"I Love You" Dry Erase Board

On the same day that I found the cool red aluminum frame I used for D's dry erase project, I found another frame I had in mind for a project for our water closet.

Because of the transitional style of our home, frames with lots of curves and texture don't really fit in, so I was really happy to find this one from Target, with the flat frame. It's just like the other ones we bought from there for much more than a dollar.

The inspiration for this project came from Pinterest, of course.

Source: Somewhere on this blog

As a side note, this was a popular pin before Pinterest exploded and pinners were more vigilant about including permalinks. I'm pretty sure that Eighteen25 is the source blog for this idea, but it's so popular that I found pages and pages of similar projects when I checked the image on Google image. Eighteen25's home page has an ad with a similar project, so searching their blog isn't helpful either, because every page shows up in the search results. So, I'm calling it quits after twenty minutes, and asking forgiveness for not citing the original source. Maybe the fine gals at Eighteen25 will leave a note and correct me.

As I said, it's been a popular pin for quite a while. I joined Pinterest in June of 2011, and it was one of my first pins. In my pre-TBI life, I did a fair amount of writing and speaking about marriage (and divorce), so this idea of affirming each other appealed to me.

First I took out the 2008 graduation matting and paper. 

I used the matting to determine what size I needed. It was a little bigger than my 12"x12" scrapbook paper, so I found another purple page to use as a header.

I have yet to find my straight edge (or ruler, for that matter) so the matting was a workable substitute.

After taping the two pieces of paper together, I checked the fit.  Perfect.

I turned the paper around and re-assembled the frame. At this point, I wasn't sure if I wanted to put the permanent words on the inside or outside.

After deciding to put the words inside the frame, I took the paper back out and added the words, "I Love You...Let me count the ways." The header strip made it very easy to put the letters on straight.

And voila!

I was feeling especially grateful for the way Niels helps me live with the limitations of my brain injury.

To make it easy for both of  us to update the board, I used some velcro to attach a dry erase marker to the top of the frame.

I cut a small piece of velcro and glued it to the top of the frame.

It was a little trickier to glue the other part of the velcro to the dry erase marker. The rubber cement didn't work well, but super glue did.

No runaway markers for this board!

The frame will eventually go up in our water closet on an Ikea Ribba shelf, like this one:

Source: LuxeChandelier.com

As an aside, next time we go to Ikea, I'm getting about 15 of those shelves. They can be used for so many things, including super cool face-out book shelves for D's book nook).

I didn't want to hang the frame because it'll be easier to make changes if we can set it on a photo shelf. So far now, we're using a different kind of shelf!

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