EntertainingFaux Floral Monogram March 3, 2017 While I wanted a pretty party for Rosie’s birthday this year, I was determined not to fill my schedule with tons of work-intensive crafts. While I love creating, hosting, prepping food, and being 34 weeks pregnant (35 tomorrow!) didn’t leave a lot of room for it this time around. But like I said in Rosie’s Pink Party reveal post, she is obsessed with pink flowers. I was looking for a fairly inexpensive and easy way to have pink flowers be a focal point for the party. But like I also said in the reveal post, I tried to have as many items pull double duty as possible. I know buying a ton of faux flowers wouldn’t be cheap, so I wanted something we may be able to use in her big girl room….kill two birds with one stone! I decided to go with a little floral monogram for our girl. MATERIALS: Large Foam Board Hot Glue Gun Faux Flowers Wire Cutter Box Cutter COST: $65 | TIME: 30 MINUTES I wanted it to be light to hang, as cheap as possible, and large enough to make a statement. So I brainstormed and developed a simple plan. I started with a large piece of foam board from the craft store that was 40″ long, giving me plenty of room to work with. 1.) Sketch your letter. I knew the entire surface would be covered in flowers, so I wasn’t worried about sketching. I started with a pencil and straight edge and played around with my R until the size and proportions felt right. Then, I outlined the final shape in Sharpie to make cutting it out easy. It ended up being 30″ tall. 2.) Cut out your letter using a box cutter. 3.) Use a wire cutter to clip the stems off of your flowers. Make sure to clip the stems as close to the bloom as possible so that your blooms will lay flat on the monogram. I wanted pretty faux flowers in a variety of colors, so that it could really inspire the rest of the party decor palette. I bought a ton in a variety of colors (peach, blush, pink, and berry) and in a variety of sizes. I also wanted a variety of flower and petal types for different textures, so it didn’t look too “matchy” if that makes sense. I bought more blooms than I thought I’d need to be safe and ending up using every last one! I cased a few local craft stores for reasonable, but beautiful faux flowers and ended up buying mine from Old Time Pottery. They were much less expensive than other stores I checked and had the colors I needed. Just for reference, I bought $60 worth of flowers and really could’ve used a few more (other craft stores prices were higher though, so that money went a long way). I realized later that Amazon would probably have a great variety and they did! Here are some favorites I wish I’d found before buying mine: Turn on your JavaScript to view content 4.) Arrange your blooms on your letter. I didn’t lay out the entire pattern before I started gluing, but I did play with it enough to know where I was headed before I did anything permanent. You’ll see in the picture, I had two really large peach flowers, so I placed them first and then sort of worked out from each bunch. As I went, I made sure that I was spacing out the different colored blooms. 5.) Hot glue the blooms to the letter. The good thing about gluing them on is that you do have a minute if you need to shift the placement. For each, I put a dot of glue where it was going to go and also added glue to the back of the bloom. A lot of them didn’t have a perfectly flat back, so I really wanted to make sure they attached well. I did hold each one in place for a few seconds to let the glue set a bit. Since they weren’t all flat, if I let go immediately, they shifted. TIP: I wanted the letter to look organic and not have a perfect edge, so I tried to have blooms spill beyond the edge slightly wherever I could. 6.) Use leaves to fill in gaps. In addition to clipping the blooms, we also clipped the leaves from the stems. Some blooms also came with little berries or tiny buds. We used it all! These smaller things are great to fill in on edges or in small spaces between blooms. If you look close, you’ll also see spots where I used leaves and small blooms to really stretch the flowers! At the time I wished I had even more blooms, but now looking at it, I actually like the spots where leaves and tiny berries fill in and give it some breathing room. I didn’t get photos of each step. Once you start with the glue gun, y’all know that stuff is messy and it was a bit difficult to stop for photos with my messy hands or photograph myself gluing and holding flowers down one handed. But it couldn’t be more simple! Anyone could do it! But I couldn’t love it more! The variety of colors, the organic feel, all of it is just what I’d pictured. And now I’m so excited to let it inspire her big girl room! You’ll see up close there are some spots along the edges where you can see the edge of the white board. I wasn’t worried about that in every spot because I knew it’d be against white for the party. And I didn’t want the flowers to create a straight edge, so I wanted some give and take along the outside. My goal for her room if it’s obvious is to paint those spots the wall color, so that the flowers really pop and you don’t see the back structure of it. If you didn’t already, make sure you check out full Rosie’s Pink Party Reveal! All sources are tagged there. *** That’s been The White Buffalo motto for the last three years and is still what I’m striving to do each day in our home and with our family. Yes, that often means tablescapes, inspiring interiors, and fun before and after renos. But it also means family. Faith. Joy. Struggles. Laughter. Health. You’ll find a little bit of all of that here as I share how we’re choosing to live with both style and purpose. A huge part of that is our journey toward a more natural life that’s focused on enjoying each and every moment together. A huge thanks to my main blog sponsor that makes this dream of mine possible:
Lindsay says March 6, 2017 at 8:48 am Yep, but it’ll also be a big wall feature that inspires her big girl room! It’s nearly three feet tall 🙂 Art that size would cost waayy more than that! Reply