Homemade gift idea – personalized baseball bat

This past October, my brother, and his wife welcomed their first baby – a boy. I am his only aunt, and boy, do I ever enjoy that title.

This baby boy has been born into a baseball family. My brother has been playing baseball since preschool – over 20 years now. He has played on provincial teams, tournament teams and teams that have taken him into the United States.

His wife plays baseball, too. I used to play, my dad used to coach both of us, and my son just started this past summer.

So, when this baby boy was born a couple of months ago, he was showered with many baseball-themed gifts.

For Christmas last year, I made something special for his bedroom. After seeing it on Etsy I fell in love with the idea – but it was selling for over $50, which I didn’t want to spend. I thought about it and knew I could make it myself for much less than $50 – so I did.

I love it, his parents love it and the best part is that although the sentimental value is quite high, it cost next to nothing to make.

I got the wooden letters from Walmart for $1 each. You can also find them in various sizes at some dollar stores and most craft stores. If the name has many letters, you’ll need to get smaller letters, but if the name is only 3 or 4 letters, you could get the larger ones.

I found an old, beat-up wooden baseball bat (exactly what I wanted) for free on a local online classifieds site.

First, I painted both sides of the letters white with leftover white trim & door paint that we had in the garage. Each side got 2 coats of paint.

Once dry, I used a simple red marker to draw on baseball stitching.

Then I used “gorilla glue” that my husband had to affix the letters to the bat. My husband insisted on using this, saying it’s better than both crazy glue and a hot glue gun. I took his word for it.

We put dots of glue on both the letters and the bat.

My husband wanted to do this step in the garage, as he was afraid if we spilled glue on the floor in the house, we’d never get it off.

We then clamped the letters with what my husband calls “squeeze clamps” for 2 hours to ensure the glue set and dried properly.

All done!

That’s it! Because his name is 7 letters long and I had everything else at home, this personalized gift only cost me $7 total. Start to finish, this project was done in only one day.

Note: You could have also arranged the letters on the bat horizontally instead of vertically and then mount the bat on the wall or lay it across a shelf.

I think it’s a great gift for any age, and the same technique could be used for hockey sticks, golf clubs, ringette sticks – minus the baseball stitching of course.

Have you made any DIY gifts lately?