diy dollar store giant letter!

have you ever written a blog post just to feel deja vu the whole time, nearly convinced that you've written the entire post before & just didn't publish it? totally getting that feeling right now, but the mystery blog post draft is nowhere to be found!

i love the look of really, really large letters. in my quest to "go bigger" with our decor, big giant letters are pretty much my favorite thing to start with! after we painted a wall brown in what used to be our big girl's nursery [to make it ready for baby brother], i found myself with this big gorgeous focal wall that needed something above the white crib.

after i discovered the paint stick letters on pinterest, i knew i wanted to do a monogram with a big giant letter for our last name in the middle, & a paint stick letter on either side. i almost pulled the trigger on one of the 2 foot tall papier mache ones from joann fabrics only to find out the letter i needed was constantly out of stock [and i'd have to pay shipping] i decided to make one.

 i started with some big sheets of poster sized foam board from the dollar tree. then i used this magical little website to print out the letter B in my choice of font on 4 sheets of paper so i could cut the pieces out, reassemble them into a B & then trace it onto the foam board to cut out in one large letter.

[that probably sounds confusing. here is an explanation/tutorial of how to do it.]

after i printed out my giant B on 4 sheets of paper, i traced them onto the foam & cut it out 3 times with an exacto knife, & hot glued all the layers together. i used 3 layers of foam board [only $3 remember?] to give it the thickness i wanted.

from that point, i needed something to make it a little sturdier, smooth the edges, & give it the natural papier mache look i wanted it to have. so i tore some paper lunch bags [also from the dollar tree i think!] & modge podged it onto the letter. 

i did the edges first [you can see it best on the back]:

& then did some squares to cover the rest of the white on the front. this step by far took the longest & i want to play around with using washi tape or printed duct tape instead!

here's a close up of the front so you can see the texture once the modge podge was dry:

ta da! big giant letter! it's hard to get an idea of the scale here, but it's leaning up against the house on my back porch railing if that helps at all. 

instead of trying to hang it with command strips, i decided to go ahead & use a picture hanging bar & a clear command hook that i usually use for hanging ornaments on windows. while i'd honestly rather have a letter like this made out of plywood or mdf, this paper version is light as a feather & that makes me feel good about it hanging over a wee one's crib.

so happy with how it turned out, especially for so cheap!