Monthly Baby Photos: How to Make a DIY Letterboard

Looking back on monthly baby photos from their first year of life is so special.  Learn how I made a DIY Letterboard to mark each month of our sweet little girl’s first year.

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Hello, friends!

Sorry for my prolonged absence around the ole blog.  I’ve been meaning to post and then life happens and I just don’t get around to it.

And, it’s not for lack of posts!  I still have a few DIYs from the boys’ shared bedroom from October I need to share.

I know I have three kiddos now and I can’t except to be quite as active here for a few months.  But, this is my happy place and I want to keep trying to post at least once a week, maybe twice, until life normalizes a bit.

One of my absolute favorite parties to have or attend is the big “first birthday”!  That sweet little baby goes from totally helpless to semi less helpless in just a year and their little personality starts to shine through.  They are covered in baby fat rolls and sticky food and they love you endlessly.  Most importantly, they sleep through the night 😉

Either way, I found the one year old version of my babies to be one of my favorite times.  I love to look back on their first year and watch how drastically they changed.  When you’re in the moment, in the thick of sleepless nights and whining, in the long days where you count down the seconds until bedtime, you don’t see how they change.  I mean, you SEE it, but it’s not the same as looking back at each month.

For Liam and Charlie’s first birthdays, I made a monthly photo display out of an old frame (full tutorial here).  Look at how little they were!!! (Cue the hormonal tears!)

For Evelyn, I of course needed something new and more girly.

I had my eye on letter boards for a while but couldn’t justify the cost.  So, naturally I decided to make my own!

Supplies:

• frame (mine had an 8×10 opening)
• wooden dowel rods
• felt (use whatever color you want!  I used a dark gray)
• glue gun
• scissors
• letterboard letters

First, remove all the backing and glass from the frame.  Then, cut your dowel rods down to the width of the opening of the frame.  We eyeballed the cut (big surprise we didn’t measure, huh?!).

Next, cut down the felt into strips.  You want the strips to be wide enough to wrap almost the entire way around the dowel rod.  I didn’t end up cutting any length off of the felt until after I had glued it to the dowel rod.  (Because I only needed to cut just a little bit off, it was easier to do once it was attached to the dowel rod).

Then, apply some glue from the glue gun to the cut felt strip.

Last, place one wooden dowel rod into the center of the felt strip and carefully press either side of the felt around the dowel rod.  (Seriously be careful.  That glue is hot!)

Then you keep doing that until you have enough dowel rods to fill the entire opening of the frame!

A note about spacing of the dowel rods: you want them to be close together but not too close.  The best way to judge if you have correct spacing is to take some of the letter board letters and push them into the letter board as if you were going to spell out a word.  So, if the letter stays put, you have correct spacing.  If it keeps popping out when you push it in, they are too close together.  If you can see through the letter board, they are too far apart.

It takes a bit of trial and error to get the dowel rods properly spaced.  I made sure to check the spacing after every 5 rows or so.

Fill up the frame with the dowel rods and you’re done!

It’s such a fun way to document each month of your baby’s first year!

Though, I also love the witty sayings I see all over Instagram, too 😉

And here’s my sweet girl!  Not gonna lie, she’s actually a week and a half old in this picture.  Oops!  Hoping to actually get the monthly photos on the correct date from here on out.  But, I wouldn’t count on it!

Wishing you a joyful day!