Sparkly Joy Altered Letters

Good morning, Scrappin' Friends! I'm Wendy Coffman from Stamping Rules, and I'm here to share this glittery holiday display today. I got these cool paper mache letters which I painted with layers of grey and silver acylic paint. The front of the letters I coated with lots of silver glitter, just some standard chunky kid glitter. Then I got to work with the Mod Podge, pasting on hexagons I cut with my Cricut machine. After all the hexagons were attached and trimmed around the letters I did a final coat of Mod Podge and coated the letters with a clear chunky plastic glitter. 

Here you can see the final coating of what I always call kid glitter because it's uber chunky. It adds a lot of sparkle but still let's your paper shine through! I topped off each letter with a snowflake embellishment I built out of glitter paper cricut cuts and some rhinestone brads that I've been hoarding for just this kind of special project. I finished off my bling with a sparkle flourish for each letter. I adhered the flourishes with lots of Liquid Glass, which dried clear so it didn't interfere with the sparkle of the letters. For the parts of the flourish that were not actually attached to the letters I just flipped the whole thing over and coated the sticky part of the flourish with more Liquid Glass so it wouldn't attract hair or dust. I can't wait to add these letters to my holiday mantel!

If you'd like to see more pics of this project, and links to my craft sources, please visit me over at Stamping Rules. Thanks for stopping by!

When a missing letter becomes an opportunity!

It has happened to all of us. We buy tons and tons of letter stickers. Yet, we still run out of certain letters. What to do when that happens? One idea is to modify some letters to turn them into others. Here are a few examples:

In the follow title, I used the fabulous Corrugated Alphas from Jillibean Soup. However, I was missing a "Y". To make up for that, I used a "V" and then trimmed the leg off an "X". I patched them together and then added tiny butterflies to hide the seam.

Same idea for the following title made with Scrap Within Reach and BasicGrey alphas. I had no more "H", so I used a "N" and the top part of the letter "K". I then added the "adventure" sticker to hide the seam.

I love foam alphas!  Luckily, they can easily be modified (as opposed to the puffy alphas, let's say.)  In this case, I ran out of "N" and "L".  No problem!  A "Z" easily becomes a "N" and a strategically tilted "1" is now a "L".

In some cases, it not possible to modify a letter to turn it into something else.  In this case, I needed another letter "C".  I used the negative of Jillibean Soup Corrugated Alphas to trace one on coordinating patterned paper.  I then inked the edges and pop-dotted it on a journaling Sprout, also from Jillibean Soup.  I love this one!

An easy way to make an "E" is by turning a "3" upside-down. Granted, everyone can tell what you've done, but who cares?! You spent a lot of money on your alphas, you deserve to use it up! In the second title, I also turned two "J's" into "R's".

Finally, why not use a heart to make the letter "O"?  In this case, it's really appropriate, isn't it?

Finally, I'd like to share with you a great tool to use up the letter left on your letter sticker sheet. This anagram solver is the best I have ever seen! Have you ever tried a similar site, only to be given words that made no sense whatsoever? Not in this case. This site lets you enter up to 12 letters and will give you all the words you can make using those letter, from 2 letter words to all 12. All you have to do after that is figure out a title that could work with one of those words and you are set!

Make sure to link us up if you use any of these tips, we love to check out your work!

Claude