Painted Initial for the Wall | Welcome To Nana's

A Painted Initial for the Wall of your room is special no matter what your age. Even adults love painting letters and making word art for the home. For grands learning the sounds of letters and how to spell their names this is especially fun.

So I just had a thought- this could make a fun Mother's Day gift as well! Use the letters MOM to paint!!

Purchase Initials

Purchase the first letter of each child’s first name for this project. There are a number of options in the hobby sections of stores. My preference is the wooden letters that are at least 10 inches tall. This provides a nice smooth painting surface and it’s easy to glue objects on if you would like to do that after the paint dries. Some stores (like Hobby Lobby) offer 50% off sales on wood products every other month or so which is helpful.

Protect your table!!

Spread newspapers or an old table cloth out on the table as this one gets a bit messy. We use Papa’s old t-shirts for paint shirts and use a binder clip in the back to pull them up tighter around the smaller grands. Someday I’ll need to invest in a few paint aprons!!

What colors?

The grands choose a few colors of acrylic paints for their letters and I squirt out a dime-quarter sized amount of each color on a foam plate for them to use.

Every time we use paints I remind the grands how to wash out their paint brushes and change color. Each child has a glass of water and a clean paper towel for brush cleaning. We swish, swish, swish the brush in the water, then tap, tap, tap the brush against the edge of the glass. Finally touch the brush against a paper towel before going into the next paint color. Of course this is a process and many times the colors on the plate still get all mixed into sort of a grey brown by the end of the project! They are getting it though, and I’ll hear them saying- “Swish, swish, swish…tap, tap, tap.” It’s so cute!

Original Designs

Each child painted their Painted Initial for the Wall with the colors and patterns they wanted. One grand was done in five minutes and off playing again.

The rest took their time and two sat chatting and making their stripes of colors and designs for some time. That’s my favorite part, the chatting.

It does look nice if they will take the time to paint the edges of the letters too. That’s where it gets messy, but it is worth it when the letters are hanging on the wall.