easy wedding DIY

Full disclosure: I started this post Tuesday night with the intent to post Wednesday. I had a great HUMP DAAAAAY intro. Then, I fell asleep early and spent the whole day in the psych ward for clinical.  #bloggerFAIL

Today I have an easy DIY to share that I'll be using for decor at our wedding reception, but you could easily replicate it for your house!  A few months ago, I purchased a lot of paper mache letters with some grand ideas. I've use some of them for various projects but knew that I really wanted large, free-standing initials. I envision these going on the cake table, which will probably also double as guest book and card drop off.

To recreate this project, you will need:

1) paper mache letters (JoAnn)
2) Elmer's Craft Bond Spray Adhesive
3) black ampersand (UPDATE: found similar one on Etsy)
4) black spray pain
5) foam brushes (Walmart)
6) Recollections Extra Fine Glitter in Champagne (Michael's)
7) Mod Podge (Walmart) 
8) aquarium gravel (Walmart)

Instructions: The letters are hollow and can easily tip over, so start by making little holes in the back of each one and putting in the aquarium gravel.  I just kept putting it in until they seemed sturdy enough that they wouldn't fall over with a small jiggle.  The black ampersand is already filled with some gravel so it doesn't need this step.

Make a hole with the scissors, then expand the hole using a flathead screwdriver. Make sure you do this on the BACK of the letters!

Cover the holes you made with tape (I used blue painter's tape) and spray paint your letters black. I chose black because it would match the ampersand and it would create a dark background to make the sparkles pop!

The "B" has two holes because I started in the middle and then realized that the lower sides of the letter had a support that prevented the gravel from getting to the base. Then I made a hole near the bottom to put gravel in the base.

Next, add the glitter to the front of the letters. I tried this a few ways and I'll spare you the failures.  The easiest way is to use the spray adhesive directly on the front face of the letters, then flip the letter over (holding onto the sides) and put it face down in a tray of glitter.  This prevents glitter from getting on the sides of the letters, if some spray glue got there.

I covered two cookie trays in wax paper to prevent the glue or glitter from sticking. This made for easy clean up! And I used two bottles of glitter so I could have a thick layer in the tray, but then was able to save most of it for future projects. The actual amount of glitter used on the letters was less than half of one container.

The final step was to coat the front of the letters in Mod Podge to prevent the glitter from getting everywhere. If you've ever used glitter, then you know that it seems to shake off and into everything around you. Using the Mod Podge should make it so that we don't have a trail of glitter around these babies!  You have to do this step once everything is dry, so you may wait a day or two.  While you're waiting, you can always fill in any sparce areas you notice as the glitter and glue begins to dry.

The 2 photos on the left are BEFORE adding the mod podge. You can see a few areas that look patchy so we filled those in.  On the right, you can see when we added the mod podge. It looks like thick, white glue so don't be alarmed! It will dry clear!

Once the mod podge dried, we had the final result:

This picture isn't as clear (it was taken with my mom's phone) but they looks great in person! Hopefully I can snap some nicer quality pics the next time I'm in Austin.

Have you done any DIY projects for your wedding or otherwise? How did they go? Would you recreate this project?

xoxo,

Cait

Don't forget to visit other posts in the link up!