Baby stat board.

On November 2nd, my awesome niece turned THREE! If you had asked her the weekend before, however, she would have told you she was going to be FIVE. She's silly.

Months before her birthday, I found a craft on [but of course] Pinterest that piqued my interest! Some girl was selling these boards on Etsy for an outrageous amount. I knew I could do it for cheaper than buying, so I did!

Afterall, I only needed mod podge and a piece of wood to fit. I made my own pod modge by combining equal parts of Elmer's glue and water in the glue bottle. It stores nicely and it's much cheaper than trotting my booty down to Michael's to buy a bottle. 

I started with the design, got all her "stats" on there... birth date, time, weight, length and most importantly HER NAME. 

Our cat, Stompers, was my personal assistant that day, seen on left. 

I printed the page and gathered the rest of the supplies: Homemade Mod Podge, a cheap brush, sand paper (not pictured) and a board or piece of wood.

The board needed to be cut to fit the paper. I don't YET own my own electric saw, so the manual method had to work. 

Next, I applied a coat of mod podge to the board.

Important to note is that I used entirely too much of the mod podge. After the final product dried it was apparent that the glue saturated the ink on the print too much and the colors began to bleed. So I recommend not using this much...

I spread the mixture evenly on the board with the brush.

Then I placed the print on the board, and smoothed out any creases I saw.

Next step required letting it dry, followed by a final coat of mod podge on top. I'm not sure this 2nd coat is necessary. I made another project using this process last night and I'm beginning to think I could do without the 2nd coat. Much of the mod podge bleeds through the paper and it's pretty darn secure with just the first coat. I suppose, that's your decision to make.

All the 2nd coat did for this project was bleed the ink. After it was fully dry, the middle part of the print had a pink hue to it from the "audra mae" ink.

Once it is completely dry, the fun part of trimming begins. I had paper that hung over the edges of the wood. That's okay, because you'll sand them away.

How much you sand is your preference. I sanded quite a bit into the print as well as created my own "imperfections" throughout. I liked the way it made it look.

Last weekend, for Audra's birthday I got to give her this for her brand new bedroom at my sister and brother-in-law's new house. She wasn't as thrilled about it as she was about her other gift from Mike and me, her new Airwalk [fake-Ugg] boots that she immediately had to try on, but my sister and mom loved this piece of work.

As I mentioned, last night I made a similar project with this process. I will share it on here once I gift it to my in-laws. And since my mother-in-law reads this blog, I'll stop there. No more clues.

Happy mod podge-ing!

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