Initials are a pretty and personal decoration for your ceremony or reception space. You can hang them on church doors, the altar, backs of a chair, place them on tables, ...
My floral initials are approximately 6x8 inch and made of recycled cardboard and a bag of potpourri from Ikea. I think it comes in different colors depending on the season but you can buy colored potpourri in every well-assorted Home Decor store.
Total project costs: 2 $
Total time: 2,5 hours
Difficulty Level: Beginner. All you need is a lot of patience because this is a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle, and if you have never worked with hot glue before you might want to practice first to get a feel for the gun.
Materials:
- 1 bag of Potpourri, but depending on the size of your initials you might need two bags
- Recycled cardboard. I bet you already bought tons of wedding stuff, re-use the boxes! Or a cereal box or any other cardboard box you already have. It's really not important what it looks like as long as it is solid and not too floppy.
- Hot glue gun, scissors and a pencil ( I tried three different kinds of glue and hot glue worked best for this project )
Instructions:
- draw a sketch of the letters and cut them out. You don't have to be too precisely because the cardboard will be covered by the flowers anyways.
- paint the cardboard in a color similar to the potpourri. Watercolors from a paintbox dry very fast on paper and cardstock
- empty the bag of potpourri and spread the single pieces. This way you get an overview of the different shapes and you can act faster while working with the glue gun.
- preheat the hot glue gun
- once the glue is hot and liquid take one of the smaller pieces of the potpourri, apply a dab of glue and stick the piece to the cardboard. Start with the edges and construct a frame, then add more pieces of a similar size and matching shape little by little.
I tried a different method first when i made the "N" . The cardboard shimmered through as i did not paint it, and instead of building a frame i just glued the flowers randomly. It was difficult to fill the gaps subsequently.
See the difference:
Now just fill the center with larger pieces until it looks full and bloomy and covers the cardstock completely. Trim the corners of the cardstock with scissors if necessary.
That's it!
