Growth Chart Tutorial

I mentioned that I was inspired by Pinterest on making these growth charts. I found them on dearlily and thought they were just so darn cute.  After reading up on ways to make them, this is what I did:

I went to our local hardware store and bought a 1x8x12 board.  I did this because they did not have a 6 ft board.  I had them cut it in half and this way I had enough wood for two charts.  I sanded it just enough to smooth out the rough spots and then I stained it by brushing on some stain then spreading it with a rag.  This is what it looked like afterward. 

After the stain dried, I took my tape measure and marked the inches from one end of the board to the other with a pencil.  I then took a square and made my lines longer.  For each 1/4 of an inch I made the line 2 inches long while the rest I made 1 inch long.  After I had them penciled on, I took a sharpie and traced it to make it look like this:

For those of you who don't know what a "square" is, it is that triangle shaped thing lying on the ground in the picture.

After I had the inches marked, I found a font I liked and printed out the numbers.  I traced the back of the numbers with the pencil and then traced them onto the board.  I have since laminated the numbers and created my own stencils my cutting the shape of the number out to make the process easier.  After tracing the numbers on the board, I again went over it with the sharpie and filled it in.

And that was it.  The board was complete.  Until I decided I wanted to personalize it a little bit.  I know most people use their last names for their personalization's, but I live around a lot of family and I wanted mine to be unique.  So, I used my husbands name and added "& Co" afterwards.  I thought it turned out very cute

When I mark the measurements, I use a super fine point sharpie after I take the initial measurement with a pencil.  It works quite well and it doesn't take up a lot of space on the board.

Can you see the marking at 3'3"?  That would be my 3 year old's height.  He thinks it is so cool that he is three and he is 3 feet tall.