The Cursive Project: Ukulele

For Letter U of The Cursive Project, Trevor chose ukulele. There's a reason. When Trevor was two, we took a cruise to Hawaii from San Francisco (which I blogged about as an example of what not to do when scrapping). I took ukulele lessons on each of the at-sea days.  Trevor sat on my lap during many of the lessons and loved playing with my practice ukulele back in the cabin.

Trevor was absolutely thrilled to watch Mommy perform in the ukulele concert.

For Trevor's third birthday, my dad (Woodworker Extraordinaire) surprised both of us with ukuleles he made. They hang on the wall above our piano.

There are many, many excellent tutorials for making a ukulele or guitar from cereal boxes and rubber bands. Since we already have real ukuleles, we decided against making a toy one. Instead, we made a 2-dimensional ukulele.

We started by each tracing a ukulele on chipboard, with separate pieces for the body and neck. We cut out the shape, primed it with gesso, and painted it. We traced circles and then colored them with a black Sharpie.

We stamped tropical leaves and flowers to decorate our ukuleles.

After stamping, we used the Sharpie to add a bridge. 

We attached the neck to the body, then used a ruler and a Sharpie to add frets and tuning pegs.

Finally, we used a ruler and a pencil to add strings to our ukulele. Here's Trevor's finished project:

This is mine:

On to Letter V!