Pins Awkwardly in Real Life: DIY "I Love You Because" Board

As many of my regular readers know, my sister got married about a week ago.
When it came to giving a gift I found myself at a cross roads. I wanted to get her and her husband something special, that wold stand out in a long list of plates and silverware.
Something that was a little different. And something that had to do with love.

So, to Pinterest I turned.

Now, I'm not much of a crafter, but I found two relatively simple ideas that I really liked, and handmade which feels a little more thoughtful.
They also were pretty romantic, which I thought was appropriate for newlyweds right?

This calls for  a Pins Awkwardly in Real Life Post! Find my first post here.

It is true that I made two gifts. I'm going to do two separate posts so it doesn't get too long.
Today I'm going to share with you the "I Love You Because..." Board.

Now I am going to put this out there right now.
This project was in no way my idea. And I am in no way trying to take credit for it AT ALL.
The tutorial that I followed most closely is from the blog  "A Content Housewife".
(Which is a blog that I now follow because it is adorable.)
Here is the link to the Pin, and here is a link to her tutorial specifically. 
Newsflash: Hers is way cuter. She also decorated the frame. I was not that motivated.
There are also other pins that show examples and link to tutorials. Here, Here, Here, Here.
I could go on. Either way, just wanted to make sure you all knew this was not my idea and I am in NO WAY claiming it is. I just shamelessly copied it, used my own style, and made it awkward.

"I Love You Because..." Message Board: Awkwardly In Real Life

My journey started off at my local big box store in the craft aisle.
I found a set of scrapbooking paper that had a few different options. The colors were cool and there were plenty of pieces with patterns that weren't super busy.

And then because the printer we have isn't so great I decided to do the lettering with stickers. I chose two sets of stickers so the word love could be in bold.

After finding a two black 8X10 frames it was time to go home and get my craft on.

Yes I got two. Why? Well I wasn't going to just make one for my newlywed sister!
I knew I'd want one too so instead of putting it of to "sometime later" I decided to do both at the same time!

First I picked out the papers that I wanted for my sister, and one for myself.
Then, because I can't cut in a straight line, I took out stock photo from the frame, used a paperclip, and used that to guide my cutting.

Because I'm the type of person that will write diagonally if I don't have lined paper, I decided to paperclip scraps to make sure my letters went on straight.

For both of the boards I decided to go with lowercase letters for everything except the word love. That was in the bolder font and in all caps. I noticed that with most of the boards that I looked at as examples they did something different with the word love to make it pop.

Now one problem that I found at the end was that they did not provide me with any periods.
Not providing enough punctuation? Who did these stickers think they were?
I couldn't go without the ellipses!
For my sister's I used the dots of the leftover lowercase i's and j's/
When I got to mine I had run out.
 So I took matters into my own hands and very carefully, cut parts of the numbers off until they slightly resembled periods.

After staring at them for a little while in awe that I had created something so adorable I slipped them into the black frames and voila! They were done!
Here was my sister's

And the one that I made for myself.

Per advice from the tutorial that I followed, I also gave my sister a vis-a-vis marker as that supposedly erases easier than a white board marker.

Here are both of them side by side.

I made sure to get frames that could also be hung up on the wall, in case we ever run out of shelf space or have a bare wall that needs something in a future home.

But for now I've put mine right next to the TV in plain view for everyone to see why we love each other. As you can see it's already being put into good use!

The project was pretty easy and not a lot of clean up. It's a sweet touch to the house, and we've already exchanged a few notes to each other that have induced "awwwwww"s all around.

What do you think?