e, l & m

A long, long time ago I had this idea to put our initials on our dining room wall (because my baby shower/valentine's day origami heart decorations are still up. i don't want to talk about it.). I also wanted the letter 3. I had this vision in my mind and that vision also involved black and white striped walls.

SO. I gave up on the stripes and decided to focus on the letters. My brother cut the letters out of some left over bathroom remodel wood and the wood happened to be really bad quality and chipped and splintered as he was cutting it. I figured I could just sand it down and make it look okay and roll with it. But it did not look good. It was bad. So Evan threw them in the craft graveyard and I forgot about them for the remainder of the summer and all of fall. And then we decided to do some redecorating and I remembered my letters and I had the brilliant idea to cover them in fabric and hang them on the wall.

I didn't take any pictures of the process because it's mostly self-explanatory: Wrap in batting, wrap in fabric, staple, done. I stapled the batting into place first and it was super forgiving so I thought the fabric would be just as easy. It is not. There are a couple of places where I barely had enough fabric to cover a corner or an edge and a couple of places where I got a little crazy with the scissors and had to be creative with my wrapping. I did have to hot glue a few corners down which wasn't a huge deal, but hot glue + batting isn't a very good time. I am also staple happy and won't disclose how many dozens of staples I used.

I'm kind of in love with them and so glad I dug them out of their final resting place and gave them new life. They look a billion times better wrapped in fabric than they ever would have with stain (or paint, which was my second option).

I also realize that I could have bought the $2 letters at Hob Lob but these are bigger and I cannot stand those ugly bubble letters they sell there. Plus I love arts and crafts with my little brother almost as much as I love arts and crafts with Evan. My brother has a lot of big boy tools and so we make a lot of cool things because he's not afraid to saw through nails or to drill holes in things. Evan is a little more careful and also the only kind of saw he owns is a hand saw and I'm like, "This isn't 1502, babe. Get with the program."

Anyway. This is my newest project. I'm kind of madly in love with it. They're obviously not in my dining room so my next project should probably involve getting that Valentine's decor off the walls. HA.