While we are enjoying our holidays, we are reposting some of our favorite or your favorite posts from 2012. This little project was one that we loved making back in January, and I’m still getting compliments. We hope you enjoy seeing it again.
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When my mom was in town last week, we had a lot of time on our hands while we waited for the paint to dry on the cabinets. So, we decided to whip up some other projects. My dining room has the most wall space of any room in my house. We haven’t had anything on the wall because I was never sure which direction to go since the wall was so big. I didn’t want to spend a ton of money, and one morning my mom had an idea.
Based on a blog entry she saw at Sweetwaterbaby.blogspot.com, she thought we could buy the big cardboard letters that you see in every craft store in the country and make a sign. But not just any sign – a sign that looks like old zinc letters. We went to Jo Ann’s and purchased four of the largest cardboard letters and two bottles of paint. One was flat black and one was pearl.
First we painted all sides of the letters black. It dried really fast.
Once the letters were painted black, we used the pearl paint color and applied a rough coat on top of the black. At first we thought one coat was good, but after doing a second coat on the D, we could tell we needed two coats to get the old zinc look.
They really do look like aged zinc letters on the wall. You know those old signs you can find in antique stores? Well, these letters look J.U.S.T. L.I.K.E. them. During our beer crawl party (read about it tomorrow), people were shocked. They couldn’t believe these are just your typical craft store cardboard letters.
The whole process took about an hour. Just think of all of the cute words you could make in your dining room, or your child’s room, or even in the laundry room. We did another letter project that we’ll share next week. It is a lot smaller but just as cool.
I remember this project and I think it turned out looking wonderful!