Decorations and festive crafts offer great ways to communicate different meanings and feelings to the people in your home, while also adding a sense of personal flair and creativity to different rooms. But what if you could do all of that and actually spell out what you’re trying to say? With wooden alphabet cutouts, you can! Using actual letters from the alphabet can help you combine visual and linguistic representations to convey messages about specific people, events, and much more. And wooden alphabet letters aren’t just a great addition to the home; they can also be a really useful tool and decoration in the classroom!
But if you’ve never crafted with wooden alphabet cutouts before, you might have a few questions. For instance, how can you make wooden letters decorative? What are the best rooms in the house to use wooden letter cutouts? How can you paint or accessorize unfinished wood letters? Finally, where can you find high-quality individual alphabet letters made of wood?
In today’s guide, we will answer all of these questions and more, so let’s get started!
Wooden letters for walls
You may have a baby room or nursery full of wooden letter blocks and other letter-themed toys that help children learn and grow, but you’ll need something a little different to decorate the walls. Most letter blocks are too thick, heavy, and chunky to hang up on your walls. For this reason, you’ll need to use wooden letter cutouts that are relatively thin (typically just a quarter inch) but tend to have a much larger face (up to 12 inches). This allows you to take advantage of the three-dimensional effect, without having letter decorations that take up a lot of physical space in your room.
When putting up wooden letters on your walls, there are a lot of different messages you can convey. You can put seemingly random letters around a nursery or classroom to signify that it is a place for learning and academic exploration, or you can use letters to spell out your children’s names. There’s really no limit to what you can spell or do with hanging letters, as long as it makes sense for the space and the person (or people) who will occupy it. You can even decorate bedroom doors with wooden letters to tell people who sleeps where!
How to hang wooden letters
Once you decide how you want to use your wooden letters, you’ll probably want to decorate them (more on that later), or simply hang the unfinished wood letters as they are. Fortunately, the hanging process is one of the easiest parts to master. You’ll just need to follow these steps:
- Prepare your letters with any paint, decorations, or finishing before you begin the hanging process
- Figure out where you want to place your letters and how you want them to be arranged (always use a leveler so you can mark where the letters will go with a pencil)
- Decide how you would like to hang your letters: via sawtooth, D-ring, or traditional screws affixed to the backs of the letters; alternatively, you can affix screws strategically on your wall and or use velcro hangers for a quick and easy hack that won’t leave holes in your walls
- Measure your markings one last time before screwing the letters into the wall, just to make doubly sure that you haven’t miscalculated anything
- Secure the letters to the wall and look at them from different angles to make sure they have been properly placed and positioned
Wooden letters for crafts
Wooden letters are great for hanging on walls or bedroom doors, but they actually have a lot more versatility than that. Block letters are commonly used as toys and educational tools, but letter cutouts can be just as practical. For example, we have a great wood sorting tray for letters that can help your little ones learn the order of the alphabet and practice their organizational skills at the same time!
Even if you’re not crafting for the kids, there are still plenty of ways to use your wooden letters as decorations. You can adorn your coffee table with different messages based on the season or a particular event using wooden cutout stands. This allows you to create an even larger three-dimensional effect without having to attach anything to your walls. Simply pop your letters into the stands and place them on virtually any flat surface in your home. If you’re celebrating a birthday, you might also consider wooden number cutouts to celebrate the birthday boy or girl’s age.
Wooden letters for Christmas stockings
Are you looking for a fun way to spruce up the Christmas stockings this year? Both kids and adults love it when they have personalized stockings or, at the very least, they know which stocking belongs to them! This is where wooden letter cutouts can really come in handy. Even if it isn’t practical to hang or display someone’s entire name on the mantle (“Elizabeth” and “Christopher” can take up a lot of space!), you can still use shortened versions to get the point across (like “Liz” and “Chris”).
Depending on the names in your family, you may be able to stick to just one letter per person. Using the first letter of each person’s name and placing it above the corresponding stocking or even attaching it to the stocking itself is a quick, easy, and practical way to decorate for the holidays!
Ideas for decorating wooden letters
There are a ton of different ways to decorate wooden letters. The key is making sure that your decorations don’t overshadow or distort the shape so that it becomes difficult or even impossible to see it as an individual letter. With that in mind, here are a few of our favorite ways to decorate wooden letters:
- Paint - Painting is the best way to add a pop of color to wooden letters, particularly if you want to use them for a specific event or season. For example, yellow and orange designs are great for autumn, while white, red, and green are great for Christmas decorations.
- Stencil Designs - Do you want to add complex designs to your letters but don’t fully trust yourself to do it freehand? If so, you can’t go wrong with stencils! Simply align your stencil of choice on the letter. Afterward, you can paint over the stencil or even draw with markers to make them really stand out.
- Washi Tape - Washi Tape is one of the easiest ways to quickly decorate wooden cutouts without changing the surface of the wood. While this will cover up the natural beauty of your unfinished wooden letters, it will also make it easy to decorate and redecorate your letters as needed.
- Ribbon or tinsel - Adding little adornments like ribbon or tinsel can really make your wooden letters fit the setting (especially around the holidays) and also add unique textures and colors to your decorations.
While this is certainly not an exhaustive list of every decoration idea for wooden letters, we hope that these ideas can help get you started on your next project!
Did you enjoy our wooden alphabet letters guide? Be sure to let us know in the comments and check out our wooden alphabet letters shop to find the perfect gift for yourself or a loved one!
