Saturday, January 4, 2014

Ruler Growth Chart

Last year, I saw a couple of ruler growth charts on Pinterest that inspired me to go out, get a piece of wood, then let it sit for a year. Heh. Not really, but that's effectively what happened. I bought a piece of oak as well as the wood stain to go with it, then never did anything with it except sand it down to prep it for staining. At first I thought I would have it done in time for Evie's 2nd birthday, in time to take her height on her birthday, but that, of course, did not happen.

I mentioned to my friend, Emily, at the beginning of the week that I had this outstanding ruler growth chart project, saying that I had never stained anything before. She said staining was super easy, and I don't know what it was about her saying it that got me over the fear of messing up staining, but it did. So, the plank of wood got a couple coats of stain, and I also used my Silhouette to cut stencils for the numbers and lines.

I used a couple of tutorials as reference when I did this growth chart, but the one from 517 Creations more so.




Here's how mine turned out:

IMG_4972_RulerGrowthChart
IMG_4980_RulerGrowthChartDetail
IMG_4985_RulerGrowthChart
IMG_4987_RulerGrowthChart

The details:
  • I used a Sharpie paint pen for the lines and the numbers. I haven't sealed the wood yet, so I'll need to find something that won't smear the Sharpie paint pen when I do seal it.
  • In retrospect, I think I would try cutting the stencil for the lines out of a thicker cardstock to reduce bleeding of the edges, or use pencil first and then fill-in by hand like I did with the numbers.
  • I also used the Century font for the numbers, like the one from 517 Creations.
  • I made my one-foot lines 3 inches long, quarter-of-a-foot lines 2 inches long, and all the other lines 1 inch long.
  • I made my numbers about 3 inches tall, but I believe my plank of wood was also wider than the ones used in the tutorials, so it could accommodate taller numbers.
  • Instead of starting my chart at 6 inches (i.e., meant to be hung on the wall 6 inches from the ground), I chose to make mine start from the ground so that we would just lean it against a wall to take height measurements.
  • I placed each number 6.5 inches from the right edge and 5/16ths of an inch to the left of the one-foot lines.

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