Monsters Inc Nursery Name Letters

Late last year, my friend and co-worker had a precious little baby boy. From the moment she told me she was pregnant, we began looking online for ways to incorporate a Monsters, Inc/Pixar theme into the nursery and saw a whole bunch of amazing items on Pinterest (like this and this). We really liked the idea of the letter names but when we looked on Etsy, the hand painted ones ran anywhere from $10-$20 per letter. She already knew she was going to name him Ethan so that could have run $50-$100! Sorry, bud, but no way!

She seemed to have confidence that together, we could draw them. I, however, did not (sorry). Weeks passed and we dropped the subject but my mind was still turning as I tried to figure out what to get her for a baby shower present. I decided to try to make them so I headed to Michaels and bought the wooden 12" letters to spell his name. I pulled up pictures of Mike and Sully and other Monsters, Inc characters on my computer and tried to free-hand them in a simpler, baby-friendly way.

Honestly? I don't think they came out horrible when I sketched them. At least, not Mike and Sully. However, I didn't have enough faith in myself to keep going. I thought even if I did manage to draw them decently, I would surely manage to fail when I began painting.

Prior to hand-drawing, I had wanted to use scrapbook paper to create the names but there didn't seem to be any Monsters, Inc scrapbook paper in existence. I was worried it wouldn't work if I just printed some images out. However, after I found this set on Etsy, I decided to give it a try because the price was good. If I failed, I'd only be out a few bucks. I downloaded the images and printed them on regular printer paper.

The color of my printer was a little off but I was pleased with how they came out. I spent a few minutes deciding how to arrange the sheets so there wouldn't be two Mike papers next to each other or two solid blue backgrounds.

I actually ended up going in and editing the third image with the doors in Paint because the way it was lining up with the H, no Mike and Sullys were showing up so I moved some of the doors and colors around and added more of them. Then I just traced the letters on the back of the paper, cut them out, and used Mod Podge to stick the paper on and seal it. I applied thin layers at first to prevent bleed through (which I had a tiny bit of with the M page). They came out super cute!

My friend was very happy with them and they are now hanging in Ethan's nursery, who finally joined us on New Year's Eve.