SIGN

Notice the lovely band-aid on her forehead? She ran into a table corner right before her party. :( It was pretty sad!

We had a hard time getting Jubilee to hold still enough by herself so decided to take a family photo. You can also put the sign up as a decoration during a birthday party for friends/family to see some of the fun "facts" about your little one.