spare time

Now that campaign season is over with, and the apartment is rented out (more on that later), I have finally had some spare time to organize/decorate/ clean up our apartment. I decided to tackle a project I found on pinterest, seen here.  

Step #1: Procure the supplies. This proved harder than I thought, as my first stop was Michael's and they did not have paper mache letters (even though the woman I talked to thought they did). And my next stop- Joann's- was just craziness. But, luckily they had the letters I wanted (but barely, supplies were low).

Once I had the letters safe in my hands- I moseyed to the paint aisle to find the perfect copper shade. It took a few minutes of searching through the brands, but this is what I finally settled on.

I hurried to the checkout line because I was more than ready to get out of there- it was a zoo- and I get to the front of the store and the line is 38 people long. Apparently everyone had Monday off for Veteran's Day too? The line is inching along and I realize I forgot to get glue. I wasn't about to get out of line, but luckily they have this sitting right by the register- crisis averted:

Step 2: Painting the letters. Pretty self explanatory. I did not take any pics of this process, but I did take a pic of the painted before gluing the pennies on. Oh, and I did two coats to get rid of any streaks, like recommended.

Step 3: Gluing on the pennies. Also self explanatory. I put a generous dot of glue on each penny and randomly glued them down. I tried to mix the shiny ones in with the dull ones, as well as heads in with tails, so the letters would not look too uniform. Unfortunately I only had enough pennies to do one layer, so the pic below is not quite the final product. (I used about $3 worth of pennies for the first layer alone).

So that's as far as I've gotten into the project. Once I get the last layer up, and the letters on the wall, I'll put up another pic. I'll also let you know how the glue holds up. Hopefully I'll be back soon with the update. Here's the cost breakdown of the project:

$13.47 paper mache letters (3 at $4.49 a piece)

$1.89 acrylic paint

$.99 paint brushes

$4.00 E6000 glue

apprx $4.00 worth of pennies

Total = $24.35

And now here is a sneak peak of another project I have been working on around the house: