One of my favouritest people in the whole world has a little girl who just turned two on Friday. The birthday girl’s name is Sophia but we all affectionately call her Miss S.

Since Miss S is (theoretically) entering the terrible two’s I thought we might as well teach her how to spell it. What’s better than art that functions as a teaching tool? Not much. (hold your sarcasm please) A teaching tool? Isn’t that like giving a 7 year old boy socks for Christmas rather than the toy he really wanted? Perhaps, but I think Miss S’s mommy will appreciate the gift and plus, a homemade gift shows how much you care. And it’s pretty too! Behold!

Now, I can’t in all conscience take credit for the great concept here. That will have to go to Destri over at The Mother Huddle. Gotta give props where props are due. Check her out. That girl’s got some mad skillz.

Anyway, first step was to find a stencil. I was thinking of doing a shape – butterfly, flower etc. but just was so in love with the alphabet that I had to go that route.

Next I grabbed a frame. Okay, question. Why do they sell white frames with off-white matts? Don’t they know that clashes and is highly annoying? Perhaps that is why this frame, instead of coming with the typical smiling family comes with this depressed looking chick. What’s her problem anyway?

So I decided to spray both the frame AND matt while spraying the stencil. Yes, I decided to spray the matt. Why not? I wasn’t going to use it as is so worst case, I ruined it. But guess what, I didn’t. (yay for trying something new and it working on the first try).

After those all dried the next step was to find some paper to go in behind the letters. I dove into my scrap booking paper stash and came up with this bright (hopefully toddler loving) palette.

And then because I am too lazy to cut squares (which would totally work) I used my circle punch and went to town.

Happy with my colours I started to lay them out over the letters. I laid them out face up and then simply flipped each colour over (these are the backs of each piece – the paper is double sided) and taped them all in place. Here is what it looked like at this point.

Now see that pesky hook/hole at top that messed up my chances of having this fit perfectly in the space created by the matt? My first thought was to trim that off and mount it on white paper. But as we all know, no white is created equal so it looked awful. Ummm, no thanks. So, a new solution was born – hence moving it all up and adding a cheery strip at bottom. Which, when it was all said and done, I think I prefer. Yay for happy accidents.

So there you go. A personal DIY gift that is functional, fun, easy and heartfelt.

HAPPY 2nd BIRTHDAY MISS S!