Monogram fun!

I've been seeing a lot of these monogrammed things all over! Plagues, pillows, signs, picture frames, you name it. I also saw, two weeks ago at Shabby Chic, a really neat way to make a raised plaster looking relief with a hot glue gun. I put these two things together and came up with this:



Here's how! I started with this garage sale find shadow box. It originally had a scroll of the ten commandments, ribbons and fake flowers. Upon removing them I discovered that this blue material (50 year old felt maybe) was pretty much attached. Since it was just a piece of particle board I turned it over.

I printed out the letter H on the computer, used chalk to outline the back then laid it down on the board and outlined the upside with pencil leaving me an outline in chalk that I then went over with pencil. That's clear right?

To make the image raised I just filled it in with my hot glue gun, pretty simple! I really filled it in some places and other places not as much, for DIMENSION.




Once it was all filled in I started tearing up common white tissue paper and modge-podged it down. You don't have to wait to do this because hotglue is cool in like what 3.5 seconds? So, I covered the whole board and went over a few spots twice to add a good paintable space and for DIMENSION.


Next I waited FOREVER, I'm not a patient girl when it comes to crafty I want instant gratification! Ok, so it took a while for the glue to dry then I mixed some craft paint, off white and brown (very technical here) and just painted it on.

I printed off these words using different types and font sizes to paint around the letter H.

I used the same technique with the chalk for the words, you can see the yellow outline here. Then, using my grandmothers paint brush again, I painted the words in using the brown paint.


The step in between did not get photographed, weird, I took the brown paint and mixed it with water, then brushed it across the whole thing with a piece of cheese cloth. You can see how it picked up all the DIMENSIONS in the above close up.

After the words were dry I watered down the original background color and swiped it across the words, they were too bright for me.


After everything was dry, TA-DA put it in the frame and. . .

Hmmm, not so impressed, I think the frame needs something, yes yes it does. Bring on the color!

(first I sanded a bit, then) I mixed some different reds and a little brown, some water and kind of "whitewashed" it on.



That's better!




TA-DA!! A personalized monogram with loads of DIMENSION!!

I'm linked at the party below:




PS I really really really like all the dimension in this project:)