I have been wanting to make one of these forever, but never went through with it. Now that I have a daughter, I can now make ALL the girly things. I however have to keep my crafts to a minimum until we move back home into a real house. My husband will kill me if I make any more crafts for the fifth wheel (whoops?).
I really underestimated the time and amount of materials (aka flowers) it would take to make this project. Also the size of the floral used plays a big part. I had bought some succulent picks for the mint color, but they ended up being too big for the size letter that I used. Had I bought the 16″ letter and not the 8″ one, they would’ve been perfect. I also didn’t pay attention to the stems of the flowers. Most of them were just plastic (no wire), so I spent way more time cutting wire and sticking them in the flower buds than I should have.
Price breakdown:
Paper maché letter: 2.99
Floral picks: 26.89 (6 @ 1.99/5 @ 2.99)
Styrofoam: 3.99
Total: 33.87 (not including tax)
I spent more on this project than I wanted to because of all the flowers. And wouldn’t you know it, the next day, Hobby Lobby has the floral on sale for 50% off. Next time I’m just going to wait for the sale. I already had the glue and paint, so I didn’t factor those in. And just like most things, the bigger the project, the bigger the cost. So I stayed small, mostly because we don’t have a lot of room for crafts.
Minus being time consuming on the flowers, this project is really simple. And only took me an hour and a half tops.
- Cut the top of your paper maché letter with a sharp crafter’s knife or X-acto blade along the side walls of the letter. It doesn’t need to be the cleanest cut since it will be hidden by flowers. Remove the cardboard from inside the letter.
- Paint your letter, if you choose to. I did 3 coats.
- Cut floral Styrofoam the width and thickness of your letter. I used my husbands work knife, but any sharp, long knife will do. Glue the Styrofoam in using tacky glue, hot glue gun, whatever craft glue you’ve got.
- Cut floral stems short enough to stick in the Styrofoam so they aren’t sticking out too far. Arrange flowers however you like, making sure that you can’t see the Styrofoam once all your flowers are in.
I ran out of flowers, so I have a few spots where you can see through, but I’m going to leave it for now. I plan on making my daughter a larger letter once we move into our house, so I’m going to reuse these flowers and purchase some more then.
I really enjoyed making this and I’m glad I finally did it. Now I know what to do differently for the next one!
Adventure Is All You Need 