Glittery Initials

For my daughter's joint-birthday-rock-climbing-party, I thought that it might be fun to have an initial for each birthday girl to place near her cake on the cake table.  In addition to being a fun design element, it would allow for guests to know which cake is for which birthday girl, provide another opportunity to bring in the party palette of blues and greens (the fave colors of each birthday girl), and would later do double duty as bedroom decor and a fun memento of the event for each girl.

For this project, because I wanted the letters to be free-standing and not too big, I searched high and low for just the right kind.  I went to A.C. Moore and Michael's, but was underwhelmed by their options.  Most of their letters seem meant to grace a wreath or hang on a wall, not stand independently.  I trudged off to Joann's as a last resort and was THRILLED to see that they have a HUGE selection of letters, both hanging and standing styles, in a variety of materials, fonts, and sizes.  I found the perfect sized 3-dimensional cardboard letters for each girl and the price was great as well - with a coupon for one, I ended up paying less than $4 total.

Back at home, prep work involved removing tags and stickers from the letters and then assembling a variety of blue and green acrylic paints from my collection.  I painted each letter using lots of different shades for depth.  I painted all sides of the letters just to be safe.

While the letters dried, I used my paint plate to experiment with glitter and sequins to figure out which route I wanted to take for embellishments.  Sequins were just too much, so scratch that.  I then tried aqua glitter thinking that it would accent both the blue and green hues and bring a little unity to each letter while still letting them be different.  It was OK, but not exactly right.  Whitish-clear glitter didn't have enough oomph.  The blue iridescent flake glitter was the CLEAR winner.  It picked up and enhanced the best of the green and the blue for both hues.  My mama always taught me that you can never go wrong with iridescence and she is right every time!

After drying - I gave them overnight, but they were dry much sooner - each letter received a coat of glossy mod podge and a liberal sprinkling of that gorgeous, flaky iridescent glitter.  I let that sit for a bit and then came the top coat of glossy mod podge to seal the glitter in.  (Nothing worse than errant glitter floating about the house.)  I probably should have let the 1st coat of mod podge sit overnight - while applying the top coat, I did end up shifting a lot of the flake glitter around.  If I do it again, I'll wait longer for the glitter to set.

(Mog podge is not fully dry here - those white streaks are gone in the finished project...)