DIY Baby Gift

A cute carryall for a kids’ room that you can decorate yourself makes for a sweet personalized gift.

With a dear friend having just welcomed a new baby boy, I wanted to make something special for their nursery.  Something cute with his name, their nursery theme, and the colors of the room.  I love when occasions to celebrate like this arise – it is so much fun to head to the craft store and see what ideas bubble up!

The nursery’s colors are navy, light blue, and red, with a theme of trains.  At the craft store, I found a flat wooden train and a little carrying crate, along with wooden letters for his name and started imagining what it would look like.

Now, since I of course can’t resist doing anything sea inspired, I also grabbed a flat wooden anchor for thirty cents to see what a nautical version would look like.  So, you’ll see both versions here just to give you some ideas.  I also ended up liking this so much that I made two more for other young ones I know, so I of course included pictures of those too!

Here were the supplies:

• wooden carrying crate or other wooden box
• wooden letters of name
• wooden decorations (I did a train for the actual gift but did an anchor for a sea-inspired version)
• acrylic paint of desired colors
• paint brush
• chalky finish paint (I chose a gray color)
• wood glue
• optional: small resin sea stars for a nautical version (I used a starfish vase filler)

This ended up being super easy, just three steps:

1. Paint the wooden box with the chalky finish paint.  No sanding or priming needed with this stuff!  Paint every bit of it: the outsides, insides, and handle.

2. While the box is drying, paint the wooden accents and letters how you wish.  For the anchor version, I went with navy blue, and for the train version, I went with the nursery’s colors of navy, light blue, and red.

3. Once the box and accents were dry, I used wood glue to adhere the accents onto the box.

Before gluing the train down, I wanted to play with some ideas for a nautical version. I used the painted anchor and two small resin sea stars from a vase filler I had.  Here’s what it looked like:

So after playing with some nautical ideas, I attached the train to the side with wood glue for Sam’s train-themed nursery:

To complete the gift, I of course couldn’t resist adding an autographed copy of Zale’s Tales for Sam’s library.  I can’t wait until he is old enough to read it!

This project was so fun, easy, and full of so many options that I made two more for other sweet young ones I know to match their room décor:

I hope it will be something that will find a place in Sam, Abigail, and Niam’s rooms for many joyful years to come!