Family Birthdays or Celebrations Wall Hanging Plaque: Step-By-Step DIY or Where To Buy

The Family Birthdays vinyl board to celebrate and remember the family’s special occasions is such a sweet gift, wall hanging, and practical decorative plaque to have in your home or to give to someone special. 

I gave one to my mom for Christmas and she loves it! It was one of the perfect gifts for her, especially with our family growing, married children with birthdays, anniversaries and numbers adding every year! 

In addition, his has been something that has been so incredibly popular! We shared this idea on our Facebook page a few months ago with a short tutorial on how to make them!

Well, they have just exploded in popularity! We have hundreds of people asking for both where to buy finished ones and how to make their own.

Since we have requests for both, we are going to share both ideas with you.

First, here’s some finished products that some have made after we initially posted this many months ago. These are creations shared by readers on our Facebook page.  As you can see, you can be quite creative and unique in how you make this! There are literally hundreds of ways to make it.

I love this variation called “Count Your Blessings”

So after showing you some beautiful examples from readers, let us take you through making your own step-by-step and ideas/modifications that you can make.

We will also share places you can buy them if you just want to skip the DIY process.

What you will need:

• Wooden Board in  6″ x 28″, 18″ x 6″ board or 24″ x 8″ (these are about $8 at Hobby Lobby or Michaels – then use the common 40% off coupon!)
• Paint in your color choice
• Letters – you can paint them on, stencil them on, use die cut letters, wooden letters, scrapbooking stickers, scrapbook paper cut letters or the best, cleanest and most popular option is to use Vinyl Lettering.
• Mod Podge to seal the wood after you make your letters.
• Wooden or thin metal circles or hearts (hearts are good for the anniversaries if you are doing a “family celebrations” plaque). Most popular size is 1″ or you can do 1.5″ too. Metal circles need to have the holes in the top and bottom already.
• Something to attach your circles and/or hearts. The ribbon is a good easy way to attach them.  You also could use oval jump rings or jewelry wire, screw eyes or cup hooks.  
• Hook on back for hanging

How to make it:

1. Cut wood to 6×28 and sand smooth.

2. Paint wood desired paint color – recommended to do at least 2 coats.  Let dry completely.

3. Apply vinyl letters or another form of lettering you want in desired spots and apply paint – let dry completely. Only paint one color at a time and wait for paint to dry completely before applying the second color! 

4. Insert cup hooks at desired lengths apart under the Months (attach ribbon to back of sign by every month with glue, I secure with a thumb tack as well)

5. Paint the 1” circles, heart, etc and let dry!

6. Use a fine tip Sharpie to write names and date of birthday or anniversary.

7. Drill small holes in the painted shapes and insert the oval jump rings to attach to the Cup hooks and other shapes.  Or if you are using wooden shapes, screw the screw eyes (see image below) into the top and bottom of each shape and then attach with oval jump rings. (If using the ribbon, just attach shapes to ribbon using glue).

8. Add a hook to the back for hanging.

Now for some other modifications/ideas. These are to aid in helping you find the best ideas for your skills, budget and time!

If you use scrapbooking stickers, it is highly recommended to attach them with craft glue for extra secure adhesive and then coat with Mod Podge.

At Hobby Lobby, we found a number of possible sticker ideas.  Note that you can find scrapbook stickers everywhere, including Walmart, so you might just find a big enough “family” or “celebrations” sticker and get creative. PLEASE NOTE: It’s super important to provide extra adhesive to stickers and then to seal stickers with Mod Podge as they will not stay as well as vinyl. Vinyl is going to be the BEST long-term option and ultimately the cheapest and easiest. Stickers are only if you can’t make anything else work.  Here are some of those sticker modified ideas:

Nifty Chalk like stickers! 

Cursive Months – cut at the abbreviation for usage (i.e. Jan for January, Feb for February, etc.) 

If you had room depending on the letters/phrases, these would be fun additions on the board! 

These were the best option as it has all of the months in two different sizes to accommodate many size boards. 

Cut at the abbreviation to fit on your board! 

Stencils are also a good way to go! 

Vinyl Ideas for the Family Celebrations (covers both birthdays and anniversaries) and the best option for the letters. 

This one is my FAVORITE!! You can order it online HERE. 

This one is custom ordered to be two different colors – one for family and a different off-set color for celebrations.  You can order it online HERE. 

If you wanted to make the “Count Your Blessings” version, then you can grab order it online HERE

Finally, depending on the circles, heart preferences, you can go with the wooden ones shown in the steps above and use the screw eyes or drill small holes in the top and bottom.  You can also go with metal. We have also heard from some of you that you made clay circles as well! There are many options for this too! 

Or

Finally, many of you have requested just simply purchasing these already made! Well, you can grab them for only $35 from our friend Shawna at Life Expressions.  

Purchasing options!

Another fun project that we recently created was the Family Events Countdown Board. My family loves this as we anticipate the next event, holiday, vacation, etc.! Check out the instructions and affordable supplies and affordable vinyl options:

Feel free to print these instructions for easy reference for you! In order to print the instructions, please go to this link HERE and you will see them to print!