The Naked Chef: DIY Woodland Theme Baby Shower Guestbook

This past weekend, my friend and I helped host our good friend's baby shower. This gave me a chance to put some of my craftiness to use. Probably the most popular item of the event was the guestbook.

It doesn't look like a guestbook, does it? The plan was to create something that she could use as a keepsake without shoving it under a bed or in the attic somewhere. The way we designed this, our friend will be able to hang it in her nursery and keep it for years to come.

We started out by having my friend's husband assemble the backing from recycled pallet wood, which I then stained this beautiful dark color.

For the deer head, we used a wooden cutout that we found in the Christmas section at Michael's. Finding this was such a godsend that set this entire project into motion. We were originally going to make a tree with leaves for people to sign on, and it was going to be on foam core with faux wood vinyl as the background. This is so much better.

The cutout was already a really light color, but I went ahead and stained it with white wood stain to lighten it up while still maintaining a woody look.

For the leaves, I found a pack of wooden cutouts with an assembly of tear drops, ovals, and circles. Naturally, I only used the tear drop shapes and saved the others for future projects. This pack is from Hobby Lobby.

The leaves were then covered with green scrap paper and the edges colored with green marker. This was hands down the most tedious step.

After all of the pieces were prepped, we then spent some quality time arranging the leaves and flowers around the deer head until we were happy with the way they turned out. The final step was gluing everything down and using vinyl lettering to spell out the new baby's name across the top.
And of course the deer needed a crown.

This project was such a success! Everyone loved it, especially the mommy-to-be! This is a keepsake that she can actually display and use as a piece of decor for years to come.

We worked on this piece over the course of three days. On day one, the longest part was waiting for the stain to dry, so we worked on the diaper cakes while that was happening.